Fire from the Sun

by

John Derbyshire

*

For Rosie

*

Author’s Note

Names of the principals:

“Weilin” is pronounced “way-leen.”

“Yuezhu” is “ü-e-jwoo.” The “ü” is done with a pout, as in German Glück or French lune. The “e” is a shortAmerican “e” as in “get.”

Opera singing, like any other line of work, has its own jargon, taken mainly from Italian and German. Though I did not want to cumber my novel with these terms of art, it has proved impossible to avoid them altogether. Because they are not defined well—often not defined at all—in standard dictionaries, I have put them in a glossary at the end of this story. Also included in this glossary are the names of all operas, arias and composers mentioned in the text, with brief descriptions (where the text has not already supplied them).

For the convenience of my plot I have taken serious liberties with some of the realities of opera life, training and performance. I ask opera lovers to forgive me these transgressions (and one or two absurdities), and beg them not to write me angry letters pointing out that, for example, the Ravenna festival only began in 1990.

Similar remarks apply to the world of high finance as I have portrayed it. I know very well, and do not need to be told, that the Bosco and Mosco are not possible objects (though the latter bears a passing resemblance to the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation, invented in 1983 by Lew Ranieri and Bob Dall). Novelists, like opera composers, are very ruthless people, as our acquaintances will tell you, and the material world is our slave, not our master.

In building my sets for this story I have been helped by friends and relatives who know much more than I do about opera, finance, and life in China during the 1970s and 1980s. I am deeply grateful to: my wife Rosie, Wally Fekula, Bing Ma, Liz Kotlyarevsky, Yanbin Wang, Liz Funghini, Carl Leaman, Paul Micio, and Kitty Brush.

Chapter 1

New Costumes at the Swimming Pool

We Have Friends All Over the World!

The first time Weilin ever saw foreigners—real foreigners, not just National Minorities or Chinese people from another province—was at the swimming pool in South Lake Park.

September in Seven Kill Stele was very hot. Weilin and his classmates used to go to the pool after lessons. Most of the classmates just wanted to splash around and cool off, but Weilin really liked to swim, and conscientiously practiced his strokes in the pool, so far as was possible. This was, in fact, not very far. The pool was patronized by all the children on the south side of the town: not only those from Elementary School Number One, which Weilin attended, but also students from Number Three, by the textile factory, and some from a nearby middle school. This made the pool very crowded. If you got there early you could swim the length of the pool without more than two or three collisions, but later it was so full you could only jump up and down in the dark, oily water.

None of the classmates had a swimming outfit. You rented an outfit at the pool, for two fen per session. The outfits were poor things, made of rough wool dyed dark blue. The boys’ outfits were just briefs, with a draw-string at the waist. The girls’ had shoulder-straps. However, the outfits were so old and worn you sometimes got one with a hole in it. This was all right if the hole wasn’t in an embarrassing place; but of course, in the case of the boys it generally was, whichever way round you tried to wear it. Then you had to argue with the crabby old woman in charge of distributing the costumes, to try to get a replacement.

The woman belonged to one of the National Minorities. She had a piece of ivory in her ear. There was nothing very quaint or fascinating about this: it was just a curved piece of ivory, murky gray in color, tapering from one end to the other like a tiny replica water-buffalo horn, stuck through a hole in the woman’s earlobe. It was just a custom the women of her tribe, whatever it was, practiced. She did not wear any picturesque Minority costume, at any rate not while carrying out her duties at the pool; just plain old-woman clothes, and that piece of ivory in her ear. Arguing with her was very tiresome. She was part deaf, or pretended to be, and her Chinese was not very good. Depending on her mood and your own perseverance you might or might not get a decent exchange, or you might have to forgo the evening swim, or take a chance with your classmates’ mirth.

Weilin was, in point of fact, rather afraid of the old woman. He had only been able to negotiate an exchange with her once, when she was distracted by several children trying to claim her attention all at once, and at last had handed out costumes at random in exasperation before slamming the window she owned in the wooden shed at the entrance to the pool area. The other times he had tried to argue with her the old woman, with the bully’s instinct for spotting the weak and shy, had rebuffed him. Furthermore Weilin was never really sure of his position among his classmates, and did not bear up well under ridicule, so if he got a costume with a hole in it he generally just claimed back his two fen and went home alone.

Weilin’s birthday—his eighth birthday—fell in October. One day in late September, a few days before the birthday, he went to the swimming pool after classes to find it all changed. The old woman’s wooden shed had been whitewashed. The old woman herself was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was an army man at the window. The army man looked very smart. He wore full uniform and a peaked cap. It must have been even hotter in the booth than outside, to judge by the rivulets of sweat running down the army man’s face from under his cap. He made no move to wipe away the sweat, though. He must (Weilin thought) be a model soldier. “Fear neither hardship nor death!” was the army motto, and so for one of these fellows an overheated shed in a muggy southwestern summer was beneath consideration.

The most wonderful change of all was that the tattered old blue woolen bathing outfits had been replaced. The new outfits were all different colors: black, maroon and ultramarine for the boys, a brilliant flower-garden of yellows, greens, crimsons, pinks and purples for the girls. There was a little knot of girls at one side of the window, still wearing school clothes, comparing the outfits they’d drawn, arguing about whose was prettier, in that noisy way girls have.

When Weilin got to the window the army man scanned him quickly, then turned and produced an outfit from one of the wooden pegs on the wall inside. It was brand-new, maroon with a white drawstring. Weilin took it cautiously. He thought it the most beautiful item of clothing he’d ever been given.

“No charge today,” said the army man when Weilin offered up his two fen. “Mind you behave yourselves in there. Next!”

Of course, all the children were delighted with their new outfits—especially the girls, their skinny bodies, when they emerged from behind the changing screens, sheathed in dazzling displays of color and pattern. They were jigging up and down in delight, shrieking, covering their mouths with one hand and pointing with the other.

The pool area itself had been spruced up. The water of the pool had been cleaned to some degree. The surface, normally scummy with algae, bits of grass and dead dragonflies, now glittered and flickered with pure light. At the shallow end you could see right down to the bottom of the pool. The concrete surround had been scrubbed, and bushes and shrubs in bright-painted tubs had been set along the outer perimeter. Everywhere was a strong smell of disinfectant.

The water, when Weilin let himself down into it, was colder than usual. Perhaps it had been refreshed from the town supply. Weilin didn’t mind this at all, because the air was so insufferably hot. However, the girls made a fuss about it—shrieking, clutching their arms about themselves and each other, pretending to shudder. Weilin thought the generality of girls very babyish, incapable of any kind of serious talk or play. He himself was an only child; but there were girls in his class, of course, and most of the boys he knew had three or four brothers and sisters apiece, so Weilin was pretty well acquainted with girls. Now, irritated by all the shrieking and shuddering, he decided to assert his superiority by splashing the nearest group of girls. He accordingly set off to swim past them, using an exaggerated overarm motion to make a lot of splash.

This went wrong. The girls were standing round in a little ring, and as he was about to pass the nearest one she stepped back right into him. His flailing arm caught her quite a sharp knock on the shoulder.

“Ow! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

By the time he got upright the girl was clutching her shoulder, face scrunched up in pain.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Weilin thought the girl was going to cry. She was a little thing, younger than him, he thought, with one of the more spectacular of the new outfits on: big yellow, red and blue flowers on a white background. Her hair was tied up in short pigtails, sticking out at each side. Her face was round, a tooth missing at top front, and her eyes were very large and mobile, like those of an alert small animal. However, the eyes did not cry.

“You really hurt me. I’m sure I shall have a bruise.”

“Why are you boys always so rough?” chipped in one of her companions, a chubby girl with no visible eye matter at all, only puffy horizontal slits, like a Tibetan. “Go away!” This was echoed by the others, a little chorus of minuscule outrage. The chubby girl splashed at him, hitting the water with her palms.

“It’s all right,” said the girl he had hit. “He didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

Weilin had had his fill of girls for the evening. He swam off as best he could among the jostling children, into the deeper part of the pool. Here he felt very brave, knowing he could not touch the bottom. Weilin considered himself a good swimmer, probably the best in his class, though nobody had ever bothered to organize any competitions.

There were only real swimmers at this end of the pool, older boys mostly. Normally they were horsing around, showing off to each other. Today, however, they were standing and sitting quietly on the surround, or making clumsy solo dives into the water. Holding on to the rim of the pool, Weilin saw the reason. As well as the normal lifeguard—one of the Physical Education teachers from the middle school, a rather unfit-looking middle-aged type with a paunch hanging over his blue shorts—there were two more army men: sleek well-muscled young fellows in army-color shorts and brown plastic sandals. They were not doing much, just standing together at one side watching the children in the pool, but their presence was enough to intimidate the older boys from their usual rough play.

Weilin made his way back to the shallow end, swimming haltingly among the milling youngsters, now so colorful. Standing there in the eighty centimeters of water he looked back down to the army men. They had gone to the other side now to talk to the regular lifeguard. The regular lifeguard had a little hut of his own, up against the screen of the changing areas. This hut, like the one where the outfits were kept, had been whitewashed. Weilin wondered about all the cleaning and painting, and about the new costumes. He thought perhaps it might be a movement. He was not very clear in his mind what a movement was, but he knew that they happened from time to time, and that when they happened people ran around rearranging familiar things. Landmarks disappeared, people’s parents were moved away to new assignments, slogans were painted on walls. Weilin had a vague idea, the very vaguest of ideas, from hearing his parents talk, that movements were a big nuisance.

“I really think I shall have a bruise.”

It was the girl, the one he had bumped into. She was standing alone just in front of him. When she saw she had got his attention she angled her head over in a way that looked quite painful by itself, to inspect her shoulder.

“I’m really sorry. But as you said yourself, it was an accident.”

“It’s all right.” She turned back to regard him, cocking her head now just a little over on one side. With her pigtails sticking out like that she looked rather comical. Weilin smiled. She smiled back, showing the gap in her top front teeth.

“My name’s Han Yuezhu. Yue like in ‘moon,’ zhu for ‘pearl.’ My father’s an army man. He’s a company commander.”

What a show-off! thought Weilin. But the girl had disarmed him, cocking her head like that, and he felt a little guilty about the accident still.

“I’m Liang Weilin. My dad teaches in the college.” Weilin didn’t feel he wanted to describe the characters of his given name. He did not like it very much, thinking it old-fashioned and pedantic. He had not yet been able to develop a satisfactory running-hand signature with the fussy, complicated characters.

“Really? What does he teach?”

“He teaches mathematics.”

The girl made a face. “I hate math. Two threes are six, three threes are nine, four threes are what? I can never remember. I think it’s stupid.”

“What do you like, then?”

“I like dancing. When I grow up I shall be a dancer.”

The girl raised her thin arms above her head, fingertips touching, and swayed a little. It was so affected Weilin could not help but laugh. His laughing discomfited her. She dropped her arms, looking a little crest-fallen, and Weilin felt guilty again.

“Your outfit is really lovely,” he said, for something nice to say.

The girl brightened at once. “Yes, it’s the prettiest one. Much prettier than Fujun’s.”

“I think it’s great that they’ve got new outfits. The old ones were so awful.”

“Oh, I know why! I know why! Do you know why?”

“Why what? Why they got new outfits?”

“Yes. I know why, and I’m sure you don’t.”

“Well, it’s true, I don’t. Will you tell me?”

She frowned, feeling the weight of responsibility. “I don’t know if I should. Perhaps you’re a bad person. A county-revolutionary.”

“It’s counter-revolutionary. How could you spot one? You don’t even know how to say it.”

“Well, then, I won’t tell you.”

“Please yourself. I don’t care.”

“It’s a secret. Because my father’s in the army, he knows. He told me. He’s a company commander.”

“It can’t be a very important secret, or I’m sure he wouldn’t have told you.”

The girl ignored this. “I guess it’s all right,” she said. “Everybody will know soon, anyway.”

“So you’re going to tell me?”

“Yes. Listen.” She came close to him, paddling her hands through the water, which came up to her chest.

“All right,” said Weilin. “I’m ready.”

The girl was at his side. Quite unselfconsciously she grabbed his arm with her hands and pulled him down so that she could whisper in his ear. Weilin experienced an odd thrill, feeling her hands on his arm. It was a new thing, something he had not felt before.

“There are foreigners,” she hissed.

“What? Foreigners? Where?”

“In the town. At the guest house.”

“All right. What’s that got to do with the new outfits?”

“They’ll come to South Lake Park. To the pool. So we have to look our best. That’s why we got new outfits. To make a good appearance in front of the foreigners.”

“Oh, I see.”

The girl had let go of him now. Weilin regretted this, still in the afterglow of that peculiar thrill. The girl was pretty, he decided, in spite of her missing tooth and those babyish pigtails. Her skin was pale, paler than most of the girls’, and looked smooth and creamy. He guessed she was a little younger than himself. You wouldn’t have called her either skinny or plump—though her chest and shoulders were somewhat broader than usual, perhaps. He wondered if there were some polite way to touch her. Start a splashing game, perhaps. But at this point the foreigners showed up.

It was a big party, foreigners and Chinese together. The Chinese were officials and party secretaries from the town government. Weilin thought he recognized one or two of them from various rallies and functions he had been taken to, though he could not have placed them by name or title. But of course it was the foreigners who captured everyone’s attention.

The most prominent of the foreigners was a most extraordinary looking creature. He was very tall and very hairy. You could see he was hairy because he was wearing shorts, and there were thick curly gray hairs all up his legs. On his feet he wore sandals: not the plastic sandals the army men had, but complicated things made of leather, with numerous straps and buckles. The man’s hair was gray and very long, swept back in a mane, reaching almost to his shoulders. He had a beard, likewise gray, a narrow goatee several inches long. He wore an open-necked shirt in egg-shell blue, hanging loose outside his shorts.

The other foreigners were slightly less alarming. The gray-haired man had a woman at his side, much younger, with astonishing yellow hair gathered in a limp pony tail, and a light cotton dress over her rather plump figure. Behind them were two other men, one in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, but with sandals like the old man, the other wearing a jacket. It was a light linen jacket in off-white, but the man still looked very hot and uncomfortable. He had an odd face, the features all hanging down, as if his flesh were especially susceptible to gravity.

The army men were coming up from the other end of the pool carrying deck chairs. The deck chairs had been secreted away in the lifeguard’s hut, apparently. The party seated themselves, the officials making a great fuss about the foreigners sitting first. Weilin could hear the old man talking. He had a loud voice, but apparently did not speak Chinese. One of the officials was an interpreter. He kept leaning over to catch what the foreigners said, then relayed it to the other officials, who listened with exaggerated attention, then nodded or laughed or clapped their hands in simulated delight.

“Don’t stand there staring! Foreigners don’t like to be stared at. Swim, or play, or something.”

This was one of the army men, heading back for more deck chairs. The children had been frozen dead still in the water and on the surround, staring at the foreigners. The army men walked back, each working one side of the pool, telling the children: “Swim! Play! Be natural!”

Even with this encouragement Yuezhu could not move. She stood staring at the foreigners, her mouth hanging open.

“Come on,” said Weilin. “We’re supposed to act naturally. The army man said.”

Yuezhu jerked back to life. She reached out for Weilin’s arm and held it with her small, pale hands.

“What a monster! Ai ai ai, I’d be scared to death to get close to him!”

“Which one?”

“The one with the beard, of course. Ai, so hairy!”

Feeling her hold on to him, the thrill came back, triple intensity. It seemed to Weilin the most delicious thing he had ever experienced, though he could not understand why. With his free hand he disengaged one of hers, and held it, his fingers twined through hers. She seemed not to mind this. Her neck was rather longer than normal, or seemed so with her hair in pigtails. Her pale skin and long neck made him think of the expression swan-neck, which he had read somewhere. He thought it was apt, though on purely instinctual grounds, as he had in point of fact never seen a swan. Beneath her neck, passing under the straps of her outfit, were her clavicles, which Weilin would have liked to touch, but of course dared not. The clavicles, and indeed as much of the rest of the girl as could be seen, gave a combined impression of grace and sturdiness, like one of the lesser ruminants—a deer, perhaps, or an antelope, some species of which Weilin had seen, at the zoo in Chengdu. Small and neat, but not frail. Robust, but not muscular.

“They’re only foreigners,” he said, determined to show himself unimpressed. “It’s really nothing out of the ordinary. At home we have several foreign books, all in foreign languages.”

“I wonder if they’re Impersonalists.”

“Imperialists. Of course not. Imperialists wouldn’t be allowed to come here. These are foreign friends. Chairman Mao says We Have Friends All Over The World. They’re just foreign friends, that’s all. Come on, we’re supposed to be acting naturally. Do you know how to swim? I’ll show you if you like.”

He tugged at her hand. Reluctantly she turned away from contemplating the foreigners.

“So hairy!” she murmured.

The pretty new costumes were strictly for show to the foreigners. Next day when Weilin went to the pool the old Minority woman with the ear ornament was back at her station, handing out the ragged woolen outfits as before. The water of the pool stayed clean for several days, though.

Chapter 2

A Fairy Weeps a Lake of Tears

Moon Pearl Dances in the Bamboo Grove

On the wall of the apartment where Weilin lived was a character scroll, a poem done in black ink on white paper, the characters running from top to bottom, right to left in the old style. The poem was Du Fu’s “Night in the Pavilion.”

Winter—Heaven’s law shortens the days.

Frost and snow—bright to the limits of the sky.

Drum and bugle bravely sound the fifth watch.

Three mountains—above winds the River of Stars.

Wild sobbing in many homes after the battle—

From fishermen and woodcutters, strange old songs.

Sleeping Dragon, Prancing Steed—now you are dust.

Let the traffic of the world yield to silence and peace!

The scroll had been made by Mother, who was a good calligrapher. Mother had helped Weilin memorize the poem, and had explained the meanings to him. Frost and snow he knew about, of course, though he had never seen them. On clear nights—all too few in this humid region—the River of Stars stretched across Heaven, a dim band of silver seeming to lie behind, beyond the actual stars. Sleeping Dragon and Prancing Steed were literary names for two great generals of the Three Kingdoms period, many dynasties ago, even before the time of the poet, himself twelve hundred years dead.

Mother told him about this poet Du Fu. He had struggled all his life to get an official position at the court of the Tang Emperor; but just when he had succeeded a great rebellion broke out and Du, along with the Emperor and all his court, became refugees. He spent the rest of his life fleeing war and famine, trying to find safe lodgings for his family, trying to get back his position, growing his own food, trudging muddy roads to seek help from friends and relatives, worn out at last from despair and from grief for his shattered country.

“That was life in the Old Society” (Mother had concluded), “before Chairman Mao swept away all those bad things and gave us a New China.”

“Don’t make it too simple for him,” Father had put in at this point. “Our progress has certainly been tremendous, and many evils have been eliminated. But we have not yet abolished loneliness and death.”

“Hush, Bullfrog. You should not speak in such a negative way. You don’t know what lesson he’ll take from it.”

Father had just chuckled and turned back to his book. He often spoke in this somewhat flippant style, and Mother always chided him for it. Weilin grasped, from the nervous edge on Mother’s voice, that it was not correct to speak like that, though he did not know why. Nor did he know why Mother called Father “Bullfrog.” Father bore no resemblance to a bullfrog, and his voice was not in the least like the lowing of bullfrogs in the empty field beyond the college wall during the rainy season. Father’s pet name for Mother was “Cicada,” though again Weilin did not know any reason for this. And in point of fact Father very rarely said “Cicada,” at any rate in Weilin’s hearing. He often called Mother “Darling” or “My Love,” though. Weilin thought that all these little endearments were, like Father’s sarcasm, mildly improper. This he gathered from the fact that Mother and Father never used them when anyone else was around, addressing each other then by given name or even full name as other people did. The family nickname for Weilin was “Pangolin.” This was a joke of Father’s. Weilin’s teeth had been slow to appear, and Father said he had his teeth inside his stomach, like a pangolin.

Weilin never regretted being an only child. He liked to be with Mother and Father, and thought he would have resented having to share them. The three of them spent most of their evenings together, reading, listening to the radio or gramophone, or playing games. Mother was best at the word games, especially the one where you had to make a harmonious sentence whose first word was the last word of the previous player’s effort, or “chain verse,” where you built a poem by each player contributing a line in turn. Father was more inclined toward mathematical puzzles, board games and card games. He was expert at both Chinese and western chess, and used to take on Mother and Weilin simultaneously, Weilin playing the western game, Mother—who didn’t care for western style—playing Chinese. When Mother was occupied with some private task, Father would play Weilin alone, spotting him a queen if western-style, a cannon if Chinese. Even with such an advantage, Weilin rarely won.

On Friday nights one of Father’s colleagues, a young lecturer in the Mathematics Department named Wang Baojiang, came to the apartment to play western-style chess with Father. Sometimes when Weilin was occupied with homework Father and Mother played a card game called “Honeymoon Bridge,” an adaptation for two players of the great American game. Weilin wanted to learn Honeymoon Bridge, but Mother, laughing, told him he must wait for his honeymoon, which he understood to have something to do with being married. He grasped the main points of the game anyway, from watching them play; but since he could not play himself, he would eventually get bored watching them and take up a book.

The books Weilin read were mostly Father’s. Father had all the old classic novels and poetry anthologies, of course, and many western books in translation. Of the Chinese books, Weilin’s favorites were Strange Tales from Liao’s Studio, a collection of ghost stories from the Manchu dynasty, and Stories Ancient and Modern, from the same period but with more commonplace themes. Of Western writers, his first favorite had been the storyteller Antusheng. Weilin especially liked the story called “The Tinder Box.” In this story a poor soldier finds a magic tinder box. When he strikes the flint once, a dog appears with eyes like saucers. Twice, and another dog comes, with eyes like mill wheels. If he strikes the flint three times a third dog comes, “with eyes like the Round Tower.” Weilin had no idea what the Round Tower was, but he trembled to think of those dogs. The dogs would do anything the soldier told them. If he wanted gold, they brought it to him. At last the people made him king, and he married the beautiful princess.

How marvelous it would be to have that tinder box! You could get anything you wanted. Nobody would dare to bully you or insult you. Weilin half convinced himself that such a tinder box really existed. He did not grasp that the story was supposed to have happened in Denmark—did not, in fact, know that Denmark existed—and thought the round tower must be somewhere in China. Very carefully, not to give away his reason for wanting to know, he asked Father if he knew the whereabouts of a round tower. Sure enough, Father said he thought there was one near Changsha, in the next province. Weilin determined to go there and find the tinder box. Then he thought of the dogs with those terrifying eyes, and inwardly trembled, and thought perhaps he ought to wait until he was older. But what if someone found the tinder box in the meantime?

While he was vacillating about the tinder box, Weilin happened to read Treasure Island, a story about pirates and buried treasure. This was so exciting it swept Mr Antusheng from his mind. Then he discovered Tom Sawyer. This was a revelation. The boys in it were so bold, so unrestrained, and showed so little respect for their parents and teachers! The book thrilled him none the less, and he dreamed of being a bold American lad, having adventures in caves and cemeteries. When, some months later, he picked up the book of Antusheng stories again, they seemed very babyish.

Father was Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the college, so of course he had many textbooks and stories about science. He had several of Jules Verne’s romances on his shelves, and The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, as well as W.W. Rouse Ball’s Mathematical Recreations. These were all in Chinese translations, but there were real foreign-language books, too, just as Weilin had boasted to the girl Han Yuezhu: dictionaries of German and Russian, some mathematical texts in German, full of strange symbols and diagrams of various sorts of shapeless blobs joined by lines. There was even an American book: Abramowitz and Stegun’s Handbook of Mathematical Functions.

This last was very fascinating to Weilin; not because of the English text, which he could not understand at all, but because the majority of its pages were filled with numbers—ten thousands, perhaps ten thousands of ten thousands, of numbers, marching down the pages and from page to page in ranks and files. So many numbers! It filled him with awe to think of all the numbers, and that a book should be made like this, presumably because there were people—people like Father—who wanted to read pages and pages of numbers.

Once Weilin had asked Father about the numbers. Had he really read them all?

Father laughed. “Of course not, Little Pangolin. It’s a reference book. Like a dictionary. You just dip into it for one number. You don’t read it.”

Weilin felt foolish, thinking he should have realized this.

The older books were battered and stained, having been packed, unpacked and repacked in Father’s numerous moves around the country. Father was much older than the generality of fathers. He had been born in 1911, the year called “Xinhai” in the old calendar, when the Manchu dynasty had been overthrown by revolution. He had been 46 when Weilin was born. Yet he had married at a normal age, to a girl of normal age. It was only that they had waited seventeen years before having Weilin. Mother said that in fact Weilin had had a sister, born during the war against Japan, but in the wartime conditions there had not been enough food and medicine to keep her healthy and she had died from an infection. After New China was established of course there was enough food for everyone, and so Father and Mother had decided to have Weilin. He was all the more precious (Mother said) because they had waited so long for him.

Mother was herself a Manchu from the northeast. The northeast was all mountains and forests, Mother said. There were bears and wolves in the forests. In the winter it was bitterly cold, often forty or fifty below. It was so cold that if you were to spit, the spit would freeze in midair and hit the ground—which was hard as iron—with a ting-ting sound. The bears found a warm place in the forest and slept through the cold weather, but the wolves used to come down from the mountains to attack the livestock of the farms, and the people had to shoot them with guns. In summer the air was pleasant, not stifling like Seven Kill Stele’s; but then there were horseflies the size of small sparrows that could sting through leather. The peasants in the northeast used to wear iron bands round their heads with burning tapers set in them, to keep the horseflies at bay while they plowed. However, you could go up in the mountains to escape from the horseflies. Up in the mountains, as well as bears and wolves, there was gold, and wild ginseng. Before Liberation the mountains had been full of bandits, who went there to mine the gold and dig up the ginseng. Now, of course, it was all very peaceful. The highest mountain was named Ever-White Mountain, and it had a lake at the very top, Heaven Lake.

“If the mountain was ever-white, wouldn’t the lake be ever-frozen?” asked Weilin when Mother told him this.

Mother kissed him and said he was a clever boy to reason so well. But Ever-White Mountain was white because of a kind of white gravel that covered its upper slopes. It only had snow on it in winter. The pool at the top was pure and clear, made from the tears of a beautiful fairy who had lived there in ancient times. The fairy was unhappy because she had had no children, so she had wept this lakeful of tears. At last Manzhushuli, the King of Heaven, taking pity on her, had given her the finest of all children, named Guoruo, which meant “Blessed One” in the Manchu language. The fairy had added the name Aixin, which means “Golden”; and Aixin Guoruo had become the ancestor of the whole Manchu race (named after Manzhushuli himself), whose destiny was to conquer China and build the greatest dynasty the Empire had ever known. The dynasty was to be named Qing, which means ‘clear’ and is written with the three-drops-of-water symbol at one side. The water was for the tears of the fairy, and also to show that the previous dynasty (named Ming, which means ‘bright’ and is a fire-word, and whose ruling family had the surname Vermilion, another fire-word) was to be extinguished.

Weilin loved to hear Mother talk about the northeast. It seemed like a very romantic place, with the bears and wolves and mountains with lakes on top. He hoped he would see the northeast one day. Mother still had relatives there, he knew. He had heard her speaking of Cousin This and Uncle That, and he thought that once or twice there had been a letter from the northeast. Father’s only relatives were Grandmother and Auntie Shi, who both lived in Nanjing, a thousand miles away. Mother’s relatives were not close relatives, either. They were all cousins and uncles. She had no brothers or sisters. Her parents had fled the northeast to escape from the Japanese. They had gone to Chongqing; then her parents had died in an epidemic; then she met Father, and they had got jobs at the college in Seven Kill Stele when it opened, soon after Liberation. Mother’s parents lived only in a photograph which stood on the dresser.

The dresser was set against the wall which separated the living-room from the kitchen. It had drawers and a door at each side. The drawers held clothes and an overflow of table utensils from the kitchen. Behind the right-hand door were kept Father’s things, and the cards and board games. Father’s things dwelt in a square tin box with a lid, on the topmost of the two shelves behind the door. Weilin was not supposed to touch Father’s things, but once he had peeped into the box. Notebooks; some letters tied with string; Father’s personal chop, in an ivory container with a carved lid and a compartment for red ink; needles for the gramophone; writing-brushes and a fancy, unused ink-block; a peculiar kind of ruler, with a smaller ruler sliding inside it and a little glass window fixed over both, that could also slide; a miscellany of small metal or wooden implements, of which the only one not entirely mysterious (he had actually seen Father use it once) was a thing made of pressed tin and wire, for threading needles with ease. Behind the left-hand door were Mother’s things: some hanging cloths she chose not to hang, needlework accessories, hair ornaments.

On top of the dresser was a radio, a Chinese model in a black plastic case. Around the radio were the photographs. Mother’s parents; Father as a college student; Father and Mother at West Lake in Hangzhou, a famous scenic spot; and one Weilin especially liked, of himself at one month old, with Father and Mother holding him between them.

Keeping company with the photographs were two little porcelain love-birds. When Weilin had first been old enough to reach the top of the dresser he had knocked off one of the love-birds. By a miracle it had not broken; instead of falling to the bare concrete floor it had hit his own infant foot and rolled off unharmed. Mother had scolded him severely for that—one of the very few scoldings he had had—and even Father had looked stern and said: “Listen to your mother, don’t be naughty.” Then Mother had put back the love-bird very tenderly, setting it and its companion further back, our of Weilin’s reach. Because of the love-bird’s narrow escape, and the vivid memory of being scolded, Weilin regarded these creatures even now with some awe. They were perched out in front of the photographs, one on each side of a slender flower-vase in which Mother always kept two or three wild daisies picked in the college grounds.

Because Weilin’s father was an Assistant Professor the family had a pleasant apartment on the edge of the college grounds. The apartment was on the third floor of a small block assigned to senior staff at the college. There was running cold water and a water toilet you could flush by pouring a bucket of water down it. From the window of the living-room you could look out over some bamboo thickets to fields and villages, with Mount Tan in the distance, rice-fields terraced all up its lower slopes. Weilin had a bed in the living-room, right under the window. His parents had a bedroom all their own, a thing few of his classmates’ families could boast, and there was a separate kitchen and bathroom, though both very tiny. The kitchen had a kerosene stove for cooking, and a large white enamel sink.

The “Night in the Pavilion” character scroll was on the wall opposite the dresser. Beneath and to the left of it stood a wind-up gramophone—a cabinet model built in the ponderous, factual Russian style. Father was in charge of loading the records and changing the needles, but Weilin was allowed to open the doors at the front of the cabinet, which was the only way to regulate the volume. Father and Mother both loved to listen to music. Mother liked piano pieces, most especially Mr Chopin; Father preferred Mr Beethoven and Mr Mozart. They had to ration their use of the gramophone rather carefully, though. The needles it used were of a soft metal which did not damage the disks; but these needles wore out quickly, and you always needed a good supply of them. For some reason they were difficult to obtain. In fact they could only be got in Shanghai, and then not very reliably; so Father had to wait until he heard of someone going to Shanghai, and ask them to get needles for him.

*

Coming home after the incident at the pool, Weilin told Father about the foreigners. Of course, Father already knew. Father knew pretty much everything. This was a Friday night. Lecturer Wang Baojiang had arrived, and he and father were sitting at the table drinking tea and trading morsels of professional gossip, preparatory to their chess game.

“They’re from England,” said Father. “The old one is a famous journalist. He’s writing articles about our country for the English newspapers.”

“I thought England was one of the Imperialist countries.”

“The government is Imperialist,” said Lecturer Wang. “The common people are our friends.”

“You can speak English, can’t you, Father?”

“Mm, only a little.” Father chuckled. “I can read it, at any rate for professional purposes. But English is very difficult, you know.” Father explained about the horrors of English spelling, and wrote out the words though, bough, cough, enough to illustrate his point. Weilin thought this very interesting, and tried to memorize the strange words: though, bough, cough, enough. It was clear to Weilin that Lecturer Wang did not know these English words. He nodded when Father was explaining them, as if he was entirely familiar with the peculiarities of English orthography; but somehow Weilin knew with certainty that he was only pretending.

Lecturer Wang said he always composed his papers with a maximum of mathematical symbols and a minimum of words, so that when they were published they could be read by anybody in any country. Father laughed and said perhaps one day the human race would be able to dispense with natural languages altogether, as Mr Leibniz had proposed.

*

Later Weilin tried to teach these strange English words to Yuezhu. After their first meeting at the pool they had become friends. They had met at the pool most days until it closed, in November. Weilin had even managed to teach her to swim a little. Then they would walk home together, as the barracks where Yuezhu’s father was stationed was on the road that led out to the college, which was located out on the very edge of the town. It was on the open grassy area in front of the barracks gate that he tried to show Yuezhu the English words. However, she could not grasp the point at all.

“I don’t see what’s so interesting. Lots of Chinese characters look the same but sound different.”

Weilin let it go. He thought Yuezhu was not really very clever. At first he had over-estimated her, because she could speak Mandarin. Weilin’s family, being educated people, and his mother coming from the north, spoke Mandarin at home, and Weilin was perfectly fluent—more so than most of the teachers at his school. Yuezhu’s family spoke Mandarin because everyone in the army did. She did not speak as well as he, but it was something that she could speak it at all; most of their classmates knew only the thick local dialect. The two of them had soon begun speaking Mandarin together, as their private language.

Mandarin, however, proved to be Yuezhu’s only claim to intellectual distinction. Weilin was only six months older than she, but he knew far more about the world. So it seemed to him. Yuezhu, however, was airily sure of herself, and thought her tiny stock of knowledge—which encompassed very little beyond her own immediate circumstances—quite adequate for her needs. From dealings with his classmates Weilin knew better than to press his superiority. He husbanded it quietly, bringing it out for employment only when he thought he might raise her a little from her slough of ignorance without risking a scornful rebuff. Above all else he did not want to lose Yuezhu because he felt sure he was in love with her.

The peculiar attraction he had first experienced that day in the pool could be nothing but love, Weilin believed. Though much too young to have known the tug of sexual feeling, and entirely ignorant of the facts of life, Weilin was familiar with the concept of love. How could he not have been? There was a large poster on one wall of the school auditorium promoting the Three Loves:

Love the country!

Love the Party!

Love Socialism!

He knew, however, that there was more to the matter than that. He knew about Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, at any rate, and about the instances of thwarted love in the Stories from Liao’s Studio, which invariably ended with a death and a haunting. At the same time he was aware of a component to his particular feelings that Mr Tuwen and Mr Liao had not seen fit to mention: something infinitely fascinating in the contemplation of Yuezhu’s smooth, sturdy limbs and swan neck. He had no way to place these impressions as he had no frame of reference to work from; but in his own mind he grouped them under the adjective delicious and thought—in a way which even he could perceive to be absurdly illogical—that if Yuezhu were food, he would like to eat her. Her voice also had a peculiar effect on him. When she was imitating someone, or when she wanted to tell something she thought very important, her voice seemed to come from deep in her chest, to be very round and strong. To hear this made Weilin shiver from head to toe, though he was not sure why.

After the pool closed for the winter there was no reason to meet, as they attended different schools. Yuezhu’s school was Elementary School Number Three, where the children of the textile factory workers went, and those from the army barracks. Weilin should have gone to Number Three too. It was closest to the College; but his father had felt dissatisfied with it for some reason and arranged for him to attend Number One in the town, halfway from South Lake Park to the Martyrs’ Monument marking the center of Seven Kill Stele. But Weilin still passed the barracks on his way home. As often as not Yuezhu would be there in the road, or on the grassy area in front of the barracks, waiting for him. There was a point on the long straight road out from the town where he could pick her out, if she was there, and the anticipation as he approached that point, and the delight when he could pick her out, were the most thrilling things he had ever known. The first few times she would be playing with some other girls (traffic was so light you could play ball games in the roadway with only the occasional interruption from a cart or bicycle). But she soon abandoned the pretense of nonchalance and stood there waiting for him, alone or in company with her girl friends.

The girl friends were a nuisance, smirking and giggling at them when they were together. Yuezhu felt this, too, and took to walking away with him along the road to the college gate. But this was only ten minutes, even at dawdling pace, so they extended their walk past the gate to the scruffy little store set in the college wall further along, where you could buy loquats—two for a fen—then past the college altogether, out beyond the end of the town to where the road was intersected by another leading to some villages, and ultimately to the provincial capital. A little way along this crossroad there was a bamboo thicket off at one side, followed by a curious depression: a little swale fifteen or twenty feet across hidden from the road by the bamboo. This became their secret place, where they would sit talking and playing and eating loquats, of which Yuezhu was very fond.

Although Weilin loved to be with Yuezhu, he did not think her talk very interesting. She knew of very little beyond her family. Her family was dominated (in her mind, at least) by her half brother. When she first mentioned this person, Weilin did not understand the expression she used, there being no common terms in the Chinese language to designate half- or step-relatives. She had just put together the words for “half ” and “elder brother” in a way that made no sense on a first hearing.

“He makes me say that,”Yuezhu explained. “He won’t let me call him Elder Brother. He says we’re not really brother and sister because we have different mothers. He gets angry if I forget to say Half Brother.”

“I don’t see why he should care. Why does he think it’s so important?”

“Because he didn’t agree with my father marrying my mother. His mother died when he was small, you see. Then my father married my mother. But Half Brother didn’t agree. He wouldn’t even go to the wedding banquet. He stood outside the house where it was held and refused to go in. He stood there until late at night, until some of my father’s relatives took him home. He’s very stubborn.”

“Oh, dear. So I guess he doesn’t get on with your mother.”

“Oh, they’re all right. He won’t call her Mother, though. He always says Ayi.” [The term used in the old society for a father’s secondary wives.] “And he fights with my father. Oh! terrible fights. Shouting and cursing.”

“Well, I guess it’s a kind of loyalty. To his own mother, I mean.”

“That’s what Half Brother says. Your mother is your mother, he says. It’s wrong to call another person Mother.”

*

This half brother was eighteen years old. He was a first-year student at the college, and actually took a class from Father. When Weilin asked Father about him Father said that at this early stage of the academic year the freshmen students were like grains of rice, there was no reason to notice one rather than another. If this Han Shiru developed any distinguishing characteristics, Father would report back.

Before Father had time to notice anything about Half Brother, Weilin met him, or at any rate encountered him. One evening just before Spring Festival the two little friends were walking along the road to the bamboo thicket when they saw two male students approaching, talking busily about something. Yuezhu squeezed Weilin’s arm and pulled him down to get his ear. Half Brother! she announced, in her deepest, chestiest, most dramatic whisper, sending Weilin’s entire nervous system into sympathetic vibration.

“Which one?”

“The handsome one. Not the one with glasses, the other one. Tall and handsome!”

The students differed in height by no more than an inch and a half, and neither was handsome to anyone but an adoring baby sister. But to be sure, one of them wore glasses and one didn’t. The one who didn’t was square-built, with broad shoulders and a powerful-looking neck, but spotty-faced and sporting a shock of unruly hair sticking up at one side. Seeing Yuezhu he stopped and broke off his conversation with the other.

“Little Half Sister. Where are you going?”

“Just up to the college. This is my friend, Liang Weilin. He lives in the college. His father teaches mathematics.”

“Old Liang?” Half Brother turned his attention on Weilin. “He’s too strict. Tell your Dad to ease up on the assignments.”

Half Brother laughed loud, showing square white teeth, and his classmate joined in. Then they walked on.

“Half Brother doesn’t like mathematics,” said Yuezhu. “In fact, he doesn’t like the college. He wanted to go to Sichuan University but Father wouldn’t do it.”

“Do what?”

Yuezhu frowned, uncertain. “I’m not sure. They had a big fight. Father said Half Brother should study harder, then he could go to the University. Half Brother said Father’s position was good enough to open a back door for him. But Father wouldn’t do it. He said a revolutionary doesn’t go in by the back door. Then Half Brother said a revolutionary should struggle by all means to serve the people and how could he serve the people if he couldn’t get a good education? And Father said Half Brother was an  …” Yuezhu squinted, trying to remember the difficult word. “… an on fong tu di nist.”

“Opportunist.”

“Yes. Oh! It was a big fight. They are both very stubborn.”

Weilin heard all about Yuezhu’s family, walking the road or lying back in their hollow in the early twilight. Her father was an old revolutionary who had had many adventures. He had fought against the Japanese and Chiang Kaishek all over China, and against the landlords’ rebellion in Tibet. Weilin felt at a disadvantage here. His own parents, so far as he knew, had never been anything but teachers. Their lives seemed very dull. Having no stories to tell about his family, he told Yuezhu the stories he had read in Father’s books. Some of them were right over her head—she dismissed The Time Machine as just silly and said she thought Tom Sawyer too naughty to live. But she liked the sad, sentimental tales of Old China from Stories Old and New and the ghost stories from Liao’s Studio. Best of all she liked the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.

Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai

Zhu Yingtai was a girl in ancient times who wanted to be a scholar. Because women were not allowed to take the Imperial examinations, she dressed as a boy and journeyed to the capital to enter the lists.

In the examination halls she met Liang Shanbo, a scholar from a poor family. They became close friends. Of course, Liang did not know that Zhu was a girl.

After the examinations they went back to their homes, which were not far apart. Zhu Yingtai realized that she loved Liang Shanbo. She went to see him to explain herself. Seeing her dressed as a girl, Liang Shanbo fell in love with her and proposed marriage.

Her family, however, would not accept him because he was too poor. They had in fact already made an arrangement for Zhu Yingtai to marry the son of another wealthy family.

When her family refused to yield, ZhuYingtai killed herself. Liang Shanbo followed her funeral procession, weeping.

ZhuYingtai’s body had been set carelessly in its coffin, and a corner of her white shroud was showing from under the lid. In his grief and despair, Liang Shanbo grasped at it and tore it off. Then he went home, and soon he too died from a broken heart.

Relenting, or fearful that his ghost might haunt them, Zhu Yingtai’s family agreed to let him be buried with their daughter in the family vault, and so he was.

As the mourners were turning away, however, a wonderful thing happened. The funeral mound split open with a mighty crack! and two beautiful white butterflies fluttered out and ascended up to Heaven. It was observed that one of the butterflies had a small piece missing from the end of a wing.

Later, when the workmen went to repair the tomb, they were astonished to discover that it was empty.

Yuezhu was deeply affected by this story. The first time Weilin told it she burst into tears, and wept for a long time. Afterwards, for several weeks, whenever they were alone together in the hollow she wanted to play Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. She herself played the part of Zhu Yingtai, of course, and seemed particularly to enjoy the death scene, which she prolonged to the point where Weilin could not restrain himself from laughing at her affected moaning and swooning. Later she added some dancing to the story. She tried to get Weilin to dance with her—the two butterflies ascending to Heaven—but Weilin lacked the necessary coordination and could not follow her, so at last she allowed him to lie back and watch her dance by herself: up on tip-toes, her slender arms raised above her head, eyes closed, turning and swaying in the twilight, while a chorus of cicadas played accompaniment.

Chapter 3

A Bird Who Takes Fright at the Sound of the Bow

The Liang Family Entertains Ardent Young Guests

One day in June, when Weilin came home from playing with Yuezhu in the hollow, Professor Fan was in the apartment. Weilin had seen Professor Fan before. He was a teacher at the college, an old friend of Father’s, of about Father’s age. Weilin had the dim impression that Father and Professor Fan were close in some way, perhaps sharing mutual sympathies about something. Mother said that Professor Fan was the best scholar at the college, and had published papers in international journals. However, he had made an error of some kind in one of the movements, and lost his professorship, and never been able to get it back. Now his title was just Lecturer. This put him below Father’s rank; but Father always deferred to him, and made a point of addressing him as Professor Fan.

Professor Fan was sitting with Father and Mother at the table in the living-room when Weilin came in. Mother was sitting forward with her elbows on the table, in a rather tense, perhaps angry, posture. Father just looked thoughtful. Professor Fan wore his usual expression—anxious and fretful. There was a newspaper on the table—an odd thing, as newspapers were delivered to work units to be read in libraries or study rooms, not to individuals. There was nothing else to be deduced from Professor Fan’s presence, as they had obviously stopped talking when they heard Weilin’s feet on the stairs. There was an uncomfortable pause during which no-one said anything. Then Professor Fan said: “Well, we must follow the General Line and obey the directives of the leaders.”

“Yes,” said Mother. “We must study Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong Thought and strive to fulfill the tasks set for us by the Party.”

Father said nothing. After Professor Fan had gone, taking the newspaper with him, Weilin asked Father what they had been talking about. Father chuckled.

“Old Fan!” he said. “He’s a ‘bird who takes fright at the sound of the bow.’”

Weilin did not know this idiom. He asked Mother to explain it, but she would not. She seemed very troubled—almost (he thought) close to tears. He found the idiom anyway in one of Father’s books.

The Bird Who Takes Fright

at the Sound of the Bow

In ancient times, in the Kingdom of Wei, there was a famous archer, whose name was Geng Lei.

One day Geng Lei was out walking with the King of Wei when they saw a gaggle of wild geese passing above them. Geng Lei said: “I can shoot down a bird using my bow alone, with no arrow.”

The King demanded a demonstration. Geng Lei raised his empty bow and took aim at the rearmost of the geese. At the twang of the bowstring the goose fell dead from the sky. The King was astonished.

Geng Lei explained: “I could tell that this bird had previously been wounded by an arrow. I saw that he was rather slow in flight, and I heard that his cry had a note of fear in it. From this I knew that his wound was not yet healed, that his heart was not yet steady again. When he heard the bowstring he at once took fright and tried to fly up higher to escape; but his strength and spirit failed him, and he died.”

Having read this, Weilin himself felt troubled. Why should Father speak of Professor Fan in that way? What did Professor Fan have to be scared of? Perhaps of being demoted again. But if Professor Fan was the bird who takes fright at the sound of the bow, who was the archer?

When this question occurred to him, Weilin at once felt afraid, though he did not know why. Clearly this was some adult thing. Normally Weilin did not concern himself with adult things; but this thing, whatever it was, had upset Mother. He asked her again about it, later that evening, but she said it was nothing, he should not worry, just be a good boy and don’t question anything at school.

Weilin was sufficiently disturbed that he could not get to sleep that night. Lying in his bed in the living-room he could hear Mother and Father talking in their own bedroom. From his bed he could not make out the words, so he stealthily crept out and put his ear to the bedroom door. Still he could not make out everything that was said, but got most of it.

“… can’t understand why they would do that. We are making so much progress.”

“Never mind why. Why does not concern us. We only have to survive.”

“Well, we’ve always survived before.”

“Thanks to me! You, you foolish old Bullfrog, you are the one who wanted to speak out in ’57. It was I who persuaded you to keep your mouth shut. And you see, I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Of course, of course, I know that. I just can’t understand the Librarian’s reasoning.”

“Nobody can understand. Why bother trying to understand? It’s like a force of nature, like an earthquake. You just have to survive.”

“We are put on this Earth to understand, my sweet Cicada. If one generation can’t improve on the previous generation’s understanding, why should we trouble ourselves to put forth new generations?”

“The Librarian has his own motives. They don’t concern us. If you could understand them, what would you have understood? The thoughts of a maniac! The babbling of an idiot! It’s not worth trying to understand it. Just be quiet and obedient. Just survive.”

“Yes, yes. I know well enough how to do that. But we should worry about the Little Pangolin. He is at a dangerous age. As Mr Rousseau observed, he has the words but not yet the meanings. We must be sure he does not use the words carelessly.”

“You must explain to him, Bullfrog. He is old enough to understand, surely. He will listen to you. You must tell him how to survive. How the nail that sticks up is hammered down; how the tree that stands tallest is felled by the storm.”

“Such things to teach a child! To always march in step, to hold the same opinions as everyone else, to be a ‘rustless cog in a great machine.’ Is this all we can offer him?”

“It’s only for a while. The Librarian is, what? more than seventy now. There are other voices in the Party.”

“Yes. There was Peng Dehuai. Look what happened to him!”

“It won’t go on for ever, silly old Bullfrog. We must be patient. Think of our Little Pangolin. He can be a fine scholar, I know. You have said so yourself. If the worst comes to the worst, perhaps he will be able to go abroad.”

Father sighed. “Ai! Ai! We are oxen and donkeys for our children!” He sighed again. “Well, thank Heaven I am a mathematician, at any rate. They can’t find anything counter-revolutionary in that!”

Other than perceiving a vague sense of menace, Weilin could make little of this. As it happened, he knew the college librarian—a tiny mild-mannered fellow named Zhao, best known in the college community for his fanatical dedication to fishing, though no-one had ever known him catch anything bigger than his thumb. Was he really more than seventy? Weilin would not have said so; but like most children he had only the sketchiest notion of numerical age beyond about thirty, so he thought it not impossible. But why was he suddenly so important? Like a force of nature. What, Old Zhao? Weilin doubted Old Zhao could muster enough force to push a wheelbarrow.

Baffled, Weilin retired to bed. In a dream, a terrifying archer with the varicolored face of a temple god shot invisible arrows into the air, one after another, howling with laughter all the while, and each arrow brought down a weeping bird. If dreams were logical the birds would have had the face of Professor Fan; in fact, they were a selection of Weilin’s classmates, all weeping.

*

It was soon after this that the school closed. One morning the teachers were all summoned to a meeting. The younger students were left in the charge of older ones. This was never a success, as the older students were themselves only eleven or twelve and had no authority, so everyone just did as he pleased. Later in the morning they were all called into the school yard, and the Physical Education teacher made them do calisthenics for half an hour to music from the loudspeakers. Then, quite abruptly, he sent them all home.

Weilin and some classmates went to the pool in South Lake Park; but it was the dead period in midday, when people ate their lunch and had a nap, so the pool was closed. The classmates started up a game called Storming the Mountain, using a little hillock among the trees of the park, but Weilin slipped away and started to walk home. He dawdled by the barracks; but Yuezhu must have been still in school, or having her afternoon nap, and did not show. There was no-one at home. Weilin took his own nap on his bed in the living-room.

Usually Mother, whose teaching duties were not very arduous, came home in mid-afternoon, Father somewhat later. On this day, however, they came home together. Weilin heard them speaking in low voices as they ascended the stairs, but they stopped before he could make out words. When they came in he told them about the school. Mother seemed not interested at all. She just went to the kitchen to start preparing food. Father, however, was very attentive.

“Did the teachers say anything to you?”

“No. Only to go home and there was no school today.”

“Were there any posters stuck up?”

“No. Only the usual things.”

“What about the loudspeakers?”

“Mmm, there was a speech. But I didn’t listen to it. Then some music. When the music started, Teacher Liu came out and made us do calisthenics. Then he sent us home.”

Father fell into deep thought, and did not speak all through dinner. That evening he seemed to have a passion for Mr Mozart, and in particular for Number Thirty-Eight. He played it three times right through, sitting in his chair with his head back, his hands clasped in front of him, moving only to change the records. Mother sat with a book, though she seemed not to be turning many pages. After the third time through Number Thirty-Eight Father sat in silence for some time. Then, abruptly, addressing the room at large, he said: “Five hundred years from now we shall be dust, and Hibiscus Slope Teachers’ College will be utterly forgotten. But people will still listen to Mr Mozart.”

Weilin could think of no response. He wondered why adults said things like that, such obvious things, unconnected with anything else.

Mother put down her book. “You should talk to our son, Bullfrog.”

“Yes.” Father sat up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking across at Weilin. Weilin was sitting at the table, practicing calligraphy. He wanted to be able to make beautiful characters, like Mother, but just could not get the proportions right.

“There’s going to be a movement,” said Father. “Do you know what that means?”

“Is Chiang Kaishek trying to come back again?” asked Weilin.

His only real experience of politics had been a campaign—apparently it didn’t count as a movement—a year or so before. The point of the campaign had been that Chiang Kaishek was trying to overthrow the People’s Republic and reinstate the landlords and bring back the old society, so everyone had had to do military training. Weilin had only been seven at the time, but he and his classmates had had to participate in the campaign, throwing wooden hand grenades and drilling with wooden rifles. Everybody thought it great fun.

Father smiled. “No, Little Pangolin. Not Chiang Kaishek. But there are other enemies, you know. The Party will try to find them and punish them.”

“Do you think there are enemies here in Seven Kill Stele?”

“Oh, I’m sure the Party will find some.” Father glanced across at Mother.

“Yes,” said Mother. “You can be sure they will find some.”

“Will I have to look for enemies, too?” asked Weilin.

“Probably not. You are too young. At any rate, we don’t want you involved if we can help it. The main thing is, you are to keep very quiet and be a very good boy. That’s all.”

Weilin was somewhat disappointed. He thought it might be fun to go looking for enemies. Imagine if you were lucky enough to find one!

“Why do I have to be good, particularly?”

“Because,” said Mother quietly, “when the Party looks for enemies, sometimes they are too keen. They take somebody to be an enemy, who really isn’t.”

“And if you’re not good, or if you bring attention to yourself in any way, they might mistakenly think you’re an enemy.” This was Father.

Weilin felt baffled. “You mean they don’t really know who’s an enemy and who isn’t?”

“Oh, it’s not so easy, spotting enemies,” said Father.

“What Father means is, the enemies are very sly,” said Mother. “They go in disguise. It’s difficult to spot them.”

“Then how do you find out? I mean, if someone’s an enemy or not.”

Father looked at Mother, then dropped his eyes. He seemed to have no wish to continue. Mother came to the table and sat opposite Weilin.

“You must trust the Party,” she said. “The Party knows. Chairman Mao knows. You trust Chairman Mao, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes! Of course!”

“Well, there you are, then. As Father said, you must just be very quiet and very good. Don’t let anybody think you are an enemy. Don’t let anybody think we are enemies.”

“Oh, no!”

“That’s right. We’ve brought you up to love Chairman Mao and love the Party, haven’t we?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Yes. That’s what it means to be good. Then no-one can say you are an enemy.”

The next day school was back to normal. Everything was normal; and because it was a Friday, Lecturer Wang Baojiang came to play chess with Father in the evening. The following day, Saturday, was a half day at school. This was normal, too. Everything was normal. Father and Mother said nothing, and Weilin thought perhaps there would not be a movement after all. He was disappointed, as it seemed a movement was an exciting thing.

*

On Saturday afternoon Yuezhu was waiting for him outside the barracks. They walked together up to the college. On the wall of the college, on both sides of the gate, large white sheets of paper had been pasted. On the paper were big black characters in a rough hand.

ARDENTLY CRITICIZE PRINCIPAL CHEN

said one of these posters. Another asserted that

CHEN AND THE TWO MENGS HAVE ABUSED THEIR POWER

Professor Chen was the Principal of the college, Weilin knew. He was not sure who the Mengs were, though the Party Secretary for the whole college was named Meng. Perhaps he was one of the Mengs. Though it did not seem likely that anyone would be rude about Party Secretary Meng on a wall poster.

“It’s a movement,” said Weilin. “I know all about it. The Party is going to find some enemies. It’s not Chiang Kaishek, it’s some other enemies. But they’re very sly and it will be difficult to find them.”

Weilin felt pleased to have this information. Yuezhu always liked to be first with gossip, and pretended she always knew what was going on. Now, for once, he had the advantage of her, he thought. But Yuezhu was not to be upstaged.

“You don’t know anything,” she said with utmost scorn. “Listen. I know all about it. Half Brother told me. Some black elements have got into the leadership of the Party, the very high leadership in Beijing. They’re trying to push out our Chairman Mao. They have allies everywhere, all over the country. Chairman Mao has asked all the people to support him. The people have to find all those black elements and criticize them. To save Chairman Mao! That’s what’s happening.”

“Wa! In Beijing! Such big enemies! Perhaps Chiang Kaishek is really trying to come back, after all.”

“If Chiang Kaishek comes back I’ll fight him myself!” declared Yuezhu. She put on a stern face, like one of the revolutionary heroes in the storybooks—Iron Man Wang or Good Soldier Lei Feng—and clenched her fists, and flexed her tiny muscles in a way that made Weilin laugh.

“It’s not funny! Isn’t Chairman Mao dearer to you than your own mother and father?”

“Of course,” replied Weilin reflexively. All the children were supposed to love Chairman Mao more than their mothers and fathers. Weilin had tried his best with this, but did not think he had managed to attain the proper level of devotion. It had been a nagging concern for him for some time, and he could never think of Chairman Mao without experiencing a tremor of guilt.

“Aren’t you willing to defend our Chairman Mao with your own flesh and blood?” Yuezhu was frowning at him, trying to look fierce.

“Of course I am. It’s just that he’s in Beijing, and I don’t see what I can do here in Seven Kill Stele to defend him.”

When Weilin went home he saw that there were wall posters all over the college buildings. Most of them were calling for someone or other to be criticized or exposed. One, however, demanded better food at the college refectory; and another politely asked the authorities to reconsider the decision not to allow a student dance following the graduation ceremony. At home, Father looked grave.

“Why are there so many wall posters?” asked Weilin at dinner.

“It’s the movement,” said Father. “That’s what happens in a movement. People put up wall posters to criticize each other. Big character posters, they’re called. That’s all.” He stopped abruptly, as if he felt he had said too much.

“Who? Who puts up the posters?”

“The work team,” said Mother. This was not helpful, as Weilin had no idea who the work team were. But it was clear the adults didn’t want to talk about it to him. It was always like that with public things. Adults never wanted you to know anything.

*

Then everything seemed to happen quickly. The next day, Sunday, there was a lot of shouting in the college, and the students had some kind of demonstration. Father and Mother had to go in to a meeting, and came back looking upset. Still they would not say anything. On Monday Weilin’s school was closed again. The teachers were nowhere to be seen, but one of the custodians came out and said they were having thought reform and the school would be closed indefinitely. When he got back to the college the loudspeakers were all blaring, someone making a speech about politics. Now there were even more wall posters stuck up everywhere. They seemed to be getting more forceful.

DOWN WITH THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY MENG CLIQUE!

PRINCIPAL CHEN, THE PEOPLE DEMAND YOU CONFESS YOUR ERRORS!

In the paths and open spaces of the campus, however, there was no sign of activity at all. One of the old women sweepers told him the students were all in the auditorium having a meeting to criticize the teachers.

“What, all the teachers?” asked Weilin incredulously.

“How should I know? They’re all in there, anyway.”

“Why should they criticize all the teachers? They can’t all be enemies.”

Weilin felt afraid for Father and Mother. Now he remembered Mother’s words about being identified as an enemy by mistake. What if Father or Mother were thought to be enemies?

The old sweeper chuckled, and expelled an ellipsoid of turquoise phlegm to the side of the path. “It’s a movement,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “A movement.”

When Father and Mother came home they looked tired but not especially upset. Weilin begged Father to tell him what was happening.

“Oh, some of the faculty are being criticized,” said Father. “The students have put together a committee. They’re making a lot of noise. But I think it’ll all blow over.”

“Are you and Mother being criticized?”

Father smiled wearily. “No, Little Pangolin. We have done nothing to be criticized for. Don’t worry. However, it looks as if Old Fan’s case will be opened again.”

Weilin didn’t care anything about Professor Fan. He just wanted to be sure Father and Mother wouldn’t be called enemies by mistake.

*

Now the Red Guards appeared. It was very sudden. One day there was no such thing as a Red Guard; the next day they were everywhere. The college seemed to be a center for them. Coming home from the pool Weilin often encountered them marching into town in columns, singing Red Guard songs. Once he saw Yuezhu’s half brother in one of these columns. There seemed to be nothing particularly scary or intimidating about them, though. They were just high-spirited students out on a lark.

The Red Guards had a campaign to change the names of the streets in the town. The street behind Weilin’s school had been named Fish Sellers’ Lane: it became Uphold the People’s Democratic Dictatorship! Lane, complete with exclamation mark. The Martyrs’ Monument was still the Martyrs’ Monument, but the stretch of road between it and South Lake Park changed from Cheng’an Temple Street to Carry Out Revolution to the End! Street. The Red Guards seemed to be especially fond of exclamation marks.

At the college itself things were very chaotic. Classes had ceased altogether, it seemed, and the students just had meetings all day long. The wall posters were more and more vituperative.

EXPOSE THE COW GHOSTS AND SNAKE DEMONS!

SMASH DOG’S HEAD CHEN TO PIECES!

Individual teachers were being denounced by name. There was a rash of posters criticizing Professor Fan, and once Weilin glimpsed him scurrying from the teachers’ refectory to his apartment building, looking terrified. Still Father and Mother said little; and Weilin did not know that Father was being criticized until Yuezhu told him. This was in the pool one afternoon.

“Half Brother says your father is a black element.”

“What? How could that be? My Father loves Chairman Mao.”

“Half Brother says he’s a counter-revolutionary.” Yuezhu was starting to get the hang of these terms now.

“Oh, Yuezhu! Don’t let him think that. Tell him it’s not true! You don’t believe it, do you?”

Yuezhu was looking down, splashing randomly with her hands on the surface of the water.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Oh, no!You mustn’t say that! It’s not true! It’s not true! You must tell him, you must make it clear to him, it’s not true.”

“No use for me to tell him. The Red Guards decided.”

Weilin pressed her nonetheless, and went on nagging at her all the way back to the barracks, until at last she said yes, she would tell Half Brother that Assistant Professor Liang was not a black element. But Yuezhu only yielded very reluctantly, and seemed disconcerted by the whole thing, and would not go with him to the hollow behind the bamboo thicket.

Whatever she said to Half Brother, it did no good. That very evening the Red Guards came to Weilin’s apartment. They knocked on the door politely, but when Mother opened the door they came spilling in, a dozen or more of them crowding into the Liangs’ living-room. There were even more Red Guards than would fit in, with others out on the landing and stairs. Among these latter, craning to look in through the door, was Half Brother. All the students wore red armbands with gold lettering—the sign of the Red Guards.

The Red Guards were quite polite. The leader, a thin bookish type with glasses, wearing a pair of army-style sneakers and baggy blue peasant trousers with a rather ostentatious patch over one knee, addressed Father as Assistant Professor Liang. He even apologized to Father, but said they had to carry out an investigation, on behalf of the people. Father was quite cool. He said he would be glad to help with the investigation in any way he could, and was eagerly awaiting their instructions, which he knew were inspired by a love of Chairman Mao and the revolution. The leader, and a female student who chimed in with him from time to time, seemed to think they had to speak in a sort of shrill bark; but otherwise the invasion was perfectly genteel. They did not call Father a black element. They did, however, mention Professor Fan, and said that Father had encouraged Professor Fan’s counter-revolutionary crime. Father said nothing to this, only hung his head in silence.

After criticizing Father, the Red Guards went all round the apartment, examining everything. Two of them sat down by Father’s bookcase and began pulling out the books to examine them. This led to a lot of discussion. The leader came over and looked at the books. The foreign-language ones seemed especially interesting to him. Through all this Weilin was sitting at the table with Mother, Mother holding his hand on the table.

The end of it was, that the Red Guards decided to seal up Father’s books. They pasted white strips of paper cross-wise across the bookcase, with AWAITING FURTHER INVESTIGATION written across them in black characters. Now it was impossible to take a book from the shelves without breaking the paper. Weilin felt glad that the book he was reading—a Chinese translation of Oliver Twist—was in his school bag, which the Red Guards had not investigated.

After the Red Guards had gone, singing one of their vigorous songs as they clattered off down the stairs, Mother started to weep. Father sat next to her at the table, his arm round her shoulder. Weilin could not see that there was anything much to weep about. It was a shame about the books, of course, but presumably that would be resolved sooner or later. That apart, the Red Guards had been something of a let-down; a group of self-important students playing policeman. He thought this movement was turning out to be rather boring after all.

Mother stopped weeping at last and went to the kitchen. She returned with glasses of tea. The three of them sat there at the table, sipping the hot tea. The silence was uncomfortable.

“Is Professor Fan an enemy?” Weilin asked, to end the silence.

“Not any more,” said Father, looking into his tea.

“But the Red Guards said he’d committed a counter-revolutionary crime.”

“Yes,” said Father. “Yes, he did. Last night.”

“But what? What did he do?”

Father did not answer. He looked up at Mother. Mother turned away, and looked as if she might start crying again. Still turned away, she said: “Tell him.”

Father shrugged. “Old Fan hanged himself,” he said.

Chapter 4

Down With Bourgeois Things!

Father Becomes a Big Character Poster

For several days Yuezhu did not appear at the pool, and was not waiting for him outside the barracks. Though there was no school now Weilin went into the town every day, to South Lake Park, always hoping she would be there; but day after day, she wasn’t. Then he would walk home, along the dusty road leading out of town to the college and the bamboo grove, and dawdle outside the gate of the barracks. Usually there would be some of her little friends playing there. They sniggered and giggled among themselves when they saw him, and the embarrassment soon drove him away. Weilin even went to the bamboo grove, more than once, in the desperate hope she might be there waiting for him, but of course she was not. The grove was quite different without Yuezhu to share it with. It seemed smaller, and hostile in some way he could not understand.

Then he discovered the reason for Yuezhu’s absence. She had become a Little Red Guard.

At about the time Professor Fan hanged himself one faction of Red Guards decided that their leaders were not revolutionary enough. They staged a coup and took over the Red Guard movement. These new Red Guards were fiercer than the old ones. They made a lot of noise at their meetings, chanting and shouting. They held many of their meetings in the open air, on the basketball courts behind the teachers’ refectory. Then Weilin could hear them from his room, sometimes late into the night. It was a very scary sound, especially when you couldn’t actually hear the words they were saying. The only time Weilin could make out words was when a certain young woman was speaking. This girl had a very shrill, penetrating voice. She especially liked to say “Down with . . . !” and that was what Weilin heard, lying on his bed at night: “Down with . . . ! Down with . . . ! Down with . . . !” There seemed to be no end to the number of things she wanted to bring down.

One of their innovations was to enroll grade-school kids as Little Red Guards. They didn’t accept just anyone, of course. You had to be politically correct, which in practice meant from a worker, peasant or soldier family. The Little Red Guards got Red Guard armbands—red with white or gold lettering—and marched around in groups chanting revolutionary songs. When the older Red Guards decided that something was incorrect, they would often send in the Little Red Guards to rectify it. Flowers were discovered to be incorrect: the Little Red Guards pulled up the flowers in Children’s Park and South Lake Park. The traditional afternoon siesta was incorrect: the Little Red Guards were set to making continuous loud noise from noon till two o’clock, banging drums and old cooking pots, singing and shouting outside people’s windows. Tea houses were incorrect: the Little Red Guards were sent to close them down—though this campaign met with fierce resistance from the tea-house patrons, some Little Red Ears were boxed, and the Red Guards proper had to go in and do the job.

Weilin, of course, was not allowed to be a Little Red Guard. His parents were intellectuals, so he was not politically correct. In fact, he did his best to avoid the Little Red Guards, of whom he was rather afraid. They had quickly got themselves a reputation for mischief. But one day, walking home from the pool, he met a squad of Little Red Guards going into town. There were about forty of them, marching five abreast, like soldiers, and singing a revolutionary song. Yuezhu was in the front rank. Weilin wanted so much to call out to her, to speak to her, but he dared not. Her face was set in the expression of righteous determination that all the Red Guards cultivated. She certainly saw him; but only clenched her features more firmly and swung her arms more wildly, and marched straight past. Weilin struggled to hold back tears all the way home. When at last he got home the wish to cry had gone. He only felt a dull, unhappy despair.

*

The new Red Guards started a campaign against Bourgeois Things. They went into people’s houses and criticized the people for having Bourgeois Things. Then they took the Bourgeois Things away on a handcart.

They came to the apartment block where Weilin lived, and took Bourgeois Things from some of the teachers. Professor Jin of the History Department, down on the first floor, had Bourgeois Things. Weilin watched from his window as Professor Jin’s Bourgeois Things were loaded on to the handcart in the courtyard below. There was a radio, something in a large glass case, a potted plant, a bird cage, some fine-looking clothes in bright colors that Weilin supposed must belong to Mrs Jin, though he had never seen her wearing them. The Red Guards taking the Bourgeois Things from Professor Jin’s apartment were all college students; the Little Red Guards did not seem to be involved in this activity.

Afterwards it occurred to Weilin that his own apartment had things in it similar to those he had seen loaded onto the handcart. This worried him. Would the Red Guards come and take away Father’s radio? The gramophone? Mother’s pretty coral-pink blouse that she wore at Spring Festival? What exactly was a Bourgeois Thing, anyway? How did you tell? Weilin had never been clear about the meaning of bourgeois. He knew it was something bad, but the Chinese characters—“wealth” and “root”—did not really make much sense together. He had a vague idea that bourgeois was a synonym for foreign. The “root” character also turned up in the word for “Japan,” which gave it a slight foreign connotation.

At dinner that evening he tackled Father about this. “Do we have Bourgeois Things?” he asked.

Father nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Will the Red Guards come and take our things away?”

“Probably. But they are not important things. Not things we really need. It doesn’t matter.”

“If the Red Guards come here, you must just do what they tell you,” said Mother.

“Why did they go to Professor Jin’s apartment, not to ours?”

Father chuckled. “It’s not so easy to struggle a mathematician. Our subject is too unworldly. Try finding anything counter-revolutionary in Pythagoras’s Theorem!”

“Does that mean you won’t be struggled?”

“Hard to say, Little Pangolin. I can’t understand this movement at all. It’s a new thing, not like the other movements. But you’re not to worry. If they struggle me, I’ll give them satisfaction.”

Weilin didn’t understand what give them satisfaction meant; but this seemed to have been intended for Mother. Father smiled at Mother reassuringly, and squeezed her hand. Then, to take Weilin’s mind off unpleasant matters, he showed him how to extract a square root by a process that on the paper looked like long division, but was more subtle. After dinner he played Mr Brahms Number One on the gramophone, listening with his eyes closed. It was a Friday, and Lecturer Wang should have come to play chess with Father; but for some reason he did not come.

*

On Sunday the Red Guards came again to the faculty apartment building. They took Bourgeois Things from old Professor Qi on the second floor and loaded them onto the handcart. Weilin watched from the window. Most of Professor Qi’s Bourgeois Things seemed to be books. So many books!—even more than Father. The Red Guards were shouting at Professor Qi in a very fierce way. It made Weilin scared to hear them. He went to sit with Father and Mother at the table. Father and Mother were just sitting there silently, listening to the commotion downstairs. Father had his hand over Mother’s hand, and sometimes he stroked her hand or patted it. When Weilin went to sit with them Mother put her arm around his shoulder.

When the Red Guards did reach the Liangs’ apartment at last, they came right in without knocking. The first one in wasYuezhu’s half brother. Half a dozen others followed him. They looked hot and bothered, presumably from carrying Professor Qi’s stuff down the stairs to the handcart in the August heat. They brought in with them a strong smell of sweat. Half Brother seemed to be in charge now. He wore a stern, angry expression, his jaw clamped shut, his eyebrows squinched together. He planted his feet wide apart, fore and aft, and stuck his arm straight out dramatically, pointing at Father.

“Liang Yushu! We are carrying out Chairman Mao’s instructions to smash the Four Olds! Do you dare to oppose us?”

“Everybody in this family loves Chairman Mao,” said Father calmly. “We are anxious to follow his instructions. Please tell us what we must do.”

“Don’t pretend to be so meek and mild!” shrieked a girl who had come in behind Half Brother. From her voice, Weilin thought she must be the Down With . . . ! girl he had been hearing at night. She made the same dramatic pointing gesture as Half Brother, like the hero in a movie poster. “You have bad thinking! Your hearts are not pure! In your hearts you cherish the Four Olds! Down with the Four Olds!”

“Down with the Four Olds!” everybody shouted several times over.

“In your hearts you are against Chairman Mao!” continued Miss Down With. “Look! This apartment is full of Bourgeois Things!” She made a theatrical sweeping motion with her arms, encompassing the character scroll, the gramophone, the radio, the bookshelves—which were still taped up from the previous visitation. “Down with Bourgeois Things!”

“Perhaps we have fallen into luxurious ways,” agreed Father. “You young Red Guards must correct our thinking!”

One of the other Red Guards, a thin youth wearing a somewhat unorthodox black pants and jacket, had gone over to the gramophone. He lifted the top and squinted at the turntable. Then he opened the doors at the bottom of the cabinet, and started pulling out the records and looking at them.

“These are foreign things!” the youth in black shouted. “Look! Foreign things!”

“They’re from the Soviet Union,” said Father, still maintaining the mild, level tone. “It’s a socialist country, like ours. They are not imperialists.”

“The Russians are revisionists and hegemonists!” shrieked the girl. “You’re in league with them! You’re black elements! Down with the hegemonists and revisionists! Down with the black elements!”

“Down with the black elements!” they all shouted. “Down with! Down with!”

Half Brother had broken the seal on the bookshelves and was pulling out books and examining them. He stood up, holding open a book. It was Abramowitz and Stegun’s Mathematical Tables, Weilin could see. Half Brother fanned some pages with his thumb. His jaw stiffened, the eyebrows squinched tighter together.

“What’s this?” He addressed Father.

“You know perfectly well what it is,” said Father, quite calmly. “It’s a book of mathematical tables.”

“In English? Why in English?”

“It’s an American book. They make the best tables. They have powerful electronic computers …”

“Much better than our Chinese computers,” sneered Half Brother. He had come over to the corner where Weilin and Father were standing together. “That’s your character, Comrade Liang, isn’t it? To worship all things foreign.”

“Worshipping foreign things and looking with contempt on the Motherland!” shrilled Miss Down With. “Down with the foreign things!”

“Down with! Down with!” The other Red Guards started shouting and shaking their fists.

Half Brother still had his eyes fixed on Father. When the Red Guards had quieted a little, he waved the book of tables in front of Father’s face.

“Liang Yushu! You don’t fool me! You’re a black element, I can see! We’re going to give your case very serious consideration!”

Half Brother gave the book to one of the Red Guards and went to examine the radio on top of the dresser. The radio was a Chinese model. He turned the tuning dial absent-mindedly. The others seemed to be waiting for him.

“All right,” he said at last. Then, turning to address Father: “We’re going to remove these Bourgeois Things. They’ll be stored in a safe place, don’t worry.” He nodded at the radio. One of the Red Guards unplugged it and carried it out, down the stairs.

After that they took all the Bourgeois Things from the Liangs’ apartment.

Practically everything the Liang family owned was bourgeois, it turned out. Mother’s “Night in the Pavilion” character scroll was bourgeois; her prettiest clothes, which she kept in the dresser, were bourgeois. Father’s books were all bourgeois. The little gadgets in his tin box; his notebooks; their board games; the gramophone records; even the photographs on top of the dresser—everything, all but the barest necessities of life, was bourgeois. Not quite all: In the peculiar calculus of the Red Guards, board games were bourgeois but playing cards were not; Father’s fancy ink block was bourgeois, but not his writing brushes.

Weilin sat with Mother and Father at the table while the Red Guards took away all the Bourgeois Things. He wanted to cry, but he dared not. He wanted to say something; but since Mother and Father were silent, he thought he had better be, too. He most wanted to cry when the Red Guards took away the photographs, including the one he liked so much, of himself as a baby. He thought up an argument that might be used in defense of the photographs: since photographs of Chairman Mao could be seen everywhere, how could photographs be bourgeois? But something told him that this logic would cut little ice with the Red Guards.

Most of all Weilin hoped that Mother’s two little porcelain love-birds would not be bourgeois. This hope was partially fulfilled. The love-birds, and the little flower vase between them, were left; but the Red Guard who swept up the photographs from the dresser knocked them all off, and they fell to the floor and broke.

Last of all the Red Guards took the gramophone. It was a substantial object, standing four feet high, made of good heavy wood. “Come on,” Half Brother said at last. “Let’s take this down to the cart.”

With Half Brother supervising, three of the Red Guards manhandled the gramophone across the room and out onto the landing. They seemed to have a lot of difficulty with it on the stairs. All of them were out there, shouting orders at each other, jostling each other on the stairs. Bump! went the gramophone down the concrete stairs. Bump! Bump! Each bump seemed to contain a plangent metallic component, the mechanism vibrating from the jolts; and with each bump, Mother winced, the motion transmitting itself down her arm to Weilin’s shoulder. Bump-thwang! Bump-thwang! went the gramophone, accompanied by shouts and grunts, fading away round the bend of the stair well, leaving the Liangs in silence.

Looking out from the window at last, Weilin could see his family’s Bourgeois Things on the handcart in the courtyard. He could see the pile of gramophone records in their brown paper sleeves: Mr Chopin, Mr Beethoven, Mr Mozart.

“Shall we not be able to hear Mr Mozart now?” he asked Father.

Father was still sitting at the table with Mother. Mother’s face was nestled against him, his arm was round her shoulders. She was sobbing quietly.

“We can hear them inside our heads,” said Father.

Weilin thought this didn’t make sense. How could you hear something inside your head? But he could see Mother was upset, and this was no time to pursue things.

“That one at the front, he was a lousy student,” said Father. “I failed him on the midterm. He just hates me for that.”

Mother didn’t say anything, only sobbed. Seeing Mother crying, Weilin began crying too, and Father had to comfort both of them.

*

Father was struggled the next day. He and Mother had been going in to work diligently, in spite of all the confusion on campus, to prepare for the new academic year. But this evening they didn’t come home. Weilin heard a struggle meeting going on over at the basketball courts, but he dared not go to investigate.

It was after midnight when Father and Mother came home at last. When Weilin saw them he screamed. They had both turned black. Their eyes were awful white circles in black faces, like demons. Weilin screamed and screamed, until Father picked him up and shook him.

“Little Pangolin! It’s all right! Don’t be afraid! It’s just a game the Red Guards played with us.”

“A game?” whispered Weilin, when he could bear to look at Father. Now, close up, he could see that Father was not completely black, only streaked with black. One ear was still its normal color. Mother had gone into the bedroom and shut the door.

Father laughed merrily. He swung Weilin round, then set him on his feet and kneeled down in front of him. “Look! It’s only ink!” With slow, over-pronounced movements, like a character in traditional opera, he licked a finger and drew it down his face. Sure enough, the finger came away black.

“They poured black ink over us, to try to show that we are black elements.” Father laughed again. “But of course we’re not.”

“I don’t like the Red Guards,” Weilin blurted out.

“Oh, you mustn’t say that. They’re just carrying out Chairman Mao’s instructions.”

“But Chairman Mao is very kind. Why did he let them break all our things? Even Mother’s little love birds. They broke them both. I tried to fix them, but I couldn’t.”

Weilin had spent part of the evening trying to re-attach the love-birds’ heads and wings with some stationery mucilage that had been left in the dresser, but with no success. He had found all the pieces and knew where they belonged in relation to each other; but the mucilage seemed to have no power over porcelain.

“Chairman Mao wants to teach us not to cherish physical things too much. To concentrate on spiritual things. How can that be bad? If people only care about physical things, how will they have any feelings left for each other? Do you want to live in a world where people have no feelings for each other?”

Weilin could think of no answer for this, though he felt that his feelings for Father and Mother, and also for Yuezhu, had been quite satisfactory when the little porcelain love-birds were intact. Now Mother came out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. She began running water from the faucet in the bathroom. Father went into the bathroom with her and shut the door.

Weilin could not sleep that night. He was consumed by the apprehension that Father and Mother would be taken away from him. Three, four times he got up and crept across the apartment to their door to make sure they were still there. Each time he could hear Father saying some soothing words, Mother weeping.

*

The second time Father was struggled, he went alone. Whether this was on the instructions of the Red Guards, or whether Mother just refused to go, Weilin did not know. He stayed with Mother the whole evening.

It was a Thursday evening, when normally there was a storyteller on the radio at seven thirty. But the Red Guards had taken the radio; so Mother played the card game Twenty-Four with him until nine, when she said it was time for bed. To help him get to sleep Mother put him into the bedroom, as she sometimes did. For a long time Weilin could not sleep. He could hear the Red Guards over at the basketball courts: Down With! Down With! Then he drifted off, to be woken suddenly by a loud cry from Mother. He jumped out of bed and ran into the living room—then stopped in his tracks when he saw Father.

Father was naked, though it took a moment or two to see that. His whole body was covered with paper, twenty or more big sheets of paper. The paper was white, with Red Guard slogans written on it in angry black characters. Apparently the paper had been pasted to Father.

“See!” said Father, turning to Weilin. He was trying to make a joke of it for his son’s benefit, but something in the eyes betrayed him. Something Weilin had never seen before: the dawning of some awful realization. “See! They have made me into a living big-character poster!”

Chapter 5

Moon Pearl No Longer Cares for Loquats

A Scholar Unwisely Speaks His Mind

The next day Mother did not go to her office. After breakfast, when Father had left, she told Weilin to sit at the table with her.

“Your little friend,” said Mother. “Miss Han.”

“Han Yuezhu.”

“Yes. You were close friends with her, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Weilin blushed, thinking of Yuezhu; and lowered his face, hoping Mother wouldn’t see him blushing. Mother had met Yuezhu once. Early in their friendship, before they discovered the bamboo grove, Weilin had brought her to the college three or four times to play in the college grounds, though mainly just to be with her; and Mother had met them on her way home across the sports field.

“Are you still friends?”

“I’m not sure. She’s a Little Red Guard.”

“Oh.” Mother seemed not pleased with this information. “Of course. She would be.”

Mother was silent for a while. Was she going to blame him for having been friends with a Little Red Guard? Weilin thought so, and tried to think of something he might say to excuse himself.

“Her brother is the leader of the Red Guards now,” said Mother.

“Half Brother.”

“What?”

“Half Brother. He’s her half brother. Doesn’t like to be called her brother.”

“Oh. Whatever.” Mother leaned forward, looking earnestly into his eyes. “Weilin, I want you to do something for the family. Something very responsible. Will you try?”

“Of course! I’ll do anything!”

“I want you to find your little friend Yuezhu and explain to her that we are not bad people. We are not black elements. We love Chairman Mao. We would never do anything to harm him. Perhaps if you tell her that, she will believe you. Then, perhaps she will be able to influence her brother. Half Brother, I mean.”

Weilin was doubtful. “I don’t think she’ll listen to me. And anyway, I don’t think she can influence her half brother. It’s more a case of him influencing her.”

“But we must try! We must do what we can! For our family, for Father! However small the chance, we must try! Won’t you do this for us, Weilin? For all of us?”

“Yes. Yes, I will,” said Weilin, despair already filling his heart. He remembered Yuezhu’s face, that time he had seen the Little Red Guards marching into town. It was hopeless, of course. “I will,” he repeated. “I will.”

Weilin’s plan was to try to bring back to Yuezhu’s mind the happy times they had spent together in the bamboo grove. To this end he begged some coins from Mother and bought half a dozen loquats from the little store set in the wall of the college. Then he went looking for the Little Red Guards.

It turned out they had been assigned the task of ridding the town of sparrows and mice, in accordance with Chairman Mao’s instruction: Away With All Pests! The older of the Little Red Guards had been issued with catapults and BB guns, and were stalking under the trees in South Lake Park looking for sparrows to shoot. The younger ones, Yuezhu included, were catching mice and rats. Or not: having already set out the town’s small supply of traps, they were reduced to patrolling the kitchen and toilet areas with sticks, hoping to see a rodent in the open. Yuezhu was behind the refectory at Number One hospital, staring resolutely at a large rat-hole where the wall met the ground, holding up a piece of two by four poised to strike any creature that might emerge.

She saw Weilin approaching her, and at once assumed the proper Red Guard glare: jaw firm, lips pressed together; but she seemed not to have mastered the squinching of the eyebrows, and attained only a sort of cross-eyed effect. Her hair was no longer sticking out in pigtails, the way he had liked it. Now it was cropped short, making her neck, her swan-neck, look even longer.

“Yuezhu. I haven’t seen you for a long time.” Weilin smiled as he came up to her, trying to be just like before. But Yuezhu only crossed her eyes more ferociously, and turned her gaze back to the rat-hole. She said nothing.

“I wanted to talk to you …” Looking down at her crouched over the rat-hole, Weilin could see the sturdiness of her frame, count the vertebrae running down the whiteness of her neck into the rough army-green blouse. A wave of hopeless longing washed over him, and he lost his words.

“Hush!” She hissed. “You’ll scare them back into the hole.”

“Do you really think they’ll come out?” asked Weilin, glad of the conversational opening.

She looked up at him, momentarily forgetting to glare.

“Of course they will. Half Brother said so. You just have to wait.”

“Perhaps you should rattle the stick inside the hole,” suggested Weilin, really keen to help. “I mean, perhaps they’re just asleep in there.”

“No! This is the right way! Half Brother said so!”

“All right. But you look like Mr Guard the Stump Waiting for a Rabbit.” This was an idiom everybody knew, based on a story from ancient times.

Guarding the Stump, Waiting for a Rabbit

A farmer was working in his field when he saw a rabbit running very fast. The rabbit ran straight into a tree stump and knocked itself out. The farmer picked it up and took it home. His wife made it into a delicious rabbit stew.

After that the farmer would not work his field any more. He just stood by the stump, waiting for another rabbit to come.

Weilin had meant this as playful banter, in their old style. However, Yuezhu took offense. She resumed her cross-eyed glare.

“I’d rather be Mr Guard the Stump Waiting for a Rabbit than Mr Black Element. That’s your father, Mr Black Element! Everybody knows!”

“No, no. Yuezhu, listen to me. My father is very good. A kind man, a sincere teacher. He loves Chairman Mao! He’s not a black element!”

“Is so!” Yuezhu pursed her little lips, and crossed her eyes with such determination the irises almost disappeared. “What’s more, he’s a spy! We have evidence! Your father is a spy for the American Imperialists! For the … the … the Xi Ai Hei.” Her voice had gone down into her chest, into those round rich tones Weilin had once found so thrilling. Now they seemed full of menace.

“Yuezhu, that’s nonsense! My father doesn’t know anything about the CIA! He’s just an Assistant Professor at the Teachers’ College! How could he be a spy? What secrets has he got?”

“We’re going to struggle him until he confesses,” said Yuezhu with satisfaction.

Weilin was close to tears, from frustration and despair. “Yuezhu!” he shouted, feeling his voice shake. “It’s me, Weilin! Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember our happy times together in the bamboo grove? When we played Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai? Look, Yuezhu, look—I’ve brought you some loquats. I always remember how much you like loquats.” He held out the brown paper parcel on one palm, and opened it with the other hand to show the loquats.

Something crossed Yuezhu’s face, just for an instant; then she locked her eyeballs and set her jaw again. “Those are old things!” she said. Stepping forward, she quite deliberately slapped aside the hand holding the loquats, scattering them on the ground. Then, suddenly, with a vocal force that almost knocked Weilin from his feet, she yelled out: “DOWN WITH THE FOUR OLDS!” Straightening up, she brandished her stick, her face now set in an expression of utter malevolence. Weilin fled, leaving the loquats scattered there on the brown earth.

*

It was some days before Father was struggled again. During those days, he and Mother both stopped going to work. They stayed at home playing Honeymoon Bridge with the deck of cards that had somehow escaped the Red Guards’ vigilance. Then, late on Sunday evening, Father was sent for.

An escort of Red Guards came for him. One of them was Miss Down With, who Weilin now knew was actually called Comrade Gao. Father got up and went to the door with them. Comrade Gao turned and beckoned to Mother.

“You, too. Everybody.”

“I’ll go. But I don’t see why the child has to go,” said Mother.

“Because you’re all black elements!” shrieked Comrade Gao. “You all need to have your thinking cleansed! To have your bad thoughts corrected! Come on!”

They left the building and walked down to the basketball courts. The light was failing, but the basketball courts were illuminated by some floodlights that had been set up on tall poles at each side. There was a big crowd all around, spilling back on to the path, and beyond, on the other side, on to the running track. Most were students, but there were teachers too, and some of the college workers. The Red Guards were all at the front of the crowd, and seated on ramshackle metal-frame bleachers at one side of the main court. Some of the Little Red Guards were up on the bleachers too, though not Yuezhu. Below these bleachers were some of the college faculty, six of them, all kneeling down, all with their heads bowed. They had placards round their necks. The placards said things like KUOMINTANG AGENT! or COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY! One of these teachers was Lecturer Wang from the Mathematics Department, Father’s chess companion. His placard said ACCOMPLICE OF THE TRAITOR LIANG.

When they saw Weilin’s father coming, the Reds Guards all started yelling. Father was forced out on to the court with the other teachers, and made to kneel down. Comrade Gao stood behind him. She pulled up his arms to force his head down, then let go and stepped back. Weilin and Mother were not allowed out on the court. They were kept at the side, behind the Red Guards. Weilin found himself standing next to one of the college workers, a member of the administrative staff. Weilin had met the man once, when he went with Father to get some papers typed. The man was watching the proceedings out on the court without much interest, and splitting sunflower seeds with his teeth.

“That’s your old man, isn’t it?” said the worker.

“Yes,” said Weilin.

“Well, he’s in for it.”

“Here’s the blackest of all the black elements!” shouted Half Brother as Father took up his position. “The leader of the traitorous clique in the Mathematics Department!” He pushed his face right up to Father’s. “CONFESS YOUR CRIMES!”

“I have committed no crimes,” said Father, not very loud but quite clearly, his head still lowered.

Half Brother let a short pause develop. Then, in a level, incredulous tone: “Do you dare to defy the justice of the masses?”

He spun round theatrically to address the crowd.

“Comrades! Our Party is in danger! Our Motherland is in danger! Our Chairman Mao is in danger! Traitors and black elements are trying to pull down our Party!”

“Down with the traitors!” shrieked Comrade Gao. “Down with the black elements!”

“Down with! Down with!” roared back the Red Guards. The teachers and workers joined in, slightly off-beat.

“Here at Hibiscus Slope Teachers’ College we have uncovered many black elements. They have been spreading their poison all over our college. We must root them out, one by one! They must be forced to confess their crimes!”

“Down with the cow ghosts and snake demons!” shrieked Comrade Gao. “Down with the dog’s-head traitors!”

“Down with! Down with!” screamed back the mob. One of the college workers, a cook from the refectory, whom everyone thought a bit retarded, did one too many Down Withs, making several people laugh; but the Red Guards turned on the crowd with their fiercest, most practiced glares, and the laughing stopped at once.

Half Brother turned back to Father. “Do you think you can escape the people’s justice? Confess!”

The Red Guards, followed by the crowd, took up the cry. “Confess! Confess!”

They had a placard ready for Father. It was a big white sheet of card with some string to go round the neck. There was nothing written on it; apparently Father had to write the characters himself. The placard was laid on the ground in front of him. A Red Guard came forward and gave him a big wood-handled writing-brush, already dripping with ink.

“What would you like me to write?” asked Father, his voice mild and even.

“TRAITOR AND SPY!” screamed Comrade Gao, shaking a fist in the air. The crowd took up the cry. “Traitor and spy!” they roared. “Traitor and spy!” The worker next to Weilin was shouting it, too, waving a fist in the air; but he brought the fist down rather quickly, to reach into his pocket for another sunflower seed.

“Maybe I’ve got some old thinking,” said Father in the same calm tone, when he could be heard. “Maybe my thoughts need correcting. But I’m not a traitor or a spy.”

“Oh, aren’t you?” Half Brother turned and pointed at Lecturer Wang, kneeling with his placard. “Wang Baojiang!” Lecturer Wang hastened to his feet, head still bowed.

“Before I had a teaching position at the College I was one of Assistant Professor Liang’s students. In a class on tensor calculus, Assistant … I mean, Traitor Liang said that the universe is probably finite. But Engels says it is infinite!” He lifted his head now, and glared indignantly at Father. He attempted the dramatic pointing gesture, without much effect, his placard getting in the way. “This is trying to turn our minds against Marx and Engels! This is trying to turn us against the Party!”

“I really don’t remember making that remark,” said Father carefully. “But Engels was a social commentator, not a cosmologist …”

He said more, but it was all shouted out by the Red Guards. They went on shouting for some time, shaking their fists at Father. When the shouting died down a little, Half Brother called out another name. One of the Red Guards, a pretty young girl student, stepped forward. She had the eyebrow squinch down to an art. Her face looked like one of those in a propaganda movie, a peasant girl who has just been raped by the Kuomintang landlord, but knows that the People’s Liberation Army is on its way to avenge her. She waited for silence; then assumed the approved posture—feet apart, arm pointing straight at Father—and spoke out.

“In our class on mathematical logic, Traitor Liang recommended a book by the Englishman Bertrand Russell. This Mr Russell was a paid hireling of Chiang Kaishek. He wrote a book against the 1917 revolution in Russia. In that same class, Traitor Liang said that truth and falsehood were absolute and independent of social facts—against Chairman Mao’s thinking, that true and false depend upon the class character of the proposition.”

“LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO!” roared a man’s voice in the crowd. The Red Guards yelled it back, and there was another spell of chanting. “Write! Write!” they ended up with. “‘Traitor and spy!’ Write it! Write it!”

“I’ll write whatever you like,” said Father. “But not ‘Traitor and Spy.’ I won’t write that. I won’t confess to that. I’ll write ‘Counter-Revolutionary’ if you like. Or ‘Dog’s Head Demon,’ or ‘Big Black Element.’ But I’m not a spy.”

“Oh, no?” Half Brother turned to the bleachers. Three male students got up and went down to join him. One of them was carrying Abramowitz and Stegun’s Mathematical Tables. Half Brother took it from him and waved it in front of Father’s face.

“If you’re not a spy, then what’s this?”

“Why, it’s a book of tables. You know that …”

“An American book.”

“Certainly.”

Half Brother held up the book with both hands, open somewhere in the middle. He held it up over his head, facing the Red Guards. “An American book!” he shouted. “Full of numbers! So many numbers! Look! What does he need so many American numbers for? IT’S HIS CODE BOOK! HE’S A SPY AND THIS IS HIS CODE BOOK!”

Everybody started yelling now. One of the three who had come down, a tough-looking character wearing an army cap, ran forward and punched Father on the side of the head. Thuck! went the punch, and Weilin could hear it above the crowd. Father fell over on his side, the ink-brush flying out of his hand and skittering away across the court, marking the ground with irregular splashes of ink. Father lifted himself up at once, back to the kneeling position. He put a hand up to the side of his head that had been hit, and shook his head once or twice, as if to clear it. The rough-looking Red Guard stood over him, as if preparing another blow; but Half Brother held him back with an arm.

Now Mother had pushed through the ring of Red Guards, out on to the court. “Stop this!” she screamed. “It’s all nonsense! You are mad, you are all mad! What has my husband done, that you call him a traitor and a spy? How can you believe this nonsense?”

Half Brother glared at her. “Teacher Yu,” he said, using Mother’s maiden name. “You should denounce your husband. He is a black element, you know it very well. If you don’t denounce him, that means you are a black element, too.”

“None of us is a black element!” shrieked Mother, holding her head with her hands. “You’ve all gone mad!”

Half Brother laughed—a rich, hollow laugh. “What a performance!” he laughed. “What an act!” Suddenly he was stern again. He made the exaggerated pointing gesture at Mother. “You know very well what you’ve done! Don’t put up this show of innocence! In your apartment, alone together with Traitor Liang, you have spoken bad words about our Chairman Mao—against the Party, against the country, against the people! You know you have, you can’t deny it! Do you think we don’t know? Han Yuezhu!”

Now Weilin saw Yuezhu. She had after all been in the crowd of Little Red Guards at the side of the bleachers, out of his line of sight. She stepped forward. Planting her feet wide apart and crossing her eyes, she pointed at Father.

“The Traitor Liang’s son told me his parents never read books by Marx or Lenin or our Chairman Mao! He said his father said they were too boring. And he told me his father was close friends with Counter-revolutionary Traitor Fan Huizhong. And he told me his father never listened to our Chinese revolutionary music, he only liked to listen to the stinking foreign music, and he said our Chinese revolutionary music was garbage. And he said his father told him the most important thing was mathematics, because it was absolutely true, but everything else was only supposed to be true, and …”

“Liang Weilin!” Half Brother was pointing right at him. Weilin was petrified. He could not move. Comrade Gao ran over and grabbed him, pulling him by the arm. Now he was out on the court with Father and Mother. Mother had her hands over her face, and seemed to be sobbing. Father was just kneeling there impassively. Then he turned to look at Weilin just for a moment, and smiled. It was his old smile, the smile he used when he had made one of his sarcastic remarks, or when he was going to trump you in a card game. The smile lasted only a second, but Weilin never forgot it. It was the last time he saw Father smile.

Out on the basketball court the illumination from the floodlights seemed much brighter. Those nearby seemed oddly distinct in the harsh white light, those further away strangely distant. There was Father kneeling, his head bowed again now, and Lecturer Wang and the other teachers, all in a row. There was Mother, her face in her hands, swinging her upper body from side to side in convulsive weeping. There was Yuezhu, still stuck in that absurd theatrical pose of accusation. And here was Half Brother, looming over Weilin, his round spotty face clenched in stern indignation.

Half Brother waved Abramowitz and Stegun in his face. “Do you recognize this book?”

Weilin tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He began to cry. Seeing this, the Red Guards all started yelling. “Denounce!” they yelled. “Denounce! Denounce!”

“Tell me!” commanded Half Brother. “Do you want to be a traitor, like your father?”

“No,” whimpered Weilin. Father had his head bowed, looking at the ground.

“When the foreigners were here last year, did your father use this book?”

“Yes.”

“How did he use it?”

“He … he just looked up numbers in it, and wrote them down.”

“He wrote them down on paper?”

“Yes, on paper.”

“And gave the paper to whom?”

“To whom? He didn’t give it to anybody. It was just his work.”

“He gave it to the foreigners, didn’t he?”

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“Then whom?”

“Nobody. He didn’t give it to anybody. It was just his work.”

Half Brother took a step back and made his mocking laugh again.

“You’re a stubborn little fucker, aren’t you? Well, we’ll find out what you know! We’ll teach you to defy the people’s investigations!”

He half-turned, and beckoned someone. The rough-looking boy came up, the one who had punched Father. This time he was not empty-handed. He was carrying a shoulder-pole, the type that peasants use for carrying bundles. It was an old, worn shoulder-pole, made from one half of a piece of thick bamboo split lengthwise, smooth and gray from long use. The rough boy stood over Weilin, gripping the shoulder-pole with both hands.

“Tell us who your father’s accomplice is, or we’ll beat you black and blue.”

Weilin had what seemed like an inspiration. Old Professor Fan! Since he was dead, they wouldn’t be able to prove anything. Without thinking further he said: “Fan Huizhong. My father gave the paper to Fan Huizhong.”

Half Brother nodded slowly. “So. The traitor Fan, who was condemned as a Rightist by the Party ten years ago! The traitor Fan, who nursed grievances against the Party, against the people, against the country! The traitor Fan, who destroyed himself in a final act of counter-revolutionary cowardice when he knew that his crimes were being uncovered!”

Yuezhu, who had held her dramatic pointing pose right through up to this point, now ran forward to where Father was kneeling. “Traitor!” she squealed. “Big traitor! Dog’s-head turtle-egg traitor!” She began pummeling Father with her tiny fists, punching at his head and shoulders.

Father submitted to half a dozen of Yuezhu’s blows; then, suddenly, brushing away the little fists, he stood up. He looked straight forward, at the crowd of students and workers.

“You … you … my students, my colleagues.”

Father’s voice was strong and clear. Everyone fell silent, waiting to see if he would confess.

“I have done my best to be a good teacher. To give you the spirit of mathematics. That everything must be proved. That nothing can be taken for granted. That even things that seem very obvious must be subjected to strict logical inquiry. Now you are taking another path. A path of unreason and nihilism, of blind obedience to dogma. Not even a dogma arrived at collectively after long inquiry, but dogma from a single uncultivated mind, the ignorant ravings of a demented despot …”

“Yushu!” It was Mother, screaming his name to stop him. “Yushu, don’t …”

Mother and Father both were drowned out by a roar of anger from the Red Guards. The rough-looking youth who had been threatening Weilin turned to Father. Lifting the shoulder-pole right above his head, he swung it round and struck the side of Father’s head with it. Stunned, Father staggered a few steps, but did not fall. But now the Red Guards were on the court. One of them grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head down, and smashed a fist into his face. Another kicked him in the belly. Then they were all over him, a yelling, kicking scrum of frenzied youth. The other teachers who had been kneeling on the court got to their feet and ran, their placards flapping from side to side as they passed from the circle of brightness under the floodlights to the darkness beyond. The teachers, students and workers who made up the rest of the crowd just stood and watched for the most part, though a few of the students were in there with the Red Guards. Comrade Gao had gone into the melee. Mother was just standing there screaming, screaming.

Half Brother was still standing in front of Weilin. He had looked angry, listening to Father; but when the Red Guards rushed on to the court his expression changed. He seemed surprised by the violence of their attack.

“Comrades!” he called out. “Comrades! Let’s do things properly!” He stepped forward and pulled at the tunic of a Red Guard on the outer edge of the melee. “COMRADES!” with more authority, and an edge of alarm.

The Red Guards untangled themselves and stepped back. Father was curled up on the floor in a ball, his hands clasped tight over his head. There was blood on his head and hands; and the sleeve of his tunic was ripped right off, and there was blood on his bare arm. By some quality of the floodlight the blood looked black rather than red, but Weilin knew it was blood. He thought Father must be dead, and he began to cry uncontrollably. Mother was still screaming. Weilin could see, through the fug of tears, that Yuezhu was crying too. Not for Father, though: she had been trampled in the rush of Red Guards and was sitting on the ground nursing a shin with half the skin scraped off it.

“That’s the end of the struggle meeting,” Half Brother announced suddenly. “Let’s show good order to the masses.”

The masses had, in fact, mostly drifted away. They could be seen in the darkness beyond the floodlights, walking away across the athletic field and down the path to the dormitories. Only eight or ten students were left at the basketball court, and two workers—one of them the eater of sunflower seeds.

The Red Guards formed up in ranks and files, Little Red Guards in the rear, and marched off down the path to the student dormitories singing “The East Is Red”:

The East is red, the sun has risen!

China has brought forth Mao Zedong!

Yuezhu was limping along at the back of the Little Red Guards, supported by two others. Weilin could not stop himself crying. Father dead! How would they survive with Father dead?

Mother was kneeling by Father. “Bullfrog! Oh, my foolish old Bullfrog! Can you hear me?”

To Weilin’s wonder and delight, Father groaned. Not dead! Father not dead! He ran across and knelt down next to Mother. There was a big pool of blood under Father’s head; but Father was moving, straightening his arms and legs gingerly, groaning.

“We must get him to the hospital,” said Mother. “He’s badly hurt.”

“How can we move him?” wondered Weilin.

Mother stood up and addressed the nearest person, the eater of sunflower seeds. “Please help us. Help us get my husband to the hospital.”

Sunflower Seed seemed to wake suddenly from a daydream. “What, me? No fucking way! They’ll call me an accomplice! I’ve got a wife and kids to think of.” He turned and walked off.

Mother appealed to the others. There were four students standing together, two others each standing alone, and a worker. The worker walked away. The group of four looked at each other, but nobody moved.

“I’ll help you,” said one of the lone students. “Teacher Liang is a good man, a good teacher. They shouldn’t have beaten him up like that. It was wrong. They can call me an accomplice if they like. I don’t care. It was wrong.”

He was coming forward as he spoke. When he reached Father, he said: “We must stop the bleeding, that’s the main thing. Then, there’s a hand cart back of the boiler house. We’ll get him on that and take him to the hospital.”

Another student, one of the group of four, came to help them. The others slipped away. Father’s tunic shirt was badly torn, so they got it off him altogether and tore it into strips for bandages. Father’s head and face were all covered with blood. There were two big round wounds on his head where the skin had been split. His face was badly bruised and his lower lip split, and some teeth had come out. There was a long, deep gash on his arm, nobody knew from what. His arms and shoulders, when they got the tunic off, were covered in black bruises. But there were no open wounds other than those on his head and arms, and the student, feeling up and down Father’s limbs, said there were no broken bones. Father seemed to be conscious, but could only groan.

They found the handcart and got Father on it. Then, with the students pulling at the front and Mother and Weilin walking behind, they took Father to Number One Hospital. But the hospital wouldn’t admit him. Mother begged with the admissions clerk, but she would not yield.

“He’s been done over by the Red Guards, anybody can see that. Nobody here will treat him. It’s more than our lives are worth. We’ve had the Red Guards here, too, you know!”

A doctor appeared, and Mother called out to him; but grasping the situation, he only scuttled off down a corridor. At last they had to take Father home.

Chapter 6

The Wood Has Been Made Into A Boat

Through the Palace of Green Porcelain to the Willow Palisade

The name of the student who had first offered to help was Liang Yi. His family name, Liang, was the same as Weilin’s, but he was no relation. Weilin never knew the second student’s name. By the time they got back to the Professor’s compound Father was sufficiently conscious to be able to support himself, though he seemed to have lost the coordination necessary for walking or climbing stairs. However, they got him up to the apartment somehow. They sat him in a chair and Mother bathed and dressed his wounds. Father nodded and made appreciative murmuring sounds, but seemed unable to speak. When they had cleaned him up they put him to bed.

The second student left soon after this, and Father fell into a profound sleep. Liang Yi said he would go to the police station first thing in the morning and report the incident. He sat with Mother talking; but it was very late and Weilin was drowsy. He went to bed. Next morning Father was still sleeping. He slept all morning and into the afternoon. Mother was worried. She thought it was a coma. Liang Yi came at noon. He had been to the police station, but the police just laughed at him. The Red Guards were sponsored by Chairman Mao, they said. The police were not allowed to interfere with them.

Mother and Liang Yi went out, with the idea of finding a doctor willing to treat Father, or at least some medicine that his condition might respond to. While they were gone Father woke. Weilin sat by the bed, holding Father’s hand, talking to him, trying to get his attention, sometimes crying, until Mother came home alone. Mother made some soup and fed Father with it. Then she gave him medicine she had got from one of the clinics. He seemed glad, and it even seemed that he recognized them; then blood spurted from his nose and one of his ears. After the blood came a dense milky substance, mixed with blood. By the time they finished cleaning him up, Father had fallen into sleep again. This sleep was fitful, and he developed a fever, his body trembling and sweating. He voided his bowels in the bed, and moved his arms convulsively.

After cleaning his mess and sitting with him all night, Mother went out the next day to visit the local practitioners of traditional medicine, to see if any of their herbs or roots might have application. After she had left the student Liang Yi came. While he was asking Weilin about Father’s condition, Father woke with staring eyes and went into spasm. His head jerked until Weilin cried out for fear he would break his neck. His limbs thrashed and his eyes popped, and a white curd formed on his lips. The milky substance came out of his ear again, but this time with no blood. Then, quite suddenly, Father opened his mouth very wide and made a dreadful gurgling, retching sound, and his spirit fled to the next world, and he fell back limp and empty. Liang Yi had backed off to the wall, his mouth a small round circle of horror, while Father was in spasm. When it was finished he went forward and looked at Father’s eyes. Then he bent down to listen to Father’s breathing. At last he said that Father was dead.

Mother came home soon after. She was inconsolable. She knelt by the bed, her head on Father’s belly, her arms out in front of her, keening, keening. There were words in her keening, but you couldn’t make sense of them. Weilin wondered if she had lost her mind, but was too numb to speculate on the consequences if she had.

Liang Yi went to tell the hospital. Still no-one at the hospital would have anything to do with Father. They only notified the crematorium. The crematorium sent two young men with a rough canvas stretcher, and the young men took Father away, stumbling and cursing down the stairs with Father on the stretcher. Mother went with them, but she would not let Weilin come. He stayed with Liang Yi, playing card games with him. Liang Yi taught him a new card game called kebizhi, where everything depended on getting fifteens.

Mother came home long after dark. It’s finished, is all she would say. It’s finished, everything is finished.

*

Mother changed completely after Father died. She could not play cards. Weilin tried to teach her kebizhi, but she couldn’t pick it up at all. Even the old games she could not now play. They would start a game, but then she would get lost, forget it was her turn, make foolish plays. In the daytime she sat for hours perfectly still, looking out of the window. At night, only at night, she wept. She could not bear to sleep alone, and made Weilin come and lie in the bed with her. She did not cry at first, only lay there holding him; but late at night Weilin would wake, and she would be curled up with her back to him, sobbing.

Though Mother’s distress was plain enough, it was some weeks before Weilin himself felt the full force of grief. What first obsessed him was guilt. It had been his fault, his fault, his fault. If only he had not mentioned Old Fan like that! Without thinking! Of course, since Old Fan was a counter-revolutionary, any connection with him would condemn Father. Of course! Weilin had only thought of Old Fan’s being dead, so that the investigation against Father would have to stop. So naive! He went over and over in his mind the words he had said, willing them to be different, willing that he had said something different—something clever to deflect their interest from Father. Weilin willed it and willed it, to the point where he really believed that if he shut his eyes very tight, when he opened them again he would be in a different place, a place where he had never mentioned Old Fan, where Father had not been beaten, where Father was still alive, smiling and passing his sarcastic remarks, showing him again how to extract a square root. But when Weilin opened his eyes at last, he was still in the same place: Mother listless and weeping, Father dead for ever, for ever.

There is an idiom in the Chinese language: mu yi cheng zhou—“The wood has been made into a boat.” This is used to speak of the irreversibility of time’s arrow; once made, the boat cannot be un-made back into logs and branches. Weilin had first heard the idiom that summer, from a storyteller on the radio, in those last weeks before the earth had opened up to reveal the dark waters beneath, and Father had explained it to him, with a long digression about subatomic physics that Weilin hadn’t been able to follow at all. Now the phrase hung dully in his thoughts all those weeks and months following Father’s death: the wood has been made into a boat.

The first time he really felt the full pain of Father’s passing was on his ninth birthday, that October. Father and Mother had always made a celebration out of Weilin’s birthday. There was a gift, and some delicious food to eat—not just the food everyone tried to get for birthdays (eggs for good luck, noodles for long life), but food appropriate to the number of Weilin’s age. The gift and the food always corresponded in some ingenious way to the number of the birthday.

On his eighth birthday the previous year Weilin had got a storybook titled Eight Heroes of Antiquity, which he had liked very much, and Mother had cooked Eight Treasures in sticky rice, and a soup with eight-pointed stars of aniseed, and tangyuan—small round rice-flour dumplings filled with sweet paste and served in soup. The roundness of the tangyuan of course corresponded to the number eight, the roundest and luckiest of all numbers, being the double of a double doubled, the Chinese character two symmetrical strokes of the pen and the western numeral having a double round form. On his seventh birthday Father had given him a tangram, which in Chinese is called the Seven Piece Puzzle—a square divided into seven parts, which could be re-assembled in all sorts of different shapes. Father had made the tangram himself, or had it made by one of the college workers, from a piece of wood cut up with a fretsaw. On Weilin’s sixth birthday they had feasted on carp, on the rather flimsy pretext, put forward by Mother to mock scorn from Father, that the word for carp, liyu, sounded like the word for six, liu. The very earliest birthday Weilin could remember was his third. Father had given him a wooden doll with two other dolls inside it, each doll painted a different color—yellow, red, blue—and counted the dolls with him over and over, to impress the numbers one, two, three on his mind.

So it had always been. Now here was Weilin’s ninth birthday, and there was nothing—only Mother pale and weeping, and too distraught to think of making sweet tangyuan or sticky rice. It dawned on Weilin, with a force that made his belly feel hollow and his skin cold, that his life had changed irrevocably, and for the worse. The wood has been made into a boat. He clung to Mother now, and wept when she wept.

*

In spite of Father’s being dead, Mother and Weilin were still black elements. The Red Guards all went to Beijing for a rally in September, but when they came back they were worse than ever. They made Mother do a parade, which meant that she and some other black elements had to submit to being led through the streets of the town wearing caps while people stood and jeered or spat on them. The caps were tall conical dunce’s caps made of white paper with slogans written on them. Mother’s slogan said WIFE OF THE CAPITALIST ROADER, TRAITOR AND SPY LIANG YUSHU. “Capitalist Roader” was an expression the Red Guards had picked up in Beijing, a new way of saying “black element.”

After the parade Mother got ill. Winter in Seven Kill Stele was cool and damp, and somehow this got to Mother’s chest. She coughed all the time, sometimes lying in bed all day coughing. The student Liang Yi, who was now the only person who would have anything to do with them, got some medicine from somewhere and cooked it up for Mother in a soup. He cooked food for Weilin, too, when Mother was too ill to do it.

The world beyond their apartment seemed to have closed down completely. There was no teaching at the college, nor at Weilin’s school. At the rally in Beijing Chairman Mao had instructed the Red Guards to roam freely all over the country. Soon they had all gone off, replaced by others from other parts of the country, who stayed at the college dormitory and held their own rallies and struggle meetings. Because they were strangers to the town, however, their activities had an ad hoc and ineffectual quality. They did another sweep of the teachers’ apartments looking for Bourgeois Things, but there were very few left to confiscate. They summoned everybody to a big meeting at the town’s sport stadium; but it was rained out and never re-scheduled.

With no radio and no books (except Oliver Twist, which he soon knew nearly by heart), with no school and Mother too dispirited to play card games, Weilin sank into a profound ennui. Some days he lay on his bed for hours, feeling empty and dead. Sometimes he walked for miles, round and about the town or out into the countryside. He came to prefer the countryside. In the town he often saw classmates from school. Like him, they were at a loose end. Some of them had reacted by forming gangs. They hung around in the streets, or in South Lake Park, or rode the town buses. They picked pockets, broke windows, stole from construction sites and started small fires. Weilin was scared of them. He had never been close to his classmates, and had always felt intimidated by the rougher ones.

Then there were the Little Red Guards. With the real Red Guards out of town, they played host to the visiting Red Guards from other regions. They liked to show off their ardor and militancy to these strangers. Weilin came across them once putting on a show at the Martyrs’ Monument. They had organized a dance troupe and were dancing for the visiting Red Guards. The dance they did was the Loyalty Dance, in honor of Chairman Mao. It involved a lot of chanting and striking heroic poses, and much waving and snapping of red flags. Yuezhu was one of the dancers, wielding a big red flag. “Rebellion is justified!” she shrilled. “Make revolution to the end!” Her voice could be heard above all the others, though she was physically one of the smallest of the Little Red Guards. She did not see Weilin, who was standing in a small crowd of townspeople and visiting Red Guards.

Watching her—her sturdy, nimble body, her round expressive face—Weilin felt an odd reprise of that electric thrill he had experienced when first she touched him, in the pool more than a year before. But now the thrill was cold and bitter, like a dagger of ice piercing his belly. As she strutted and posed up on the plinth of the Martyrs’ Monument he saw her again at Father’s struggle meeting—pointing, accusing. Weilin was gripped with a dull, helpless rage. He wanted to push forward up to the plinth, pull her down and tear at her with his hands. Of course, he did nothing of the sort. The crowd would have stopped him, and in any case he thought Yuezhu was probably strong enough to resist him.

*

In the spring another blow fell. Capitalist Roaders—this was now the official designation—were no longer to be allowed to occupy high-quality accommodation. A woman from the college’s administrative office came to tell Mother. She would have to move into the single teachers’ dormitory.

They made the move that weekend. Weilin was so bored at this point he didn’t mind at all. Any change, anything new, would be interesting. But the new accommodation was awful. Because all teaching at the college had stopped, most of the single teachers, who came from all over the province, had gone home to their families. The dormitory was full of visiting Red Guards. They were very noisy and dirty. To go to the toilet Weilin had to use the common facility at the end of the corridor. The Red Guards had fouled it up, so that you couldn’t relieve yourself without stepping in excrement. Weilin took to scraping his feet on the door-sill as he came out, but he knew he was still treading excrement up the corridor. The common wash-rooms were just as bad. The Red Guards threw everything into the big stone sinks so they were all blocked up and full of scummy, stinking water.

Mother and Weilin had the top and bottom of a bunk bed in one of the dormitory rooms. On the other side of the room was another bunk bed. Since the teachers it belonged to had both gone back to their families, it was let out to visiting female Red Guards. None stayed more than a few days. Some were decent and treated Mother with respect; most just paid no attention to her at all, but came and went on their own whim, at all hours of the day and night, shouting, laughing, arguing.

Lying there in his bunk trying to sleep, negotiating a path between pools of ordure in the toilets, standing on line for the rough, tasteless food at the teachers’ refectory, Weilin thought with aching, hopeless longing of the third-floor apartment with Mother’s “Night in the Pavilion” on the wall, where everything was theirs and the window looked out over the bamboo groves to Mount Tan, and Father seated in his chair with head back and eyes closed, listening to Mr Mozart. The wood has been made into a boat.

In the summer the fighting started. The first Weilin knew of it was, one day when walking in the town he was almost run down by Half Brother. Half Brother came racing very fast round a corner into Red Flag Street, where Weilin was walking. Weilin froze with terror when he saw Half Brother bearing down on him, and only at the last moment had the presence of mind to step back into a doorway. But Half Brother didn’t see him. He was running at full stretch, his mouth wide open and eyes staring; and right behind him were half a dozen other Red Guards in the same condition. They seemed to be running for their lives. The last of them was no more than twenty yards past Weilin when another crowd of Red Guards came round the corner, also at full tilt. It was clear that they were pursuing Half Brother’s group; and their numbers were far greater. Soon the whole street was full of them, eighty or a hundred, running and shouting: “Stop the Rebels! Death to the Rebels!”

Some days after this there was a gunfight. It happened in the evening before dark, just as Weilin was eating with Mother in the teachers’refectory. There was a crackling sound, distant but very sharp. Weilin thought at first it was firecrackers, but Mother had frozen to attention like a startled animal. She sat bolt upright, listening. There was a string of isolated crack … crack … sounds, then another general outburst. Some of the college staff jumped up and ran out.

“What is it, Mother?”

“Guns, Weilin.” Mother never called him “Pangolin” now. “The Red Guards are fighting each other. You must not go into the town.”

Weilin didn’t mind this. The college grounds let out on to open countryside, so he could walk as far as he liked without going into the town. Since his school was closed, his only reason for going into town had been to do food shopping, for such fruit and fresh vegetables as could be found to supplement the awful refectory meals. He had begun this during Mother’s illness the previous winter, and been proud of the responsibility. Now Mother took care of it again, waiting for days when there seemed to be no fighting. Weilin filled his time by walking out into the countryside. Soon he knew all the nearby villages. One of the village headmen took a liking to him, and let him buy fresh produce from the village stocks, at a price much below the town price.

Weilin never understood the reason for the fighting. From hearing the talk in the teachers’ refectory, and of occasional visitors in their dormitory room, he gathered that it was between Rebels and Revolutionaries. This made no sense to him. The main Red Guard slogans, which you still heard shouted at rallies and meetings, were: “To Rebel Is Justified!” and: “Make Revolution To The End!” So it seemed to Weilin that rebellion and revolution were both part of the Red Guard creed—in which case it ought not be possible for them to be in conflict. When he tried to ask Mother about this she just shook her head and put her hands over her face. Any talk about politics or Red Guards now sent her into a fit of distraction.

The fighting sputtered on through the summer and into the fall. Once there was fighting on the college campus itself: endless running feet and shouting voices outside the dormitory window, while Weilin cowered with Mother under the lower bunk bed. Now the food situation was bad. Mother came back from town with only a handful of moldy cabbage leaves, or a bunch of thin gray scallions. When Weilin trekked out to the village of the friendly headman, there was a crowd of townspeople there already, negotiating with him. The headman sold Weilin some bruised, over-ripe persimmon and the head, legs and feet of a duck, but said all his green vegetable had been bought up.

By the fall of that long year, the year 1967, Weilin had fallen into a stupor of boredom and fatalism. He slept twelve hours a day, and lay on his bed inert another two or three. He knew now, with conviction that had sunk roots deep into his childish soul, that Father was gone for ever, that Mother would never again be the Mother who had played word games with him, who had cooked eight treasures in sticky rice for him, who had made the “Night in the Pavilion” scroll. Since all that was gone, it seemed impossible that there could be anything in the future. It remained only to live out his fate, whatever it might be.

Yet still he could not help working over in his mind the events of Father’s struggle and death. Still in his mind’s eye he could see Half Brother, towering over him implacable; and Yuezhu, feet apart and pointing, her face all set in grim accusation. He nursed fantasies of revenge. He would climb over the wall into the barracks compound where they lived. Watching from a hiding-place, he would discover their apartment. Then: overpower one of the guards! steal his gun! go to the apartment! kill anyone who stood in his way! shoot them! shoot the whole family! leaving Yuezhu till last, so she could beg for the lives of her family! in vain!

Under the muggy skies of September he lay on his bunk bed, dreaming. The dreams got worse. Something about Yuezhu’s body, something to do with the smoothness and wiry strength of it, seemed to demand pain and dismemberment. He tortured her with knives, blinded her with fire, opened her belly and pulled out her five entrails, as Yang Xiong had done to the witch Pan Qiaoyun in the old novel Water Margin, that for so long had sat cozy and secure in a green and yellow colored binding on Father’s bookshelf, now cast out into the world helpless, like Mother and himself.

*

He thought Mother would forget his tenth birthday altogether, as she had his ninth. Two weeks before, however, she sat with him on the bottom bunk bed, took his hand, and told him she had a special birthday gift for him.

“The gift is this: a great change in our lives. Weilin, we are going back to the northeast.”

Weilin was delighted. Strictly speaking it was only Mother, of course, who was going back; he himself knew the northeast only from her stories. But how was it possible?

“It’s an exchange. If you want to go live in another place, you can sometimes find someone in that place who wants to come to your place. Then, if your work units both agree, you can exchange.”

It was difficult, of course (Mother went on), if you wanted to move from a poor place to a prosperous one, or from a bad climate to a good one. She had tried to get a transfer to Nanjing, where Father’s sister and mother lived, but it was hopeless. Auntie Shi was scared to help, and Grandmother had become senile and understood nothing. But then she had contacted one of her own relatives in the northeast, Auntie An. It was a country district; and being in the northeast, winters were harsh. Auntie An had easily found someone willing to move to a cozy little market town in the lush southwest. It had taken months to get the units to agree, but now everything was all arranged. Mother was to be an office clerk in a town named Dewy Spring, far in the northeast.

“It will be a poor life,” Mother continued. “Poorer than we were used to when … before. But no poorer than this, I believe. And we will be in my homeland, where my relatives will help us. And … away from these memories.”

From Seven Kill Stele to Dewy Spring was five days by train. It was a miserable journey. The trains were all packed, of course, so there was no guarantee of a seat; and even when you got a seat, it was hard wooden slats whose edges eventually penetrated through anything you tried to put between them and your flesh. Everybody was uncomfortable and ill-tempered, and of course the railroad staff, who had authority, took every possible opportunity to inconvenience or insult the passengers, as people invariably did when they had authority.

Even Beijing, the nation’s capital, the place where Chairman Mao himself and all the nation’s leaders lived, was a disappointment. They had to change trains there; but to get in position for a good seat on the connecting train they had to wait for eleven hours on line with a mass of other people and their bags and quilts and blankets and bundles, all crammed together fidgeting and grumbling and snoring on the wooden benches and hard stone floors. There was no opportunity to go out sightseeing. It was in fact perilous to move at all as you might lose your place, thereby condemning yourself to another half day, or half week, of waiting.

Beijing railroad station itself was by far the biggest building Weilin had ever seen. The waiting hall stretched away to infinity on all sides, countless ramps, passages, stairways and galleries running off into nested interiorities as complex and mysterious as those of the Palace of Green Porcelain in The Time Machine, leading away (for all Weilin knew) into darkness and menace, into the haunts of the Morlocks. He huddled beneath his quilt trying to hold off the moment when he would have to go to the toilet and face the chill fear, coming back, of not being able to locate Mother.

For all Mother had said, and all the trouble she must have gone through to effect the transfer, Weilin knew that she was in low spirits at leaving Seven Kill Stele. He tried his best to support her, to be a good boy, to be cheerful and enthusiastic. He was in fact, for all the discomfort and fear, quite looking forward to the northeast. Mother had told him so many stories about it, it seemed to him like a place of romance and adventure. He knew nothing about Dewy Spring—Mother herself knew nothing about it, other than that Auntie An lived there—but in his young imagination Weilin developed pictures from the name of the place: neat wooden houses set along the banks of a bubbling mountain spring.

Late in the evening of the second day, as they rode north to Sea-and-Mountain Pass, where the Great Wall meets the eastern ocean, Weilin managed to coax Mother to tell some of her stories about the northeast. She told him about Nurhachi the conqueror, who had united the north-eastern peoples in a great confederacy and made war on the Ming dynasty, and about his son and grandson, who overthrew the dynasty and seized the Empire.

After the Manchu people seized the Empire (mother told him) they worried that their native vigor would be sapped by the luxurious life of the court. So they fenced off their old homeland in the far northeast, preserving it in its original condition as the raw mountains and forests from which their race had sprung. The Manchu emperors of China used to retreat there from Beijing, to hunt and fish, and to mix with their own people. To keep out the Chinese, whom they despised, they built a palisade of willow trees, as long as the Great Wall, and stretching north from the Wall to the Black Dragon River on the Siberian border.

Weilin thought the northeast sounded more and more fascinating. A wall of willow trees, as long as the Great Wall itself! What a wonderful thing to see! He wondered at what point they would cross through the Willow Palisade into the homeland of the Manchus, with its bears and wolves, its mysterious forests and mountain-top lakes.

Of course (Mother continued) the Chinese could not be kept out. Human beings are a kind of infestation of the earth (she said): they will seep through any barrier, occupy any empty place at last, teeming and squabbling, trampling everything down. So the northeast filled up with Chinese at last, and the Manchu people lost their aboriginal vitality, and their dynasty fell.

“But what about the Willow Palisade?” asked Weilin anxiously, thinking now that he might have been born too late to see this wonder.

“All gone.” Mother made a careless motion with her hand. Her spirit seemed to have deflated suddenly, as it did so often now. She leaned her head against the window of the train, against the darkness fleeing past outside. “There is only a sort of ditch in places to show where it was,” she continued. “The willows were all burned for firewood by the people, the people, swarming and trampling everything like locusts.”

The train passed through the Wall at Sea-and-Mountain Pass while Weilin was sleeping that night, the night of his tenth birthday, and he woke in the northeast. It did not look magical at all. In fact, from the train window it looked just like the countryside south of the Wall. After Mother and he had eaten the last two of the steamed buns she had bought in Beijing he spent a long time pressed against the window, looking out at the dull flat fields and brown villages. The northeast looked just like everywhere else after all. So disappointing! Perhaps the place where Auntie An lived was also dull, flat and brown. He stood at the window for hours, vaguely hoping to see some sign of the Willow Palisade—even if only the ditch Mother had spoken of. But there was no sign at all.

They traveled north through a great industrial city named Shenyang, where they had to change trains again. Mother picked up more food from the vendors in the station. This train was older and dirtier than the one that had brought them from the south, but less crowded. It passed through a myriad tiny station stops, more people getting off than on each time, so that by nightfall Weilin had the luxury of stretching out at length on the seat, his head on Mother’s lap. For all the hardness of the wooden seat he slept soundly, and when he woke the land had folded up all around them, and they were moving among forested mountain slopes.

“Oh, Mother, it’s the real northeast at last! Look, the forest! Are there really bears and wolves in the forest?”

Mother smiled and ruffled his hair, which made him feel very happy. “Don’t worry, Little Pangolin. I won’t let them eat you.”

It was the first time she had called him by his pet name since Father’s death. And although he was glad to see her smile, hearing himself called “Pangolin” set something cold moving deep inside himself.

Auntie An was waiting for them at Dewy Spring station stop. She was a rough woman with a sallow, unhealthy face, and wearing a peasant’s padded winter jacket, though it was only October and the air, though of course colder than in the south, was not uncomfortable. Weilin thought she did not look very happy to see them. She greeted Mother by her full name, and only nodded to Weilin without any spoken greeting at all.

Dewy Spring was a settlement of two hundred or so low buildings in a valley, with fields of sorghum and millet all around. Its purpose was to service a mine, whose excavations had stripped bare most of the nearer mountainside. Auntie An’s unit was a mile from the station in the direction of the mine, so they shouldered their bundles and trudged behind her along the road. From the railroad station to her unit Auntie An talked with Mother; and in her talk the words trouble and difficulty occurred a great deal. From time to time her flow of talk was interrupted by a soft, repetitive cough.

It was on this road that the dust first caught Weilin’s attention. It seemed to lie everywhere: on the road, on the grass and stones at the roadside, on the leaves of the trees, on the roofs of the houses. It was a fine dust, and each step on the road puffed up a tiny cloud of it, which seemed to just hang there without re-settling. It was not unpleasant to look at—a sort of pale creamy color, like the flesh of a banana. Now, glancing at Auntie An, he saw that she, too, was covered in the banana-colored dust. He could see it in her hair, on her clothes.

The dust was worse nearer the mine; a visible layer of banana-white, covering everything. There were some donkeys tethered outside one of the buildings: their coats were thick with the dust. At Auntie An’s unit Mother went into an office with Auntie An and stayed there for a long time. Weilin was left in the corridor outside. After a while he got bored waiting in the corridor and walked out into the walled courtyard that fronted the place. Three young men were loafing there, squatting on the ground, smoking and talking. They all had the same pale, sickly look as Auntie An; and one was coughing the same soft, dry cough that Auntie An had. The youths stopped talking when Weilin came out. One of them stood up and accosted him. He was an ugly character, about eighteen probably (Weilin thought), with a weedy black mustache. He addressed Weilin without taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

“You from Baiyong?”

“What? No. I’ve never even heard of Baiyong.”

The youth squinted, apparently unable to credit that there might be human beings so benighted as never to have heard of Baiyong. “From where, then?”

“From the south. My mother’s been assigned to work in this unit.”

The youth’s eyes widened. “You’ve come here from the south? Wa!” He turned and spat on the ground. Then he coughed—the same cough everyone else in this place seemed to have, the dry, gentle and oddly deferential cough. When he was through coughing, he addressed the others. “Hey, this kid’s come here from the south.”

They got to their feet and came over, kicking up little clouds of the creamy dust. “What, from Shenyang?”

Weilin smiled at their ignorance. “No, the southern part of our country. Sichuan Province.”

They stared at him for a while, absorbing this. Then one of them laughed.

“You’re crazy, coming here from the south.”

“I’d cut off my arm if I could go live in the south,” said the third youth, chopping violently with his hand to act out the wish. He went into a fit of coughing.

“But it seems very nice here,” said Weilin. “Mountains, forests.”

They all laughed. “Ha!” said the first youth. “You should see it in the winter!”

“Forty below, and the snow twelve feet deep!” said number two.

“You’ll find out,” said number three; and he and number two coughed together in unison.

But Weilin did not find out. Mother came out of the office at last red-eyed from weeping. There was no place for her in the unit after all. There had been some change in the administration of the place, some faction overthrown by some other as was continually happening in those times, and the person she was supposed to exchange with was having her case re-examined, and nobody had thought to tell Mother.

“Then … shall we have to go all the way back to Seven Kill Stele?” Suddenly the thought of five more days on the train going back seemed unbearable.

Mother was silent. It seemed that that, in fact, was exactly what they would have to do.

“No, we won’t go back to that place. We’ll go to Uncle Zhou. Uncle Zhou will remember me, Uncle Zhou will help us.”

Auntie An came out of the office while Mother was saying this. To her credit, she looked embarrassed. “Uncle Zhou,” she said. “Yes, Flat All Around.”

“But now how can I get a ticket?” asked Mother.

“We’ll fix you up,” mumbled Auntie An. “We should do that, at least.”

Chapter 7

Flat All Around Brings Forth an Upright Official

An Enterprising Young Man Tells of His Conquests

“Flat All Around” was the name of a town, the town where Uncle Zhou lived. It was still in the northeast, a day’s journey westward by train from Dewy Spring.

“How can it be called ‘Flat All Around’,” asked Weilin as they rode in the train, “if the northeast is all mountains?”

“Sometimes places are named for peculiarities,” explained Mother. “Well, in the northeast it’s peculiar for a place to be flat all around.”

Uncle Zhou seemed to be even less promising than Auntie An. He was a decent man but very poor, living in one of the low, dark hovels behind the railroad shunting yards in Flat All Around, near the center of the town. His daughter and her husband lived with him, and their two children also, sickly urchins with scabby, snotty faces. The whole family—three adults and two children (Uncle Zhou’s wife had died during the great famine in ’61)—lived together in a single room, divided at night by a soiled white curtain, so that the married couple could have at least the illusion of privacy. The sanitary arrangements were even worse than in the teachers’dormitory at Seven Kill Stele. The Zhous shared an outhouse with eight other families. Water came from a pump at the end of the street, fifty muddy meters away.

“We manage all right,” said Uncle Zhou, who was a philosopher. “There are plenty worse off than us. But I really don’t see how we can take in two more.”

There was not even any place for Mother and Weilin to sleep. At each end of the room where the family lived was a narrow kang, the raised brick-built bed people used in the northeast, heated in winter-time by burning straw in flues underneath. Uncle Zhou slept on one kang with the children; his daughter and son-in-law had the other. Weilin and Mother spent their first night on the floor, covered with the curtain, which the family sacrificed for this purpose. The floor was earth, but beaten hard as stone from generations of being lived on. Weilin could barely sleep, what with the shuffling and scuffling of the family on every side, Uncle Zhou coughing, one of the children sneezing with a cold, and the hard floor, the drafts from the doors and windows not yet taped up for the winter.

“You’ll have to settle things before the winter comes,” said Uncle Zhou. “Being in the south so long, I dare say you’ve forgotten our northeastern winters. And the laddie has never experienced one at all.” (Turning to Weilin.) “Forty below! Spit freezes before it hits the ground! Ting-ting!”

Weilin thought they would surely have to go back to Seven Kill Stele, and wondered how they would be able to pay the fare. With no work unit to appeal to, and no place to live, their situation was perfectly hopeless. But Mother did not weep at all that night on the hard cold floor. At breakfast, as they shared some thin millet gruel with Uncle Zhou and his daughter, Mother announced in a voice stronger than Weilin had heard from her throat for more than a year that she would go to the Revolutionary Committee of Flat All Around and ask them for help. Uncle Zhou’s daughter shook her head in disbelief—as if officials would be any help in such a situation!—and Uncle Zhou said nothing, only looking down into his gruel, embarrassed at Mother’s naivety, or at his own incapacity to be of help to her, or both.

Mother went anyway, taking Weilin with her. The Revolutionary Committee was in a fine square old Japanese-style building right at the center of town. Before being the home of the Revolutionary Committee it had been Party Headquarters, before that very briefly the Corps HQ of General Du Yuming’s Nationalist army, before that the Civil Affairs Office of the Japanese occupation government. The townspeople of Flat All Around, who were of a conservative inclination, just called it the yamen, using the term current in Imperial times for the center of local administration.

Mother didn’t say anything to the officials about having been married to a black element. Her file was still on its way to Dewy Spring, so it was not likely anyone here would know about that for months. She just said her husband had died and her transfer had fallen through. The first officials they saw were brusque or frankly abusive, telling her she would have to go back to the southwest, and that her old unit there would have to pay for the ticket. She persisted, however, sitting for long hours in the dim waiting-room, just doggedly refusing to be dismissed. The floor-boards of the place—Weilin came to know them very intimately—were worn down into long shallow depressions from decades of use. There was a dado of black grime round the interior walls at shoulder height where generations of citizens had leaned, waiting for the resolution of their cases. Light seeped in from outside through small, high, filthy windows. At last, when even that little light was beginning to fail, when they had been in the building all day with no lunch, been shunted up four levels of the Party hierarchy with no word of sympathy or hope, they got an interview with Secretary Tang.

Secretary Tang’s office was up a flight of worn wooden stairs, with fine carved banisters and roundels on the posts. Secretary Tang himself was fortyish, a large handsome man still wearing a short-sleeve white summer shirt. He listened to Mother’s tale, asked about her relatives, shook his head.

“Not really our responsibility,” said Secretary Tang. “But kaolü, kaolü.” [We’ll consider, we’ll consider.] “Come here tomorrow.”

He wrote something on a sheet of paper and gave it to Mother, so that she wouldn’t have to begin the bureaucratic board game again from the beginning next day. He was somewhat warmer in his manner than the other officials had been, as if he really wished to do something for them; but Weilin dared not hope, and Mother said nothing as they trekked back to Uncle Zhou’s.

Secretary Tang came through, though. They climbed the fine dark wooden stairs again next day, and Secretary Tang informed them that one of the rural production brigades outside the town would take Mother as an assistant in the kindergarten, and even give her a room.

It was a gift from Heaven. Mother wept when she heard it. She took Secretary Tang’s hand in both of hers and would not let it go, calling down blessings on him as an upright official and a true friend of the common people, until the scene was enveloped in such a cloud of embarrassment Weilin felt he could hardly breathe. The most mother had hoped for (she told him going back to Uncle Zhou’s) was some arrangement for a loan to pay her way back to Seven Kill Stele.

*

Love Socialism! Production Brigade was a bus ride to the end of town, then a long walk on broad unpaved tracks. They had had several years of good harvests (this was the first thing everyone told them) and so were well off by the standards of the northeast, itself one of the nation’s more prosperous regions. The brigade offices were set up in neat square brick-built buildings in a compound surrounded by a wall. The front stretch of the wall, facing and parallel to the road into Flat All Around, was made of brick, and had a gateway in it (though no actual gate), over which was a semicircular metal framework bearing the name of the brigade: LOVE SOCIALISM! in six characters stamped from metal and painted red, with a big red star in the center, three characters on each side of the star. The wall at the other three sides of the brigade office compound was made of dried mud, with gaps in it for the paths leading to the several villages that made up the brigade.

The kindergarten shared some low buildings behind the main compound with the brigade’s elementary school. It was for the children of the peasants and the workers at the brigade offices. Most of the peasants who had toddlers sent them to the kindergarten in care of older children (who had nothing to do all day, the elementary school having been closed by the Cultural Revolution), to get them out from under foot and free both parents for work. The room Weilin and his mother had been given was one in a row built against the back wall. It had a kang, and a window, and a door, and a floor of actual concrete, and nothing else at all, but Mother was radiant with pride when the Branch Secretary responsible for the school showed them it.

“We had them built last year, same time as the new boiler house,” explained the Branch Secretary in her slurred northeast dialect. “So many kids now! We Chinese, we know how to make babies all right! So we figured we’d add a kindergarten to the school. But the teacher who lived here had a situation, and she was sent off.”

Mother said nothing to this. Weilin could sense that having a situation and being sent off were not good things, but no-one seemed to want to elaborate. That evening Mother acquired two salted eggs from somewhere, and they ate them with millet gruel from a common kitchen area at the end of the row.

Weilin thought the northeast very pleasant. He didn’t understand why it should have been so easy for Mother to get a transfer. The air was clear and bracing, if somewhat cooler than the south, and they had been given this wonderful new brick-built room for the asking. There were no actual shortages of food, though of course one could never have enough food; and while rice was impossible to get, sorghum and millet were plentiful, and corn merely a treat, not a luxury. The local people were good-natured and frank-speaking, and there seemed to have been little fighting—certainly nothing as savage as in the south. Flat All Around was run by a family, or a clique, called the Dongs, about whom Weilin knew nothing except that everyone seemed to approve of them, and that, as he overheard some workers in the brigade administrative building say, they had kept the lid on the Red Guards.

There were no Red Guards to be seen, though everyone spoke of them having passed through the place. They had, indeed, left their foot-prints on the town. On the road in from Love Socialism! was an old temple they had visited, the porcelain tiles of the roof and door lintel all splintered, the statues decapitated, the place all boarded up and covered with peeling big-character posters whose characters, where sheltered from the rain, could still be made out: DOWN WITH THE FOUR OLDS! and SMASH THE DONG ELEMENTS AND THEIR RUNNING DOGS! But the Dongs were unsmashed and the Red Guards had moved on, and Flat All Around vegetated quietly in its modest prosperity.

Then came winter.

*

As October passed into November the air cooled to what Weilin thought a winter should be; cooler than it ever was in the southwest, but not intolerable if he put an extra shirt on under the light winter jacket he had brought from the south. “Better get some cotton-padded clothing,” the locals all said, smiling, beginning to appear in theirs. Mother said the brigade would give them coupons for the clothing, but there was some mix-up and they were not yet eligible.

Suddenly it was cold, a terrible icy cold keening down from Siberia, a wind that seemed to pass clean through the body, penetrating every membrane. A lazy wind, said the locals, who had a pawky style of humor—too lazy to go round you, so it went through you. The single-layer brick of their dwelling offered almost no protection at all, and Weilin noticed now how thick were the earth walls of the peasant’s houses, and how their roofs were insulated with layer upon layer of straw. He and Mother’s little room, exposed outside the compound to the wind sweeping across the fields, the room which Mother had thought a gift from Heaven, looked set fair to carry them both down to Hell, frozen to death.

Following the instructions of the brigade workers, he and Mother sealed up their window-frame with pasted-on strips of newspaper, but of course they could not paste up the door. Mother had lost, and Weilin had never acquired, the art of keeping a kang warm. They put burning straw into the flue underneath; but either it went out in three or four minutes, or else it burned up too fast instead of smoldering in the proper fashion, or else it blocked the flue somehow, filling the room with rancid smoke. Uncle Zhou came out from the town to give them lessons in kang management, but still they could not get it right. Mother took to using the straw as night-time insulation instead, heaping it on top of them where they lay, then covering themselves and it with their single inadequate quilt.

Weilin thought they would die of cold before the cotton coupons arrived. The prosperity of the brigade apparently did not extend to cotton-padded garments; everybody had one set, and that was that. In desperation, Mother went back to Uncle Zhou. With some help from him, some cannibalizing of their spare clothes, and some scrounging from the workers and peasants at the brigade, she got enough material and cotton to make a suit for Weilin—padded pants, padded jacket, padded hat. Weilin knew he ought to say Make clothes for yourself, Mother. I’m younger and stronger than you, it’s you who should have the padded clothes. He knew he should say it, he wanted to say it, but he did not say it. Instead he took the jacket and pants and hat gratefully, and wore them day and night, giving his summer jacket, which now looked so flimsy, to Mother in exchange. Mother (he rationalized) was in the school all day, except when she was shepherding the kids to and from their little refectory for meals. The school was heated, or at any rate had a big kang that was kept warm for the little ones to sleep on.

The coupons arrived in late December, and Mother at once acquired a suit of cotton-padded clothes from a seamstress in the town. The excess coupons—since Weilin had the suit she had made herself—she traded for food. By this time, however, it had been severely cold for a month and Mother had developed bronchitis. She coughed all night. Hearing her, Weilin felt terrible that he had let her dress him before herself. He thought that he could have got through to the point where the coupons arrived without developing health problems; only it had been so cold. He lay at night twisting with guilt, listening to Mother’s cough.

Almost worse than the cold, Weilin began to think, as 1967 turned to 1968, was the boredom. Though the Cultural Revolution had fallen fairly gently on Flat All Around, the national policies arising from it applied here as much as elsewhere. In particular, the schools were all closed, so that Weilin had no legitimate occupation. On being assigned to the brigade he had vaguely supposed he might have to work as a peasant, but in fact the peasants did no work in the long northeastern winter months, only sat on their kangs playing cards, smoking and gossiping. And drinking. The northeast had been one of the last regions of China to be populated, so that the soil was very fertile, but until Liberation there had been a shortage of roads and canals. In times of plenty the only economic way for the peasants to transport the grain they produced in such abundance had been to first transform it into liquor. This tradition had continued into the modern age, and every production brigade had its still. Love Socialism!, somewhat larger than the average brigade, had two, both out in the villages somewhere. In the long winter idleness it was not uncommon to come across peasants oblivious from drink, something Weilin had never seen in the southwest.

Weilin could not drink liquor, of course. Mother would not have allowed it, even if they had had money to pay for it, which they had not. He occupied himself with long walks out into the countryside around; then, when the vistas of mud-built peasant huts and frozen fields palled, into the town itself on long, aimless wanderings through the grimy streets, stopping sometimes at Uncle Zhou’s for a bowl of gruel and half a batter-stick.

From Uncle Zhou he learned the history of the place, such as it was. There had been a trading station here since the Manchus allowed Chinese people into the northeast. It had had a wall around it, like all Chinese towns in the old times, made of dried mud, some sections of which could still be seen. Then after the Sino-Japanese War seventy years before, the Manchu government had begun to fear Japanese power, and arranged with Russia to allow an arm of the Trans-Siberian railroad to cut through the northeast to Vladivostok. When Russia in turn was defeated by Japan, the Japanese had taken over the railroad. They had built another one at right angles to it, running from Korea west into Mongolia. Where the two railroads crossed, there was Flat All Around.

“You should have seen this place in the Korean War,” said Uncle Zhou, nodding his head in slow remembrance. “Soldiers going through every day, ten thousands and ten thousands. And coming the other way—empty trains, or trains full of cripples. Nobody knows how many of our young lads died fighting the Imperialists. In those days, if they shipped you to Flat All Around with a ticket east—suan wanle ba!” [You could consider yourself done for.]

*

The current railroad station had been built by the Japanese when they held the northeast in the thirties, and had the solid, graceless functionalism of Japanese imperial architecture. In front of it was a huge open square, with small stores, restaurants and hotels set around the other three sides, and some of the lesser sort of government offices.

Such vitality as the town possessed was on display here in the railroad plaza. There were peddlers here selling fruit, eggs and peanuts, herbal medicines, small cooked delicacies, dried jujubes and candied apple pieces on sticks. Sometimes there was a show; some patent-medicine salesmen hawking their wares, doing conjuring tricks to attract a crowd. Three or four mad people had made the square their home (the Red Guards had declared psychiatric medicine to be counter-revolutionary and had opened the doors of the county asylum). One was a woman, incredibly ragged and filthy, who was always absorbed in an endless slow dance, to enhance which she sometimes broke into discordant song. The exquisite grace with which she danced was made ludicrous by her grimy rags; but she seemed oblivious to this, and to the kids who gathered round to throw stones at her, and even to the Siberian wind cutting through the great rents in her clothing to the dirt-blackened bare flesh beneath. Another lunatic, a middle-aged man with the look of a college professor, delivered long earnest speeches about electricity, the proper application of which, he urged, would induce levitation and personal immortality.

But the strongest attraction for Weilin, when the novelty of these other wonders had worn off, was the penny library. This was run by a boy a few years older than himself—fifteen perhaps; a local boy with a coarse round face and a cap with padded ear-warmers. The boy supervised a rickety old table stacked with books, any one of which you could sit and read for a penny an hour. He would sell you the books, too, for forty or fifty cents, but that was beyond Weilin’s means. The books were a perfectly random collection: farmer’s almanacs, engineering handbooks, poetry anthologies, children’s primers, adventure stories, the old classic novels, occasionally a translation of some western book.

“Got ’em from the Red Guards,” explained the boy quite openly, when, after four or five visits, he considered Weilin a sufficiently close acquaintance. “They went round confiscating books from all the intellectuals. Stored ’em all in the old temple on Victory Avenue. Then the Red Guards were chased out, but the intellectuals were too shit-scared to go and get their books back, so I took ’em. I got a million books.”

The boy’s name was Asan, which means “number three,” he having been the third son in his household. The first two had apparently exhausted the entire onomastic resources of his parents. He was an odd person to be in charge of a book stall, being next to illiterate. He seemed to have a keen sense of business, though. As well as being proprietor of the book stall, he was a middleman for several of the fruit vendors in the square, one of his relatives being headman of a production brigade in Liaoning with extensive orchards. He could get medicines, too, both herbal and western-style, at a rate much lower than the clinics charged; but he would not divulge his source of supply for the medicines.

“If I told you that you’d be as wise as I am, wouldn’t you?” he laughed when Weilin asked him about the medicines.

Weilin spent many hours sitting on the kerb reading adventure stories from Asan’s stock. The older boy seemed to take a liking to him. No doubt noticing Weilin’s makeshift winter clothes, he often took a reduced fee, letting Weilin read all day for two pennies. Sometimes he seemed to forget the fee altogether. If Weilin was there at lunch-time he would send him to one of the restaurants for millet gruel and batter-sticks or the steamed sorghum-flour buns called mantou, and share what he had. If business was really good he would order a beer, and it was sitting on the kerb by Asan’s book stall in the railroad plaza of Flat All Around that Weilin first tasted beer.

“Main thing,” Asan said, “is to keep ahead of the tiaozi.”

The tiaozi—the sticks—were Flat All Around’s constabulary. They operated on the usual third-world principle: let things run along quietly for a few months, then launch a sweep and round up anyone you can find who is doing, or looks as if he might be capable of doing, anything that might be construed as unlawful, or inconvenient to the authorities. Give them a beating, extract a fine from their families, let them go, and leave things alone for another few months. Since street trading was theoretically illegal, Asan was vulnerable to these tactics. However, his vulnerability did not seem to cause him much loss of sleep. When the sticks made their sweep, one bitter freezing day in January, he was not in the plaza at all.

“A little bird told me,” he said the next week, when he was back in business. “I got friends.” He nodded gravely and tapped the flange of his right nostril to indicate the potency of his friendships.

Actually most of Asan’s friends seemed to be local youths very much like himself. They used to stop by at the book stall from time to time. All were coarse-looking and ill-educated. All smoked cigarettes, when they could get them—and all in the same style, holding the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, lit end outward, expelling the smoke through their nostrils. None of them paid the least attention to Weilin, but he came to know the most frequent callers by overhearing their talk. There was Red Wang, so styled for having been a Red Guard, apparently; a thin fellow with a hatchet face and exceptionally long, yellow teeth. Red Wang was an easy-going type with a cheerful laugh. His father worked for the railroad, and Weilin gathered that most of his visits were concerned with another of Asan’s sideline businesses: obtaining railroad tickets outside the normal channels. Red Wang often traveled with Donkey, a short plump boy, almost perfectly spherical in his padded winter clothing, whose main activity in life seemed to be cadging cigarettes.

Weilin was a little scared of these visitors, though Asan was quite at ease with them all. There was one called Big Meng, a Mongolian with one of those ironed-flat faces Mongolians have. He was older than the generality of Asan’s friends—seventeen or eighteen, perhaps—and fully-grown, square and muscular as a horse. One day Asan sent Weilin to a restaurant to get some lunch. When Weilin came back, Big Meng was standing talking to Asan. Still talking, Asan tipped some of his millet gruel into the mess tin Weilin now carried for just this purpose, and gave him half a mantou. Big Meng watched this transaction with hungry eyes.

“Wouldn’t mind some of that myself,” he said as Weilin was stepping away. Weilin thought he could feel Big Meng’s eyes on his back as he sat down on the kerb to eat.

“You want some, fucking buy it yourself,” said Asan, not at all intimidated by the older boy.

“Who’s that then?” asked Big Meng. “Your little bit of butt cake, is it?”

“He’s a friend of mine, a good kid,” replied Asan. “You got a problem with that?”

“He can pull on mine, if he likes.” Big Meng laughed, sticking to his train of thought.

“He’s not even old enough to pull on his own,” said Asan. “So mind your own fucking business.”

Weilin liked this, was thrilled by it—the way Asan stood up for him, even against hulking Big Meng. It was not only the words themselves, it was also the very timbre of Asan’s voice—deep, confident and rounded. Hearing Asan’s voice, Weilin sometimes experienced a shiver of excitement he could not account for, related somehow to the electric thrill he had felt in the swimming pool at Seven Kill Stele, when Yuezhu had grabbed his arm. Weilin thought at that moment (and the thought never quite left him) that he would do anything for Asan.

The remarks about pulling were, of course, over his head, though he guessed they had some filthy connotation. Quite a lot of the talk that passed between Asan and his friends was filthy. They seemed to know several girls with whom they did filthy things; but none of these girls ever showed up at the book stall, and Weilin wondered why, if the girls were willing to do the filthy things (whatever they were) they were not willing to come and pass the time of day with Asan in the railroad station plaza, as his male friends did. Perhaps (he reflected) they were ashamed because of the filthy things. Some of Asan’s customers were girls, of course, but Asan showed them no particular favor, treated them indeed with some diffidence, certainly never with as much consideration as he showed to Weilin. If you had not heard Asan’s stories you might even think he was shy with girls.

By spring time, when Weilin had been going to the book stall two or three times a week for three months, Asan felt sufficiently intimate with him to share some of the filthy talk. Weilin could never quite follow what was supposed to have happened in these brief narratives, but he listened attentively and chuckled at what seemed like the right place, just to please Asan.

“I had great pussy last night,” Asan would say. “Wet and hairy. One of the girls from the bottling plant. I fucked her up against the wall in Serve The People! Street. Boy, I served her all right!”

Or: “Me and Red Wang fucked Little Plum last night.” (Little Plum was a frequent player in Asan’s stories, gifted—according to Asan—with sensational qualities of hairiness and wetness.) “One after the other, over in the old brickyard. I fucked her first, to get her juices going, then Red Wang had the sloppy seconds. Oh, she squealed like a cat when I shoved it in!”

*

Asan left town for the summer, to go to stay with his relative in Liaoning—the one whose brigade had the fruit orchards. By this time Weilin had got so used to him, to his cheerfulness and rough courtesies and incomprehensible salacities, he missed him terribly. There seemed no point in going into the town now, and Weilin developed an actual aversion to going in, though Mother sent him once a week for supplementary provisions.

The countryside, by contrast, came alive with the warming air. Sorghum, millet and corn were shooting up, ducks and geese were under foot everywhere, around every cluster of buildings could be heard the grunting of swine.

Weilin went out on long expeditions through the brigade and into those surrounding it. At the furthest extremity of his journeyings, an hour and a half away by foot, was a little river, a distant tributary of the mighty Liao, the water muddy and cold but clean enough for swimming. The country was still flat here, the current sluggish. Weilin could swim upriver for an hour or more, then turn and float on his back, allowing the current to return him to his starting-point.

He loved this: the clean rhythmic effort of the swim, then the leisurely floating, gazing up at the sky, hearing voices of children splashing in the shallows by the bank, allowing the river to bring into his head whatever idle thought it would. Floating so serenely like that, even the bad thoughts did not seem so very disturbing. He could think of Father, even of Han Yuezhu, without the pain that came at other times. Something about the brightness and cleanness of the sky seemed to leach out everything vile from those memories; though, when they came to him at home, in the darkness, trying to sleep, listening to Mother coughing the cough he had given her, they were as bitter as ever.

Nor were the Liangs allowed to forget those evil things. In July Mother’s file finally arrived at Love Socialism! Production Brigade; or perhaps it had arrived before, but no-one had bothered to look into it. The two of them were called in together to see Secretary Duo, the head of the brigade’s Revolutionary Committee. Secretary Duo was coarse and ignorant, a real peasant, but Weilin had never heard anything bad of him. He was sitting at his desk when they went in, smoking a cigarette—not one of the smart manufactured ones that Asan and his friends affected, when they could get them, but a crude cone of newspaper stuffed with black shag.

“Eh, Comrade Liang, mother and son … Sit down, sit down.” Secretary Duo’s desk had a brown paper folder on it. Mother’s file! It was an unusual thing, to actually see one’s file. Mother (he noticed) could not take her eyes off it.

“Before you came here you were on the staff of a college in, ah, yes, Hibiscus Slope, way down south.”

“Yes,” said Mother. (“Hibiscus Slope” was the official name of Seven Kill Stele.)

“It seems there was a situation there. Accusations of counter-revolutionary activity.”

“It was all nonsense!” said Mother with sudden vehemence. “The Red Guards …”

“Oh, is that who it was?” Secretary Duo was squinting at the folder, picking out characters with his finger. “‘Ad Hoc People’s Red Revolutionary Organization Committee of Inspection’? Fuck me, they like to think up grand names for themselves, don’t they?”

“My husband was accused unjustly. He was beaten by the Red Guards, then he died. Nothing was proved against him.”

The fact that the relevant entries in her file had been made by Red Guards seemed to have settled things for Secretary Duo. He waved his cigarette hand to dismiss the matter.

“Many improper things were done when the Red Guards were running wild. Now we have Clean Up the Class Ranks” (the name of a nationwide movement that had started that spring to reign in the Red Guards once and for all). “I don’t think you come under the scope. It’s all a Party matter.”

Secretary Duo leaned over and spat on the floor, rubbing it in with his foot. He was a Party member, of course. Mother was not.

“There won’t be any difficulty for you here. It’s only that you should have come clean with us first off. Old Tang really went out of his way to help you, just out of renqingwei [the milk of human kindness], knowing you were a northeasterner yourself trying to settle back in the home region. He won’t be pleased if he knows about this. If he asks me I’ll have to tell him, of course. But if nothing is asked, nothing will be said. We’ll keep it in the file.”

Mother cheered up a lot after that. The bronchitic cough that had lingered with her since winter-time now dwindled to an occasional asthmatic rasp. Weilin cherished the hope that she might be persuaded to play card games with him again. In the long summer evenings, before going to bed, he took to playing solitaire on the kang, hoping to draw Mother in; but still she only sat sewing or preparing vegetables, lost in her thoughts.

Chapter 8

Clean Up the Class Ranks!

Weilin Joins a Daring Expedition

In September the schools opened again. The Brigade had an elementary school and Mother arranged for Weilin to attend. But the school was a poor place, the teachers hardly better than peasants themselves. The content of the lessons was: elementary arithmetic, with endless exercises of numbing simplicity, and class reading of newspaper editorials, the teacher explaining the characters and words one by one. Since there was no secondary school to advance to, Weilin thought there was little point in attending. After a few days he went back to his wanderings.

The Saturday after National Day, October 1st, Asan reappeared in the railroad station plaza. Weilin had gone into town early that day, and saw him setting up his stall and books, which he brought in in a handcart. Asan was the same as ever: cheerful, confident, obscene. He seemed taller, but Weilin thought probably he was only narrower without the padded winter clothing. It was still warm, and Asan was in his summer jacket with oversleeves and an army-style green cap. He was wearing smart shoes, the kind everyone called Capital shoes, made of black corduroy with white soles. As they loaded the stall he favored Weilin with a long discourse on the relative merits of the girls of Liaoning Province, where he had spent the summer, and those of their own district, with special reference to their body hair and juices.

“Jilin girls are easier,” he concluded, naming the province in which Flat All Around was situated, “but Liaoning’s are prettier.”

“I think our southern girls are prettiest,” said Weilin, wanting to have an opinion. He really did think so. The girls in Flat All Around, with their bad-diet lumpiness and frostbitten complexions, did not seem to him at all like his female classmates in Seven Kill Stele, where fish, fruit and vegetables were plentiful and light summer clothing could be worn all year round.

Asan considered this seriously. “Well,” he said at last, “maybe the chicks are cuter the further south you go. Liaoning’s south of here, isn’t it? That must be it.” He grinned, pleased at having successfully mastered logical induction. “Hey, you’re pretty smart, Little Brother! Let’s you and me go south!”

“Prettier, but more difficult,” pointed out Weilin.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Shit, there’s always a downside to everything.”

*

In October Love Socialism! Production Brigade was visited by one of the new Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda teams. All the adult employees of the Brigade had to go to an open-air meeting in the main compound one evening. Weilin did not go, but sitting in the room behind the wall of the school buildings he could hear the shrill, urgent tones of the speaker. The sound filled him with dread, bringing irresistibly to mind the struggle meetings at the college in Seven Kill Stele. Down with! Down with! These were not Red Guards, though. They had been sent by the Party to restore order and tell people the new line. Still Weilin feared them. Once a movement got started, you never knew what direction it would take.

His forebodings proved well-founded. The Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda team decided that life in Flat All Around had been altogether too orderly. The Dongs had not been Taking Class Struggle As The Key. Counter-revolutionaries had not been properly exposed. Under the leadership of the team, the Party Secretaries of the various units therefore rooted out such counter-revolutionaries as they could identify and exposed them.

Inevitably, Mother’s case was reopened. She wept when they told her, and continuously for several days afterward. Weilin could make no contact with her at all; she just shook her head wildly and burst into tears at any approach. She was struggled again: not a violent affair like the one at the college, only a one-hour meeting in the Brigade compound, the Thought Propaganda team leading the Brigade members in criticizing their half-dozen counter-revolutionaries and urging them to reform.

A few days later there was a parade, all the town’s counter-revolutionaries being marched down Victory Avenue with caps on, the names of their crimes written on the caps in black letters. Again Mother’s cap said WIFE OF COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY LIANG YUSHU. This parade was rougher than the meeting, as the townspeople had the opportunity, which some of them took, to spit or throw stones at the participants. After the parade there was a rally at the town sport stadium where the local counter-revolutionaries were yelled at, and in a few cases beaten up, by those they had wronged, or by anyone else who had a grudge against them for any reason. Since nobody knew anything about Mother’s case she was spared this. As struggle meetings went it was nothing. There was an air (everybody said) of just going through the motions. No great harm was done and nobody was sent away. Two days after the parade the Thought Propaganda team left, and Flat All Around lapsed back into its customary political torpor. The Dongs had finessed the situation somehow and were still in charge, to everyone’s satisfaction.

Weilin did not attend either the struggle meeting or the parade. He cowered at home through both, remembering Father, and the milky white substance that had come out of his ear, and wondering how he would live if Mother were struggled to death. When she came home at last from the sport stadium, carrying her cap in one hand (it would have been counter-revolutionary to discard it on the road), he ran to her and threw his arms round her. They held on to each other for some time, mother very quiet and still, Weilin sobbing loudly.

“Do you think this will ever end?” he asked Mother.

“No,” said Mother. “It will never end.”

*

It was after being paraded that Mother definitely changed for the worse. The spells of silent introspection, when she could hardly be persuaded to speak at all, expanded to occupy whole days, sometimes two or three days at a stretch. Her hair turned white; at least, that was Weilin’s impression. Mother had had some white hair before, he was sure, but now the white outnumbered the gray—or perhaps it was only now that the change in Mother’s manner caused him to think so. Weilin had always thought of Mother as young and beautiful, though in fact she had been almost forty when he was born. Now quite suddenly, through whatever blend of the subjective and objective he could not unravel, she was old.

Mother’s bronchitis returned with the cold weather. This year it was worse than ever. She would wake in the middle of the night coughing, waking Weilin on the kang beside her. At first Weilin tried to console her by holding her in his arms, but Mother could get relief only by sitting up, so of course he had to sit up with her, and instead of sleeping they sat up for an hour or more every night, in the cold and the dark—their only light being from an oil lamp, and oil too precious to waste.

The room was never warm, but by midwinter this year Weilin had mastered the kang, so that it was never really cold. He had also developed a technique for plugging the cracks around the door at night with strips of crushed straw, so that the icy draughts were eliminated, at least once they were shut in for the night. As Mother’s condition got worse he tried to keep her confined to the room when she was not at her duties in the kindergarten. He would not let her go out, and went himself to fetch food and hot water for her from the communal kitchen. Still Mother coughed and coughed.

Weilin told Asan about Mother’s bronchitis.

“Is she coughing blood?” asked Asan, who liked to pose as an authority on everything.

“No. I don’t think so. I’ve never seen any.”

“That’s good. That means it’s not TB. Does she take any medicine?”

“No. We haven’t got any money for medicine.”

“Shit, I can get you some. Leave it to me.”

The result was a brown paper package filled with traditional remedies: herbs, bulbous seed-pods, fragrant bark and the pale white skins of cicadas. Following Asan’s instructions, Weilin steeped it all for a long time in boiling water, then gave it to Mother to drink. In the following days her condition really did improve; but this was spring time now, each day warmer than the last, so whether her revival was caused by the herbs or by the weather, Weilin could not know.

*

It was late that summer, the summer of ’69, that they tried to rob the bank.

Robbing the bank was Red Wang’s idea. Weilin first heard of it from Asan, of course. Asan had stayed in town this summer. His other businesses were languishing, so he kept the penny library in the station plaza two or three days a week. When Weilin did not feel like swimming he would go into the town, and it was on one of these days that Asan told him about robbing the bank.

Weilin had been reading a Chinese translation of R.M. Ballantyne’s Coral Island, which he thought a wonderful tale. On the day he was hoping to finish it he went to the plaza. Asan had told him he would be there this day, and there he was, sitting on the kerb in his usual spot—but there were no books.

“We’ll go for a walk,” said Asan. “Then we’ll have some lunch.”

Weilin tagged along with him, suspecting nothing. They went along Renxing Street (named for Ma Renxing, a hero of the Liberation War) and down Victory Avenue. Here was the newer part of town, most of it built after Liberation. The town bank was on a corner, where Victory Avenue crossed Revolution Street. It was a single-story building in red brick, with a grassy area all round it. Clothes-lines were strung between poles on the grassy area, with clothes drying on them. Some of the bank staff lived in the bank, explained Asan. The clothes belonged to them.

“Have you ever been in the bank?” he asked Weilin.

“No, of course not.”

“Me neither. But Donkey has. His ma’s elder sister works in the bank.”

“Really? What exactly do they do in the bank? I’m not clear.”

“Why, they hand out money. All the units in the town, the railroad and the paint factory, the shoe factory, all the production brigades in the countryside around, they all need money. The bank hands it out.”

“Where does the bank get the money from?”

“From the Party of course. Now, look there. Don’t stop and don’t make a big show of looking, just glance. The little window, in the corner of the wall there.”

“Yes. I see it.”

“Think you can get through there?”

“I don’t know. It’s very small.”

“You can, I bet. Skinny kid like you. You climb in there, go through to the front and open the door. Me and Red Wang will come in, help ourselves to a bit of money, slip out again. Easy. That window, they always keep it open.”

Weilin stopped dead. “You’re going to do this now?”

“Course not. And keep walking. Cross over here and we’ll walk back. Try to get a good look at the place going back, careful like.”

Weilin felt scared. His knees were shaking. These boys were bandits! They were going to rob the bank! He had fallen in with bandits, like poor Oliver Twist!

“We’re going to do it one night, one Wednesday night. Maybe this coming Wednesday.”

“But don’t they lock up the money at night?”

“Mostly, yes. But Thursdays they do big payouts to the work units all over the town. They have to get a start on counting up the bills before, on Wednesday. When they’ve counted them, they lock them in the cashiers’ drawers. They’re just drawers made of wood. You can open them with ordinary tools. Donkey knows, heard his Ma’s elder sister talk about it.”

“If Donkey’s Ma’s elder sister works in the bank, why doesn’t she let you in?”

“’Cause she doesn’t live there. Only the ‘collars and sleeves’ live there. But they all live round the back, they won’t hear us if we’re quiet.”

Asan, for all his street smarts, had a peculiarly old-fashioned way of referring to authority. People in a senior position were always “collars and sleeves,” the old metonymy used in Imperial times; Party HQ was “the yamen”; the instructions of the national leadership, on the very rare occasions he referred to them, were “edicts.” Admiring Weilin’s good educated Chinese speech on one of their first encounters, he called it guanhua, “the Mandarin tongue” instead of saying putonghua, “the common tongue” as everyone was supposed to nowadays. Weilin did not think Asan was consciously counter-revolutionary, he was just ignorant. His people were peasants, Weilin knew. Once Asan’s mother had come to the railroad station plaza and stopped to pass the time of day with her son. She had one of those shiny faces that have never been washed, and was smoking a pipe.

“I don’t think it’s a very good idea, to rob the bank,” said Weilin cautiously. “Suppose you get caught?”

“Who’s going to catch us? The sticks had a sweep last month, they won’t stir for a while. The army’s helping with the harvest. We have a flashlight—Red Wang got one from his dad, they use it to check under the trains. Everything else will be dark. Piece of cake.”

“I don’t know. I really … It seems so dangerous.”

They were back on Victory Avenue now, fifty yards from the bank. Asan stopped and looked down at Weilin.

“Younger Brother, don’t you want to help your mother?”

“My mother? Of course. How will it help her if I rob the bank?”

“Why, she needs treatment for her bronchitis. It will come back this winter for sure. You need a decent doctor. You know the saying: ‘Money can move the gods.’”

This put things in a new light. Weilin considered. “If we suddenly start spending money, people will wonder where we got it.”

“Nah. You’re strangers here. Tell ’em it’s a secret stash you brought with you from the south. Your people had a decent position in the south, didn’t they?”

“Yes. I … I suppose we could do that …”

Probably Weilin would still have resisted if it had been anyone other than Asan grinning down on him. But he could not resist Asan.

The following Wednesday was unpropitious for some reason, so it was ten days later that they robbed the bank. Asan had them all meet at midnight—“zero o’clock” as he put it, sounding very military—in the old brickyard on Victory Avenue, at the edge of the town. It was a moonless night and the town had no street lights, so the darkness was total. Weilin stumbled along the familiar streets for what seemed like hours, feeling for the kerb where there was one, making his turns by dead reckoning. He passed the bank on the way out of town, but could only sense the shape of the building, set back from the street corner. How would he find the window? What if it were closed?

The other boys were all at the brickyard. They met in one of the kilns, gathered round the feeble glow of Red Wang’s flashlight. Donkey was there, of course, and another boy called Pimple who dropped by at the book stall from time to time.

“Any trouble, we all run off in different directions,” said Asan. “That’s important. I’ll head down Victory; Red Wang go up Victory, out of town …”

He had planned it carefully, but everything depended on Weilin being able to get in through the window, he being the only one small enough to accomplish this. When at last they found the window, after groping along the wall in pitch darkness for twenty minutes, it was higher than it had looked from the street, and Weilin had to stand on Asan’s shoulders. It was open; but going in head first, he could find nothing inside to hold on to. At last they fed him through feet first and face down. When he was standing inside they passed in the flashlight. As Asan had instructed, he held the flashlight against the floor to switch it on, then raised it an eighth of an inch to let some light leak out, and wait for his eyes to adjust. He was in a store room, shelves all the way up to the ceiling, with stacks of printed paper forms on the shelves. The place smelt of dust and damp. Perhaps they kept the window open to ease the damp. The only door seemed to be locked on the outside. Weilin felt relieved. It was clear there was no way to open it from this side. He stood on tiptoe at the window to report these facts.

“Shine the flashlight on the door,” said Red Wang, who was peering through the bottom part of the window. “Yeah, see the hinges? Knock out the pins. Quietly.”

He passed a heavy wood-handled screwdriver in over the window. After some experimentation, Weilin found he could tap out the pins from the door hinges using the screwdriver and the heel of his hand. When they were free he pulled back the door as quietly as he could; but still it made a grating, scraping sound and he froze in fear, clutching the heavy door, waiting for some sound of activity from inside. No sound came, and he got the door standing stably, supported by its lock.

Beyond the door was a corridor which led to an open area behind some counters, presumably where the tellers worked. On the other side of the counters was the main hall of the bank, with a big sign on the wall in Chairman Mao’s calligraphy: FOLLOW THE GENERAL LINE! Weilin thought of their quiet little room at the production brigade, and wished he were there. But winter would soon be on them, and if Mother’s bronchitis returned it would be worse than before, and need some treatment. Asan had said they wouldn’t take much money, so as not to anger the authorities unduly; just a few hundred. Enough, anyway, to get Mother some decent treatment from a doctor.

The main door of the bank had no locks at all, only two heavy metal bars set across in brackets. The bars were too heavy for Weilin to lift; but by sliding and jiggling he got them out of one set of brackets, and the right-hand door opened far enough for Asan to squeeze in.

“Well done, Little Brother!” he whispered as Red Wang and Pimple wriggled in behind him, Donkey performing lookout duty outside. “Where’s the screwdriver?”

“I left it back in the room, after I took off the door …”

“Don’t leave anything!” hissed Asan. “The sticks can figure out who it belongs to. Go get it. Take the flashlight.”

When Weilin came back the other three had made their way over to the counters with the aid of some matches Asan had. Now they started opening the drawers. There were several that were not even locked; but none held any money.

“Here,” whispered Red Wang. “Give me the screwdriver.”

He had found a locked drawer and began working on it with the screwdriver, trying to lever it open, to break the lock. It broke at last, with a sound that seemed unbearably loud. The drawer shot forward, coming right out, but Red Wang caught it. Inside the drawer were bundles of bills.

“Wa!” Said Red Wang. “It’s true!”

Pimple and Asan grabbed at the bundles in the drawer. They were too forceful, and knocked the drawer out of Red Wang’s hands. It hit the floor with a crash.

They all froze. By the flashlight Weilin could see their faces, mouths part-open, eyes wide and scared. Far off down the corridor light showed suddenly from an open door, and there was a voice: “Zenme hui shi? Zenme hui shi?” [What’s going on?]

“Run like fuck!” said Asan—redundantly, as Red Wang and Pimple were already half-way to the door. He himself went down on hands and knees, for the bundle of bills he had dropped. When Weilin got to the door, Pimple was just wriggling through. The lights went on inside the bank as he slipped through the opening, and there were voices shouting. Asan’s head came through, and Weilin pulled at him.

“Run for it!” yelled Asan.

Weilin ran. With the lights on in the bank he could make out the roads, but had forgotten which one he was supposed to take. He ran at random. Looking back, he saw that Asan was through the door and away. There was a lot of shouting. Then a gun went off: once, twice.

Weilin ran through the darkness for what seemed like miles, though he was still in the town. Once a jeep with headlights on came racing towards him, and he had to duck into a doorway to avoid being seen. When at last he could run no further he groped around in the darkness for a long time to find a street name. He found one, discovered that he was in the old part of town, not a hundred meters from Uncle Zhou’s house. It was dark, and cold, and he was exhausted, and contemplated for a moment going to sleep on Uncle Zhou’s floor; but thought better of it and began the long trek out of town.

Chapter 9

Mother Divulges a Terrible Secret

The Barefoot Doctor Shows His Art

Thinking of what had happened at the bank, Weilin became profoundly scared. He stayed in the room at Love Socialism! for several days. Had any of the others been caught? If caught, had they informed on him? The bank robbery was big news; Mother heard about it at the kindergarten that very next day. The authorities were furious, the police running round town rounding people up. Weilin did not trust himself to speak. Mother had heard him coming home, but did not seem to know how long he had been gone. At any rate, it did not seem to occur to her that he might have had anything to do with the bank business.

Boredom drove him out after a week, but he dared not go into the town. When Mother sent him food shopping, he just went to the Brigade commissary. The commissary had little to offer, but sufficient for their immediate needs. In October there was a distribution of cabbage to everyone, and Weilin occupied himself with storing it in jars of vinegar to keep for the winter, in some underground cellars the brigade had dug out for common use. Still he dared not go into the town.

*

That November Mother began to go mad. Or perhaps she had been going mad for some time, and it was only in November that Weilin really noticed it.

He woke one night, in the seamless darkness and silence of the small hours, to the awareness that Mother was not on the kang with him. After some fumbling Weilin got the lamp lit. Mother was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room, hunched up as small as she could make herself, clutching her knees to her chest.

“Mother, mother, what’s the matter?”

“They tried to make me go with them, but I wouldn’t go,” said Mother. “Hush! They may still be here.”

“Who? Who tried to make you go with them?”

“The men. They said I had to go with them, but I said no, I won’t, I won’t. They pulled at me, but I wouldn’t go.”

“Well, you don’t have to go with them if you don’t want to,” said Weilin, understanding that she had suffered some kind of nightmare.

“No.” Mother shook her head, her face set in fierce determination. “I won’t, I won’t.”

After much coaxing Weilin got Mother up from the floor and back onto the kang with him. There he held her in his arms to comfort her; but there was a stiffness, a withholding to her body that he had never noticed before, until she fell asleep. Next day she was perfectly sober, one might almost have said cheerful; and it became the pattern of these episodes that after each one there was a spell of normality, slipping into silence and distraction as the days went on, mounting at last to another crisis, as if those times when she was lost to the world were the venting of some slow-accumulating pressure.

Some days after this night-time attack one of the kindergarten teachers brought Mother home in mid-morning, while Weilin was still in bed. Mother was staring straight ahead, lips pursed, as she had when they had paraded her in the town.

“She just wouldn’t do anything,” said the teacher. “She stood there in the classroom staring into space, not saying anything. The kids were running wild, she just didn’t do anything. When we spoke to her she didn’t answer, just stood there staring at nothing. She came along with me easy enough, though.”

Weilin put Mother to bed on the kang. She made no resistance; but when he brought her food from the kitchen she would not feed herself, and he had to spoon the millet gruel in through her unresisting lips.

It got worse, though never dramatic. Now, even when Mother was not perfectly silent, her speech was sometimes strange and illogical. Word of it spread out to the people in the brigade offices, and even to some of the peasants.

“Your ma’s very strange,” said one of the cooks at the communal kitchen. “She was in the boiler room talking to herself. I asked her if she was all right, and she said yes, her life was good, the Party had sent a young man to take care of her. Said this young fellow lived in her room and took care of her. Well, there’s only you and her living there, right? So I suppose she meant you. She thinks you’ve been sent by the Party to look after her.”

The cook—who was really just a peasant himself—laughed openly in that uncouth, unembarrassed way peasants had towards other people’s misfortunes. “Seems like your ma’s got a screw loose.”

The disturbances, whatever they were, had a good side: they seemed to act beneficially on Mother’s bronchitis, which did not seem so bad this winter. Some of this was sheer willpower. Part of the malady that had seized Mother’s brain was the determination to make as little impression on her surroundings as possible. When in the grip of her disorder she would not speak, for fear of being heard; she would not move, for fear of being noticed. When attacked by a coughing fit she did her best to swallow it, keeping her mouth closed and straining to hold her breath for fear of giving herself away to the demons that, in her imagination, surrounded her. Weilin found her a number of times like this, often in the middle of the night; her chest wheezing and creaking inside, an occasional stifled grunt escaping through her mouth or nose, but no real coughing. He wondered if these prodigies of self-control would cure the illness, and hoped that they would, for he still dared not go into the town and so had no access to Asan and his pharmacopoeia.

One night in January, in the very bitterest depth of the northeastern winter, three days before the Spring Festival—which in these latitudes marked only the beginning of the hope of Spring—Weilin woke in the pitch blackness feeling cold air on his face. Even before he struck the match to light the oil-lamp he knew the door was open. Mother was not in the room.

Weilin ran to the door and shouted for her: “Mother! Mother! Come back!”

The moon would have been far gone toward new even if it had been up; but it was not up. The only light came from the stars, which were countless, but whose rays revealed only the dimmest apprehensible outline of the brigade’s administration building a hundred yards away. The terrible remoteness and ineffectuality of the stars seemed only to add five more degrees of frigidity to the winter air, which had been at fifteen below the previous afternoon, when Weilin passed the thermometer fixed to the outside of the window frame of Secretary Duo’s office. Weilin slept in his cotton-padded winter clothing, but without his hat, and now the cold air burned his exposed ears. He went back into the room, grabbed and donned his hat, then ran out into the icy darkness calling to Mother.

Past the school and kindergarten buildings the path from their room forked into two at right angles to each other. One went off to a village, the nearest of those that made up the brigade; the other to the administrative building, then out through the brick gateway on a broad track to the paved road leading into Flat All Around. Guessing that Mother would take the route more familiar to her—she had never had any reason to go to the village—Weilin headed for the administrative building. It was dark, the doors bolted from inside; but by this time Weilin’s eyes had accustomed themselves to the very little light there was, and he was aware of something moving up ahead on the broad track.

He caught up with Mother fifty yards along the track. She was walking at a brisk, deliberate pace, and did not stop when he grabbed at her arm. Like Weilin himself, Mother slept in her padded winter clothes, and had her jacket on now; but Weilin was horrified to find that the jacket was wide open, unbuttoned at front, and that Mother had no hat or gloves.

“Mother! Mother! It’s me, Weilin!” Weilin put himself in front of her, holding out his hands to grab her arms and stop her. He could make out her face as a pale oval in the starlight, though not well enough to discern its expression. With surprising strength Mother pushed him aside, hardly breaking her stride. Weilin turned and walked alongside her.

“Mother, at least let me fasten your jacket. Don’t you feel the cold? It’s twenty below, at least.”

“I have to find Comrade Shu, before it’s too late,” said Mother.

“Comrade Shu? Who is Comrade Shu? Mother, Mother, please let me fasten your jacket! Please!”

“Comrade Shu will know what to do. Comrade Shu will fix everything. I’ll find him all right—don’t think you can stop me!”

Weilin had never heard of this Comrade Shu. In desperation he was contemplating hurling himself on Mother to bring her to the ground, as apparently being the only way to stop her; but in the darkness Mother stumbled in one of the frozen ruts of the track, and fell to hands and knees. Weilin went down beside her, got his arms round her torso, and began fastening her jacket as best he could from behind. Mother made no resistance to this, only kneeling there murmuring about the necessity of finding Comrade Shu. Weilin got the buttons all fastened, then took off his hat and put it on Mother’s head, fastening the two ear flaps under the chin. By the time he got this done Mother had fallen silent. He helped her to her feet.

“Put your hands in your sleeves, Mother. That will keep them warm.”

“My feet,” said Mother. “My feet are cold.”

Her feet were, in fact, perfectly naked. They were as cold as the icy air itself. Weilin made her sit on the track while he put his own shoes on her. She was silent the whole time. The coldness of the air was terrible on Weilin’s feet, and he wondered how Mother had endured it so long. Neither of them possessed any socks.

Mother was quiet while he was putting his shoes on her. When he tried to get her standing up, however, she grabbed his wrists with that same extraordinary strength and prevented him from rising.

“Mother, come on, let’s go. Now I have no shoes or hat. My feet are freezing.”

“It’s you, Weilin, isn’t it? Weilin, my son. Our Little Pangolin.”

The sheer conversational normality of Mother’s voice cut him deeper than the steely Siberian air.

“Yes, Mother. It’s me. Weilin. Of course it is.”

“Something’s happening to me, isn’t it? I’m losing my mind, aren’t I?”

“No, Mother, no, of course not. But we must go now. Quickly. We must get out of the cold.”

Mother paid no attention. She was still holding him down by the wrists.

“Weilin, listen carefully. I am losing my mind, I know. A few minutes ago I didn’t know who you were. I thought they’d sent someone to follow me. I can clearly remember thinking that, like when you wake from a dream. You were talking to me, but I didn’t know your voice.”

“Mother, it doesn’t matter. You’ll be all right. But we must get back. My feet …”

“All right, Weilin, all right. But listen. While we’re here, with no-one around, there is something I must tell you.”

“Mother, please …”

“It will be quick. Then we’ll go back. Here, put your feet under my jacket while I talk. Here, yes.”

She let go his wrists and pulled his feet back under her padded jacket. They were still sitting on the frozen hard earth of the track, and Weilin’s ears were burning from the freezing air, but he humored her, holding on to her jacket with his hands to keep from falling over backwards.

“All right, Mother, but quickly. What is it you want to tell me?”

“You have an uncle. Fourth Outside Uncle.” She pulled him closer so she could whisper the story into his ear.

“My mother’s fourth younger sister’s husband,” she said. “She died very young, and he remarried. He lives in Hong Kong.”

“But I never heard you talk about him.”

“Listen! He was an officer in Chiang Kaishek’s army. An intelligence officer. This is a secret thing! If people know you have such a relative, it will make trouble for you. Don’t say anything about it!”

“Of course. I understand, Mother.”

“He lives in Hong Kong. When I went to see Auntie An that time, you remember? At Dewy Spring, when we first came back here. She told me, this Fourth Outside Uncle is still alive. He’s a rich man in Hong Kong. You must go to him. He will help you.”

“No, Mother, no. I will stay here with you.”

“I am going to lose my mind, Weilin, I know it. I’ve heard the comrades talking about the things I do, the things I say. I know what is happening, don’t think I don’t know. When I’ve lost my mind the brigade will stop feeding me. They don’t want useless mouths. I’ll be left to wander around naked, like the woman you told me about in the town.”

“I’ll look after you, Mother. Please don’t say these things. I’ll always look after you.”

“No! Listen to me! Don’t waste your life looking after an old mad woman. Go to Fourth Outside Uncle in Hong Kong. His address. I remembered it. In Hong Kong, of course. It’s Wodalao Road, number 433. You must remember that. Don’t write it down!You see, I remembered it! I didn’t write it down. Too dangerous. I followed your father’s example. Anything with numbers, he would remember it. Such a brilliant man. My Bullfrog, my dear old Bullfrog.”

Mother was silent for a while. The terrible steely cold of the earth was seeping up through the road, through Weilin’s bottom and haunches, penetrating the cotton padding of his pants.

“Bullfrog,” whispered Mother. “Oh, Bullfrog!”

“I can remember it, Mother. Wodalao Road, Number 433. But what is Fourth Outside Uncle’s name?”

“Name Xu, Xu Yiming. Listen, and I’ll tell you the characters.” She described the written characters. “A rich man, a rich man in Hong Kong. He will help you. Things in Hong Kong are different. They have no movements there. The living standard is higher.”

“All right, Mother. I’ll remember. But we must go back now. We’ll freeze to death here outside. Come on, let’s go back. Please.”

“Tell me his name, Fourth Outside Uncle. Tell me his name and the characters. And the address. Tell me!”

Weilin told her, describing all the characters until she was satisfied. At last she got to her feet. They set off down the track in silence. Weilin’s feet quickly went numb, but he could still walk. Mother seemed to have exhausted her capacity for speech. The only words that passed between them were when, near the gate of the brigade, Weilin asked: “Who is Comrade Shu?”

Mother stopped at once and looked at him. “Comrade Shu?” Incredibly, she chuckled. “Did I talk about Comrade Shu?” When she walked on, Mother was chuckling again, quietly, making the bronchitis rasp and gurgle in her chest, sending her into a spasm of coughing at last.

“Comrade Shu!” she murmured, before the coughing took over. “How absurd it all is! What a comedy!” But Weilin was never able to find out anything about Comrade Shu.

*

Mother caught a cold from this night-time expedition. She lay on the kang coughing all through the Spring Festival. She coughed now even when lost in one of her attacks, as if concealment from the demons no longer mattered to her.

At Spring Festival the refectory had a distribution of fresh fish, meat dumplings and sugar candies, all of which Weilin dutifully fed to her; but she took no pleasure from them. On the third day of the Lunar New Year she developed a fever. Weilin became aware of it in the night. He woke to her coughing. Sitting up and taking her in his arms, he felt the heat of her skin against his face. It seemed almost too hot to touch.

He lit the lamp, which was just a string wick poking up through a hole in the lid of a little can holding oil. There was enough light to see how flushed Mother was, and he got up and woke the barefoot doctor.

The barefoot doctor was not actually barefoot. Nor was he, in point of actual fact, a doctor. “Barefoot doctor” was just a term people used for the paramedics with minimal training who served in places like Love Socialism! brigade, that could not afford the services of a fully-trained doctor. When people on the brigade needed a real doctor they walked into the town. If too ill to walk, they used one of the brigade’s donkey carts; or, if it was an emergency and none of the carts was to hand, two of the strongest peasants would carry the patient into town on a makeshift stretcher; or piggy-back, taking turns.

The barefoot doctor had a little clinic in the main administrative building, and lived in his clinic. Weilin had to shout and bang on the window shutters for fifteen or twenty minutes before the doctor unbolted his door. He was a young fellow, big and strapping, and Weilin had often wondered why he had been chosen to be a barefoot doctor, when he would probably have done better for himself earning work points out in the fields. He supposed it was just sloth. Father had once remarked that peasants would do anything to avoid field work.

On this particular night the barefoot doctor was drunk, being of the opinion—a majority opinion among the male population of Love Socialism! brigade—that Spring Festival was a splendid opportunity to test the limits of one’s capacity for the brigade’s home-distilled white liquor. He was willing to do his duty, but not very able, and fell flat on his face twice in the pitch darkness going back to the room behind the school buildings. When they finally got back to Mother he could think of nothing to do but put a hand on her forehead and look at her tongue.

“’S a fever,” he mumbled. Getting up from the kang he lost his balance and would have fallen again if Weilin had not held him.

“Shouldn’t you take her pulses?” asked Weilin, drawing on his scanty knowledge of medical procedures. [In traditional Chinese medicine the doctor feels for several pulses.]

“Noss ness, noss sess, not necessary,” averred the barefoot doctor, lips pursed authoritatively. “Bring down fever, ’ass all. Wessa ma bag?”

Turning to look for the shoulder bag of supplies he had brought, he fell down, this time too quickly for Weilin to grab him. He landed on his bottom and sat contentedly there on the floor by the kang, having apparently forgotten about his bag. Mother was coughing again: a thin, dry, exhausted cough. She was clearly awake, and had begun plucking fretfully, abstractedly at the quilt. Behind the cough was the other sound, a scraping, creaking sound from inside her chest.

“Perhaps you should listen to her chest,” Weilin said to the barefoot doctor, handing him the bag. The barefoot doctor was singing, or mumbling, a peasant ditty:

“Big Wang’s donkey

Pissed in my bowl.

Millet on the stalk;

A prick in a hole.”

Weilin unbuckled the bag and looked inside. There were a lot of bandages and dressings, scissors, a glass jar of some kind of salve, presumably for burns, and half a dozen small circular pill boxes made of cardboard. Each pill box had one character written on the lid—crude, simple characters, mnemonics for the barefoot doctor, who probably could not read much, to remember which pill was in which box.

“Which one?” insisted Weilin, to the barefoot doctor mumbling his song. “Which one to lower the fever?”

“Aspirin. ’S the one with ‘wood.’”

Weilin found the box with a rough “wood” character on its lid. There were a hundred or so small white pills inside.

“How many?”

The barefoot doctor’s professional pride stirred in his sodden brain. Holding on to the kang, he got to his feet.

“Gimme.”

He snatched the box of aspirin pills from Weilin, and promptly dropped it.

Weilin brought the lamp down onto the floor, and the two of them set to picking up all the pills. The barefoot doctor was giggling to himself. In the middle of their work he paused, straightened up, adopted a look of great concentration, and farted loudly. Then, giggling even more relentlessly, he went back to picking up pills. Weilin, who had quite got the measure of the barefoot doctor by this time—the measure both of his general abilities and of his current condition—took the opportunity to hide twenty or thirty of the pills in his jacket as he picked them up.

They gave Mother three of the pills, and some warm water from the flask, and the barefoot doctor left, the heavy marinated-vegetable stink of his fart lingering behind. Weilin left the lamp on all night. Mother was silent when not coughing, plucking and plucking at the quilt.

The aspirin did nothing to lower Mother’s temperature. Weilin gave her a dozen more the next morning, but still without result. When he tried to give her some food at noon, she was unconscious and could not take it. He could hear her breathing from outside the door of their room as he approached with the mess tins of food. Her fever was still high, her skin hot and flushed. Weilin went to see Secretary Duo, and brought him over to see Mother. Secretary Duo was rough and uneducated, but he was not a fool and had seen people die.

“Pneumonia,” he said. “She needs penicillin.”

He had a cart brought up from one of the villages, and roused the barefoot doctor from his hangover, and they bundled Mother up on the cart in a mass of quilts, and the barefoot doctor and the peasant who had brought the cart set out for the town at a run, taking turns to push, Weilin trotting along behind. When they reached Flat All Around Number One Hospital, Mother was dead.

Chapter 10

Weilin Ventures a Bold Suggestion

An Old Campaigner Earns Merit for His Next Life

After Mother’s death in February that year, the year 1970, there was a period of some weeks when, so far as Weilin was ever able to recollect, nothing happened at all. Or at least, it was difficult for him to apprehend that such things as happened were in fact happening to him.

Responsibility for his welfare fell upon the production brigade. However, nobody there seemed to have a clue what to do with him. Everybody’s idea was that he should be taken in by relatives, as generally happened in such cases. Since Uncle Zhou’s circumstances were already strained, this would have meant going to live with Auntie An in the mountains up by the Korean border. But Weilin did not want to go and live with Auntie An, and evaded this fate by simply not mentioning her. Apparently there was nothing about Auntie An in Mother’s file, only a transfer notice from Dewy Spring; and nobody in the brigade or its school knew enough about her to be able to locate Auntie An. Indeed, it seemed that the brigade did not even know about Uncle Zhou. At any rate, no-one spoke of him. There was a boys’ orphanage in the provincial capital, but for inmates under thirteen only. Being just eight months short of thirteen, it seemed hardly worth while for Weilin to apply. In any case, the brigade would have to pay for his upkeep there, and the Revolutionary Committee felt that all things considered it would be cheaper to keep him on, if he could be found some useful work to do.

This decision was conveyed to Weilin by Secretary Duo, at an interview in his office.

“You’ll have the same coupons as before,” said Secretary Duo. “And you’ll be on work points, like everybody else. We don’t do badly here, as you know, so long as there’s some rain in May and June.” He leaned forward and blew his nose onto the floor, wiping his fingers on his jacket.

“And shall I still go on living in the same room?”

“Don’t see why not. Nowhere else for you to live, anyway.”

And so Weilin became a full-time employee of Love Socialism! Production Brigade. Dully, in no frame of mind to care about it, he had supposed this would mean working in the fields at last. In fact none of the work units seemed to want him in their fields, being too jealous of their work points, and too suspicious of the capabilities of anyone not born a peasant, and he ended up doing odd jobs, mostly around the brigade office. The conditions were just sufficient to keep him from starving, and the work was never arduous. Indeed, much of the time there was nothing to do at all, and Weilin could wander off into the countryside. When the weather warmed he started going back to the river to swim.

It was in the summer, in July that year, that Weilin saw Asan again. His fear of being seen in the town had subsided by this time, and he had made two or three trips in, to stroll around Number One department store and check out the railroad station plaza. He always hoped to see Asan and his bookstall, but the bookstall was never there.

On this particular day in late July there were two men in the station plaza selling patent medicine. By way of advertising, they were giving a demonstration of qigong. [Qigong is a traditional art of mind and body control, attained through breathing exercises.] One of the men was the qigong practitioner, the other the salesman. The qigong man was stripped to the waist. He was muscular and fierce-looking. He broke a brick and some tiles with his head, and leaned at an alarming angle against a spear, the tip of the spear pressing on his naked belly, the other end held fast to the ground. After these wonders the salesman went into his pitch.

Weilin lost interest and was turning away when he saw Asan in the crowd. Asan saw him at the same moment and came over, greeting him with a slap on the shoulder. He looked the same as ever; big and confident, though perhaps a little shabbier than Weilin remembered. His army green pants had a long tear up one leg that had been inexpertly stitched closed, and the Capital shoes had given way to a pair of battered army-green sneakers. He favored Weilin with a broad grin.

“Little Liang. Haven’t seen you around.”

“My mother got sick. I had to look after her. Then she died. Now I work for the production brigade.”

Asan looked grave. “I’m really sorry about your Ma. But what’s this about you working on the farm? You’re too smart for peasant work, Little Liang.”

“What else can I do? I have no way out.”

“There’s always a way out. Hey, you look undernourished. Come on, I know a place we can eat.”

“I’ve got no money.”

“Fuck that. Come with me.”

Asan led him through some back streets to a dingy place in the old part of town. It was hardly any larger than the living space of someone’s house, with four tables jammed together and a hatch in the wall where you ordered your food. Without consulting Weilin about it, Asan ordered tripe in noodle soup, some batter sticks, and two bowls of beer.

“They water the beer, of course,” he explained as they started on the food, “but then so does everybody else. These people use clean water, at least.”

The tripe was delicious, a wonderful relief from the alternated sorghum mash and millet gruel at the brigade dining room. They ate and drank, Asan talking through his food. His fortunes were at a low ebb, it seemed. After the bank raid, the police had gone into the streets with army men in support and rounded up anyone who looked like a trouble-maker. This had pulled in far more people than they could deal with properly, so most had been let go after a routine beating. Red Wang had been charged, though—nothing to do with the bank job, they had fished up some offense from his Red Guard days—and his family had had to pay a huge bribe to get him out. Donkey, having no family who cared sufficiently to bribe him out of trouble, had got three years Reform Through Labor for hooliganism, and was now doing time at a camp near the Mongolian border. Again, the sticks did not seem to know Donkey had been at the bank, and Donkey had not volunteered the information, perhaps feeling that bad as Reform Through Labor might be, it was less of an inconvenience than being shot.

Asan himself had only avoided arrest by chance. When the army and police did their first sweep, he was hiding in the old brickyard, making tongfang with one of the girls from the textile factory. He gave a full and graphic account of the episode, dwelling at length on the exceptional flow of the girl’s juices. This part of the discourse left Weilin embarrassed and puzzled. He could not figure out where these juices were supposed to be flowing from, or what purpose they served; and it all sounded very disgusting anyway.

“Now,” said Asan, sitting back and lighting a cigarette, “the whole district’s as quiet as a bone yard. Nobody wants to do deals, nobody wants to take a chance, nobody wants to fuck. I haven’t felt a girl’s tits for three months, can you believe it? As for any kind of enterprise—well, they’re shooting people now for picking pockets. Imagine that! Pick a pocket, get a bullet through the gourd! And that’s after they’ve broken all your bones, of course. I keep myself looking shabby now”—he pulled with disgust at the fabric of his pants—“so nobody will think I’m running any schemes.”

“What about the money you got from …”

“Hush!” Asan looked round nervously. They were the only customers, but the proprietor could be seen behind his hatch, leaning against the wall picking his nose and scrutinizing the extracta. “Walls have ears, don’t you know? Yeah, I got some.” He laughed. “Know what it was? Ten-fen bills. I got three hundred of the fucking things. Thirty dollars!” Asan laughed again and shook his head. “The others I don’t think got anything. In too much of a hurry to get out of there. Thirty dollars! I wouldn’t mind, if we hadn’t closed down the whole town like this. You can’t do anything now. To tell the truth, I’m thinking of relocating.”

“Where will you go?”

“To Beijing, if I can get a residence permit. I’m working on it. Nothing’s impossible, you know.”

“Me, I’m going to Hong Kong,” said Weilin.

The truth was that up to that instant he had not given a moment’s thought to following Mother’s suggestion. It had just seemed impossible; and he had anyway been disabled by grief and hopelessness. But Asan was so cool, so confident in his life and his schemes, the temptation to try to impress him was irresistible, and Hong Kong bobbed up to the surface of Weilin’s thoughts, and he said it.

Asan was not as impressed as he decently ought have been. He nodded, and took a drag on his cigarette.

“Hong Kong, huh? It’s a long way. Er, in the south, isn’t it?” Asan’s ignorance could still shock Weilin.

“I don’t care how far. It’s better than here. There are no movements, and the standard of living is much higher.”

“That’s not what I heard. Hong Kong? It’s like the old society, isn’t it? Darkness and oppression.” Asan frowned, summoning up his fragmentary knowledge of public affairs. “Capitalism. Or is it feudalism? One of those things.”

“How can it be worse than here? I’ve been hungry for months, and the winter—so cold! Hong Kong’s in the south, at least the climate will be bearable.” Following Mother’s injunction, Weilin did not want to say anything about Fourth Outside Uncle.

“I don’t know, Little Liang. It’s a long way to go to be disappointed. Suppose it is just like the old society? Suppose you end up a rickshaw boy, with an opium habit? Perhaps you won’t be able to come back.”

“I’ll never come back! How can Hong Kong be worse than this? They killed my father, they killed my mother. Now I’m supposed to be a peasant all my life. No, if Hong Kong doesn’t suit me, I’ll go …” He struggled to think of another foreign place. “… I’ll go to America!”

Asan chuckled. “Well, you certainly have great plans! But, by the way, just how exactly are you going to travel? By jet plane, perhaps? By helicopter?”

“I don’t care. I’ll steal a train ticket. I don’t know. I’ll find a way.”

“Hng.” Asan drew deeply on his cigarette, pondering. “It’s a long way to go,” he said again at last.

“I don’t care. I’m going,” said Weilin, with great and sudden determination. He felt it, too, for the moment at any rate; though now he wondered for the first time: How exactly am I going to do this?

“Perhaps you could help me get a ticket,” he said boldly.

Asan considered. “Rail tickets are not easy to get,” he said at last. “Red Wang was my main contact for that little business, and he’s sitting at home pissing in his pants. You need a letter from your unit. Then there’s the expense. To Hong Kong? It’s the other end of the country, right? Must be a hundred dollars, at least.”

Weilin’s entire income, board and lodging aside, was four dollars fifty a month. Now it all seemed impossible again. He regretted having raised the subject of Hong Kong. Of course he could not go to Hong Kong! He would be a gofer for the brigade office all his life, not even allowed to work in the fields with the peasants. There really was no way out, after all. His head drooped. He dipped his finger in a puddle of soup that had spilled on the table, and drew out a long pseudopod.

Asan seemed to be deep in thought. His cigarette finished, he dropped it to the floor and ground it with his foot. Abruptly, he stood up.

“I’ll see what I can do. How often do you come into town?”

“I can come any time.”

“Meet me in the old brickyard. Mmm, four weeks from today. Twelve thirty, nap time. I don’t promise anything, mind. But I’ll see what I can do.”

*

Weilin hardly dared hope for anything to come of the Hong Kong idea. It had fixed itself in his mind now, though, and he could not stop thinking about it. He wanted to know about Hong Kong—where it was, what things were like there. There were no maps in the brigade offices, but one of the schoolrooms had a map of China on the wall. It showed Hong Kong as a small dot on the south coast, with a broken line around it and the words SEIZED BY BRITAIN. It was indeed very far: much further than Beijing, further even than Shanghai. Very close to Guangzhou though. Perhaps if one could get to Guangzhou, one could walk to Hong Kong. It wasn’t clear from the maps.

He went to the old brickyard at the appointed time. It was deserted, the kiln cool inside away from the noonday sun. The brickyard had been built during the Great Leap Forward, back in the fifties, when every unit was supposed to strive for self-sufficiency. The authorities of Flat All Around had decided to make their own bricks, so they had built this brickyard. There were huge kilns, big enough to walk around in, where the bricks had been baked. However, because the local clay had been wrong for bricks, or the necessary expertise had been lacking, or peasants requisitioned for the work had drifted back to their fields, or starved to death in the great famine, or for some other reason, the whole project had been abandoned. Now the brick-yard was deserted. There were stacks of crumbling yellow bricks all around, with grass growing out of the cracks between rows of bricks. The kilns were all empty; local people passing by used them as toilets. There were always turds in various stages of decomposition on the floor by the walls and in the corners, the fresher ones attended by little buzzing clouds of flies.

Asan turned up half an hour late, looking pleased with himself.

“Well, well, Little Liang!”

“You found out something? You can help me?”

By way of reply Asan took a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, and flourished it. It was white, six inches by four, and covered with ruled lines and neat small characters.

“A railroad ticket! You got me a railroad ticket!”

“Take a good look. The money I spent to get this, they could nail me for the bank job. And I had to give up my share in the fruit business. Not that I’ll be needing it any more.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, it’ll be no use to me, once we’re in Hong Kong.”

“We?”

“Sure. I’m going to Hong Kong, too. I’ve been thinking about it, since you raised the subject. This place is dead. Everybody’s just waiting for the next movement. You’re right, things will be better in Hong Kong. So I’m coming with you.”

“But … Do you have another ticket?”

Asan grinned. “No, just the one. And it has my name on it. But don’t worry, I’ll get you to Hong Kong.”

“But how will I get there with no ticket?”

“We’ll hide you under the train seat. Don’t worry. I’ve found out everything. They don’t check your ticket when you get on, only when the train is going. We just have to keep you out of sight when the inspectors come around.”

Weilin was unsure. It couldn’t really be so easy, surely. But Asan was beaming his big audacious smile, and Weilin felt sure that if only he stayed close to his friend, everything would be managed somehow.

“Can you swim?” asked Asan.

“Sure. I can swim very well. Why?”

“Because we’ll have to swim over to Hong Kong across the sea. The land border’s guarded both sides, you can’t get through. You have to swim. But people do it all the time, it’s all right.”

Weilin didn’t care about the swimming. He was suddenly impatient to leave. “What’s the date on the ticket?”

“Friday. Night train, eight o’clock. Will you be ready?”

Weilin laughed. “I’m ready right now.”

Packing did not present any serious challenges. Weilin’s entire possessions at this point in his life were: two T-shirts, one newish, one very old and ragged; a pair of pants, baggy and somewhat too big; a pair of shorts he wore as underpants; the cotton-padded winter jacket and pants Mother had made for him in ’67 and enlarged each subsequent fall, in very poor condition now; a pair of canvas shoes with worn-out soles; a hat; a quilt; a toothbrush; a towel; a mess tin; an oil lamp; a thermos flask inherited from Mother; and a single photograph of Mother and Father, taken before he was born, which had been overlooked in Father’s tin box when the Red Guards took all their Bourgeois Things. The rest of Mother’s possessions, such as they were, had been taken by the brigade to defray her cremation expenses—all but a red plastic hair clip Weilin had salvaged somehow.

He agonized briefly over the cotton-padded jacket, pants and hat, which were his most substantial possessions, and basic survival equipment in the northeastern winter. However, he reasoned that since Hong Kong was in the south, he would not be needing them, and left them lying on the kang. Everything else he took, bundled up in the quilt. The quilt itself was not very thick, and the whole bundle fitted easily under his arm. Weilin did not think it necessary to notify the brigade he was leaving. In the fullness of time they would notice his absence and assign the room to someone else.

*

Asan was waiting for him at the railroad station on Friday evening, He too was traveling light, with only an army-style backpack slung casually over one shoulder. They boarded the eight o’clock train in a press of people, and scrambled for seats. Nobody checked their tickets, and in fact the train was milling with non-passengers seeing off colleagues and relatives. The last of these scrambled for the doors as the train began to move. Weilin watched the grimy back streets of Flat All Around slipping away into the gathering darkness, and cursed the place, and swore a bitter silent oath that whatever happened to him, he would never return to it.

“Oh, one thing I forgot to tell you,” Asan was saying.

“What?”

“The ticket is only for Shanghai.”

“So what shall we do then?”

Asan laughed. “We’ll manage. Meantime, you’d better get under the seat. The inspectors will start coming round soon.”

Weilin felt very self-conscious, asking the other passengers to move their legs so he could squirm under the seat. Most of them took it in good part; but there was a woman opposite with what Asan called a Class Struggle Face—angular and self-righteous—who took exception.

“If he hasn’t got a ticket, he shouldn’t be riding,” she said, very loud. People in the next set of seats turned to look.

“He’s an orphan from the south,” explained Asan. “Didn’t you hear his accent? His mother died just recently. He wants to get back to his family in the south, and he has no other way to do it.”

“Leave him alone,” said one of the passengers. This man belonged to a party of four—workers, from their appearance—who were starting up a card game on the floor between the seats. “He’s not doing any harm, is he?”

“Many things happen that are not right,” said an old fellow sitting by the window. “This is a very small one. Is it really worth making trouble about?”

“I’m not making trouble. I only said, it’s not right.”

“Oh, come on, comrade. He’s only a kid,” said another of the card players. “Let him sleep. The inspector won’t see him down there.”

Class Struggle Face was sufficiently cowed by all this opposition that she had nothing to say when the inspector came round. Weilin soon fell as nearly asleep as was possible in his cramped quarters, among the smell of dust and cigarette smoke and the noise of the card players. He woke briefly when the train stopped at Shenyang, and noticed that Asan had got into the card game somehow. When next he woke it was clear daylight outside and the train was running fast through a countryside of low hills and small villages. The card players were all asleep: two stretched out on the floor, Asan and the others leaning against each other at odd angles on the seats.

Weilin was hungry. He wanted to wake Asan to ask if he had any food, but thought Asan might be angry at being woken. Weilin struggled out from under the seat and went to the toilet at the end of the carriage. After relieving himself he felt hungrier than ever. His traveling companions were asleep, Class Struggle Face snoring like a hog. Only the old man by the window was awake. He favored Weilin with a discolored grin.

“Hungry, little fellow?”

“Yes.”

“Here.” The old boy reached into a cloth bag he was carrying, and produced a steamed bun. “I’ve got some tea, too. Come on, help yourself. Don’t be polite!”

The bun looked delicious—white and soft. But Weilin hesitated. “What will you eat, comrade?”

The old man chuckled. “I can ‘eat the air and drink the dew,’” he replied, using a Taoist tag. “Never mind. This world belongs to youngsters like yourself. We old ones have played our part. What use are we? Look at me. I can’t sleep, I can’t work, I can’t fuck, and I have no appetite. But I can still earn some merit with Lord Buddha for my next life. Come on! Eat.”

Gratefully, Weilin ate. In contradiction to his philosophical boastings, the old boy produced a second bun for himself, and ate it with gusto. He also had some pickled turnip wrapped in wax paper, and a flask of cold tea.

While they ate he told Weilin stories about his life in the northeast. His father had gone south to fight for Sun Yatsen in the Xinhai revolution of 1911. He himself had been a soldier in the army of the Old Marshal, a famous northeastern warlord of the twenties. When the Japanese invaded he had gone into the mountains and lived with bandits, poaching ginseng and hunting bear. Several of the bear’s body parts were culinary delicacies, or key ingredients of traditional medicine, and you could live well for a year from the proceeds of one bear. But it was very difficult to kill a bear. For all their size, they could move very quickly. Their flesh was thick and hard, and you had to shoot them in just the right spot. If you misjudged your aim the bear would keep right on coming, and tear you to shreds with his claws, which were three inches long and sharp as razors. Or else you would kill him all right, but at the cost of destroying his gall bladder or some other priceless organ.

Weilin listened, hypnotized by the rhythm of the train and the old man’s tales. In the small hours of the next morning they passed through the Wall at Sea-and-Mountain Pass, into China proper.

Chapter 11

Strange Blessings Fall on Weilin’s Head

A Brief Experience of the Seafaring Life

They reached Shanghai early in the morning of the third day. The ticket Asan had got would take them no further, so they left the train and ate breakfast at one of the restaurants near the station.

“We’re going to be mailmen,” chuckled Asan, when Weilin asked him how they were to proceed. This he explained: before leaving Flat All Around he had canvassed all the Shanghai people he could find in the town and surrounding countryside. They were all young people, sent to the northeast as part of the clean-up campaign following the suppression of the Red Guards. Shanghai had been a big Red Guard center, and there were Shanghai youth all over the country now. All of them were bitter and homesick. None trusted the public mails and all were glad to know someone traveling to Shanghai, to carry letters to their families and sweethearts. Asan had five of these letters to deliver.

“One of these families is bound to have enough connections to get us railroad tickets to Guangzhou,” he said.

The plan did not start out very well. The first address they could not find at all, and they got hopelessly lost in a down-at-heel industrial district far from the city center. They took a bus all the way back to the railroad station; and by that time it was noon. The second address was not so far out, but the only person at home was the mother. She could barely speak Mandarin and seemed to be terrified of them, taking the letter eagerly but not opening it in their presence, edging them towards the door even as she thanked them. Number three, out towards Sun Yatsen Park, was even worse: a sweetheart who went into peals of laughter at hearing the name of her exiled lover, and held his letter between thumb and finger away from her body, as if it had been sprinkled with plutonium.

By now it was nearly twilight, and Weilin was sick of Shanghai, of its endless dusty streets and packed buses. The weather was hot: not the heavy, humid heat of the southwest, but still oppressive and enervating after a day spent on the move.

“Where shall we sleep, Elder Brother?” he asked.

“Leave it to me,” said Asan, scrutinizing a bus sign. “Let’s do one more, then we’ll eat.”

With the fourth address their luck arrived. It was in one of the narrow old alleys off Sluice Gate Road. The alley was bounded by an eight-foot wall with rusty metal spikes on top. In the wall was a door, and by the door a bell. After Asan had pressed the bell three or four times the door was opened by a boy of Weilin’s age. He was skinny and nervous looking. After the necessary introductions he led them across a bare courtyard to the house. It was large, with several rooms; but in contrast to what Weilin imagined a rich family’s house would be like, this one had no decorations or ornaments at all. There was only a bare minimum of furniture, nothing hanging on the walls, no mats on the floors.

The boy, it turned out, was the younger son of the family, whose name was Fu. The elder was in the northeast, on a production brigade near Flat All Around. It was he who had given Asan a letter, addressed to his mother.

Mrs Fu was a straight-backed, handsome woman with a pale, lined face. Using flawless Mandarin, she greeted them in the main reception room of the house, took the letter from Asan, and opened and read it at once, her eyes moving hungrily over the pages. From another room somewhere further back Weilin could hear someone coughing a thin, feeble cough. It made him think of the coughing at Dewy Spring, of Auntie An’s cough and the boys in the courtyard of the yamen there.

When Mrs Fu had finished reading the letter she sighed, folded it carefully, and put it back into its envelope.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I am a poor hostess. Have you eaten? You’re very welcome to join us. We shall have dinner soon. After my husband has eaten.”

Mr Fu was bedridden, dying of lung cancer. That was the coughing Weilin had heard. They were taken in to be introduced to him. Weilin thought he had never seen anyone looking so ill. Mother and Father, at the time they died, had both looked more or less normal; but Mr Fu was like a ghost already, his skin deathly white, the flesh beneath it all gone. His eyes were clear, though, and he spoke steadily, if very softly, with a strong Shanghai accent. He asked them why they had come to Shanghai. Boldly, Asan took the opening.

“We’re going to try to escape to Hong Kong,” he said.

Weilin was shocked to hear him say this out loud, to people they had known less than half an hour. But Asan’s judgment was sound. The skin of Mr Fu’s face moved slightly in a smile. “Good,” he said, “good, good. I hope you make it. These devils …”

“It’s all right, Husband,” Mrs Fu broke in. “Don’t exert yourself. Save your strength to eat.”

Mr Fu, once interrupted, seemed to have disconnected from them. He was lying straight back now, staring at the ceiling. “They cheated me,” he whispered. “The bastards, they cheated me. I should never have trusted them.”

Mrs Fu seemed very keen to get them out of the room at this point, but Asan pressed his advantage. “Good Sir,” he said, addressing Mr Fu with the old honorific, instead of Comrade. “We have enough money, but no way to get tickets from here to Guangzhou. Can you help us get tickets?”

Slowly, Mr Fu turned his head, engaging them again. Once more he made the waxy smile.

“I’ll arrange everything. I’ll tell my son what to do. Leave it to us. Stay here tonight. Tomorrow everything will be arranged.”

While Mrs Fu fed her husband, Weilin and Asan sat in the reception room with the son. He told them his father had been a National Capitalist. Before Liberation he had owned and run a printing firm. He had done favors for the Communists, printing some of their pamphlets free of charge; so when they took Shanghai they had let him stay in business. He had done well and developed good connections in the local Party. Then the Cultural Revolution had arrived. The Party had been purged; the Red Guards had looted his house; and both his sons had been sent away to remote areas. Now that he was dying, the younger son had been allowed to come home to look after him. Of course the boy had no residence permit for Shanghai, so when Mr Fu died he would have to return to his unit, a poor place in Anhui Province where (Little Fu grimaced) the peasants washed their bodies only at birth, marriage and death and talked of nothing but food and money.

“The authorities here are very strict about residence permits,” said Little Fu. “A Shanghai residence permit is like gold. My father still has some contacts in the government, but even he can’t pull it off. I guess I will spend all my life in that place.”

Weilin thought the boy was going to burst into tears. Little Fu was a year or two older than himself, but seemed, to Weilin, much younger. He felt sorry for the boy. Like himself, Little Fu had had an agreeable life and bright prospects. Then the Red Guards had smashed everything. Weilin could never think of the Red Guards without seeing in his mind’s eye Yuezhu, pointing at Father in accusation, or strutting and prancing through her Loyalty Dance at the Martyrs’ Monument. As soon as he thought of her, acid rose from his stomach.

“But my father can get railroad tickets, don’t worry. That he can still do, I know. He’s done it for other people. The head of the Railroad Bureau is an old classmate of his. Ai!” Little Fu shook his head. “Everyone says: to get ahead in life, you need a father with influence. But soon I shall have no father at all! What will happen to me?”

Now Little Fu really did cry, though without much fuss. There were just the tears, running down his pale cheeks. Weilin lowered his head in embarrassment. Asan, too, was apparently at a loss for words. Fortunately Mrs Fu came in and announced dinner.

The dinner was not much: a dish of fibrous green vegetables, some dried fish, rice. The striking thing was that before taking up their chopsticks, Mrs Fu and Little Fu said a prayer. Apparently they were religious. Weilin had only the vaguest concept of religion: a copy of the Diamond Sutra at Grandmother’s house in Nanjing, on their one visit there when he was seven, the book all printed in thick ugly black old-style characters … the temple in Flat All Around that had been wrecked by the Red Guards in ’66. He felt fairly sure that religion was counter-revolutionary, and listened apprehensively to the Fus’ prayer.

“We thank the Master of Heaven for the food on our table, and for his many blessings in the past, and for the hope he sets in our hearts for the future. His will be done.”

Mrs Fu and Little Fu said amen in unison. Asan had bowed his head; but Weilin was too much taken by surprise even to do that. He just gawped. The Fus did not seem to mind. After amen they set to the food with a will, pointing out such choice pieces as there were to their guests.

After dinner, when Mrs Fu had retired and Little Fu was showing them their room, Weilin asked him about the prayer.

“We are Christians,” said Little Fu. “We say prayers to the Master of Heaven, and to his son, Yesu. Yesu was a bodhisattva. He lived in Palestine back in the Han Dynasty. He stayed on Earth and suffered, to show us how suffering could be conquered. My mother was a Christian first. After she married my father she tried to convert him. He was very stubborn, and made fun of her. But at last she converted him. Now they read sutras together every night. But don’t speak about these things to others,” he added.

“I think these people are counter-revolutionaries,” said Asan when the two of them were alone in their room, lying on the wood-frame bed together in the darkness.

“You shouldn’t say that. They’re being very kind to us. Even though they have nothing to hope for from us.”

Asan considered this. “Maybe they’re going to shop us. And in return, the authorities will give the kid a residence permit.”

“Shop us? For what? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“We’re trying to escape to Hong Kong, aren’t we? It’s against the law, I’m sure.”

Weilin wondered if this was right. “No,” he said. “Even if it’s against the law, we’re not such big criminals. They wouldn’t get a residence permit just for shopping us. Little Fu said they’re like gold.”

Neither of them said anything else about it. Lying there in the dark, Weilin wondered if what Asan said might be true. He lay awake a long time wondering about it. Very faintly he could hear Mr and Mrs Fu talking in another room: the woman’s voice strong and insistent, the man’s barely audible, lapsing into long spells of coughing.

The next day they had to themselves. Little Fu went off to do whatever his father had instructed him to do by way of getting railroad tickets. Mrs Fu ate breakfast with them, then retired to her husband’s room. The two companions set off for a day’s sightseeing.

They strolled the Bund, looking at the ships on the Yellowbank River. They explored the stores in Nanjing Road. Now Weilin found the city awesome and intimidating. The great buildings—mountains of stone—glowering down at them along the Bund: the mighty ships moored at the waterside, impossible complications of halyard and hawser, sheer metal sides streaked with rust, super-structures all embroidered with railings, funnels, companionways, davits: an enormous hotel, towering up into the sky layer upon layer, twelve foot high glass doors guarded by two PLA men.

Now, with no purpose but to observe, he watched the people themselves, moving briskly about their wide, clean-swept streets, the men wearing short-sleeved white shirts, the women in pretty blouses—so different from the sluggish inmates of Flat All Around moping listlessly in their patched khaki jackets and mud-colored T-shirts. Asan, however, seemed not impressed at all by the great city, though it must have been as strange to him as it was to Weilin. His main comments concerned the girls they saw. “What a cutie!” he would exclaim, or: “Check out the pretty face over there!”

Back at Sluice Gate Road that evening, they found that everything had been arranged. More, indeed, than they had anticipated, for the number of tickets was three. Little Fu was to come with them.

“My father said it’s best. He said there is no future for me here. I must make my way in the outside world.”

“You must look after him,” said Mrs Fu. “He is not very strong. Please, please look after him.”

Asan was scrutinizing the tickets. “Are these the right characters for Guangzhou?” he asked.

Weilin looked. The tickets were not for Guangzhou at all but for Shantou, a different city—also, he knew, in the far south.

Little Fu explained. “My father says we must get a boat to take us to Hong Kong. You can’t get across the border, it’s guarded. So you either have to swim across the sea, or get a boat. And I can’t swim, you see. He says it will be easier to get a boat from Shantou. There are a lot of fishing people there. They will take you on their boat for a consideration.”

He showed them the consideration: a wad of bank notes wrapped in brown oil-paper. The notes were all for ten yuan, the highest denomination in China at that time. There were two hundred and forty of them. Weilin’s salary at Love Socialism! brigade had been four and a half yuan a month. Probably nobody in Flat All Around earned more than fifty.

Mrs Fu made bundles of food for them to take to Shantou. The train was to leave the following afternoon. That morning, when everything was ready, she took them in to see Mr Fu again. He reached out for his son, resting one wasted hand on the boy’s cheek, which was already wet with tears again. The papery skin of his own face trembled with emotion. He looked past his son, addressing himself to Asan.

“Go to Shantou. Say nothing to anybody about why you’re going. I’ve given my son an address in the city. Old associate of mine. He’ll give you directions, tell you how to find the fishing people. If you have no luck with them, steal a boat. Hong Kong is along the coast, west from Shantou about three hundred kilometers. Keep the coast in sight. Do what you must do! Don’t be afraid of anything!”

He fell back, exhausted, and Mrs Fu led them out. Before seeing them off she made them all kneel in the reception room while she prayed to her Christian gods. Now Weilin and Asan knew enough to temple their hands and bow their heads.

“Master of Heaven, look down on these young people and bless their journey. Guide them with your strong hand. Let the love of the Lord Yesu be with them in all their dealings with those they meet. And let the Holy Spirit be their companion and strength. If they succeed, fill them with humility and gratitude for the gift of success, which can come only from You. If they fail, take them up to live with You inYour Hall of Joy and Peace for ever. In all things let Your will, not ours, be done.”

Amen, said everybody. They rose and went outside, across the courtyard to the door in the wall. Mrs Fu opened the door for them. At this point Little Fu began weeping without restraint, shaking his head from side to side in distress, the tears flying away from him. Mrs Fu, however, showed no emotion. Her eyes were clear and her voice strong.

“Master of Heaven bless you all,” she said as they stepped out. “Lord Yesu bless you.”

When they were all outside she closed the door quickly. Little Fu sobbed all the way to the railroad station.

*

Shantou was further south than Weilin had ever been. Here the people spoke a dialect so thick and strange he couldn’t understand them at all. Little Fu’s mother had written out a letter of introduction for them to Mr Fu’s old business associate. They spent half a day trying to find this man, asking directions from all the people they met until they hit on one who spoke Mandarin. Then they would get lost and have to repeat the process.

It was evening before they found the man, whose name was Zhang. He was suffering from some illness that had swollen his feet up with edema so that he could not walk. He was friendly enough, much more so when he knew that they were well supplied with cash. He insisted on knowing how much, and also on seeing it, which was embarrassing as Asan had told him they had only four hundred, while the oil-paper bundle, if produced, would show six times that amount. Asan, with great presence of mind, said that Little Fu was carrying the money fixed to his underwear, and would need to detach it in private.

“My health is poor,” sighed Mr Zhang. “I need medicine. But it is so difficult to obtain now.”

“I am sure Little Fu’s father intended us to help you in this respect,” replied Asan.

They paid him a hundred yuan for his assistance, and stayed three days and nights while Mr Zhang made inquiries on their behalf.

“There is a village along the coast,” he told them at last. “Forty kilometers. You can take a bus. The headman is a distant relative of mine. He can arrange everything. You should pay him sixty.”

It took them all the next day to reach the village, riding a bus from the Shantou station to a dozing country town named Baodan, then hitching a ride in a truck that stank of fish, until they reached the coast. Here China fell away in steep rocky cliffs to the Pacific, lusterless under solid cloud cover. The village headman read Mr Zhang’s letter with some difficulty, tracking the characters across the page with a long curving brown fingernail, mouthing them as he read. Finished, without further ado he said gei qian!—pay up—quite possibly the only words of Mandarin he knew.

When they had paid the headman he took them down to the waterfront, which was surprisingly well-appointed: concrete dock, typhoon bar two hundred meters out, half a dozen large shed-like buildings—fish-drying or -canning plants, perhaps. There were an astonishing number of ships in the typhoon shelter, all of them ancient-looking high-prowed junks in dark wood. The headman strolled along the dock, calling out to the ships. Some yielded a response; most did not. He entered at last into long negotiations with a man on one of the smaller ships. The man looked about ninety years old, burnt by the sun to the color of his vessel’s timbers.

THIS ONE HIMSELF, OLDER BROTHER, OLDER BROTHER’S TWO SONS, THEY GO EARLY MORNING TOMORROW, YOU PAY 40 EACH.

The headman frowned and grimaced as he wrote, making the characters very slowly, holding the paper away from himself after each one, to make sure it looked right. Weilin marveled that anyone who looked as old as the man on the boat could yet have an older brother.

The three adventurers slept that night on the boat with the old man, whose name they never discovered—with whom, indeed, they had no means of communication, he being perfectly illiterate and speaking a dialect none of them understood. The old man’s brother and nephews were on shore. Little Fu paid him up front, the bills ready in his pants pocket, he having followed Asan’s instructions and fixed the main part of their cash into his underwear. They bought salted eggs and dried fish from the headman, at a price that left Asan grumbling the entire evening, and the fisherman shared some delicious white rice gruel with them, and they slept out on deck in the heavy heat. Weilin was almost too excited to sleep. So easy! And soon they would be in Hong Kong! Fourth Outside Uncle would take care of him, and he would have a life of prosperity and peace. So easy, after all!

They were out at sea when he woke next morning, China a smudge on the horizon, the sun already high behind the heavy tropical clouds. The ship was under sail, presumably to save fuel. The sail was of oiled brown cloth, lifted up the ship’s mast by a boom. Three men, none of them the old ship-owner, were sitting on piles of netting at the rear of the boat, eating rice from bowls and talking cheerfully with Asan. Little Fu was squatting on his haunches by the railing that ran along the side of the boat, looking over at the shore with a glum expression. As Weilin stirred himself upright, Little Fu lost his balance from the movement of the ship, and clutched at the wooden railing to keep from falling over.

“I don’t think you can squat on board a ship,” said Weilin. “Look, the sailors are all sitting.”

“I feel sick,” replied Little Fu. “I want to throw up.”

Weilin went over to where Asan was talking to the three fishermen. They were talking in their own dialect, but explaining with sign language as they went.

“Can you understand them?” asked Weilin.

“Yeah, more or less. I think they’re telling me, if we see a boat to go downstairs. He means the coast guard, I guess. They don’t want the sticks to know they have passengers. We should investigate downstairs, try to find some hiding places.”

Which is what Asan was doing when the boat arrived, late the next day. It was not a coast guard boat, though, but a motorized sailing junk very much like their own, except for the machine gun mounted in its prow. Weilin and Little Fu were up on deck, thinking the new arrival was another fishing boat until they saw the machine-gun, by which point it was too late to go below. No sooner had they seen it than it fired, stitching a neat line of holes across the junk’s sail. Their hosts brought down the sail. They did not seem afraid, only subdued. Weilin caught the eye of one of the nephews. His expression was unmistakable: Your luck just ran out. Nothing I can do.

The visitors came right alongside, cutting their engine, grappling to the boat’s railing with poles and jumping up on to the deck. Four of them came aboard, all with the burnt, ageless look of these sea people. They were barefoot and wore shorts, like the fishermen. Two of them wore nothing else at all. Of the others, one was wearing a white T-shirt of surprising cleanliness, brilliant white against his burnt umber skin, with a picture printed on it somehow—the head of a cow, with unnaturally long horns—and some English words Weilin could not understand: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. This character also had a lurid red-and-white bandanna wrapped round his head, and sported a machete in a leather holster at his waist. The fourth man wore a rather smart maroon vest, unbuttoned, over his bare torso.

Red Bandanna seemed to be the leader. He went to the older brother and began yelling at him. Maroon Vest stood behind him, eyes scanning the deck. The two others went below, shinnying expertly down the hatch.

Red Bandanna went on yelling at the three fishermen for some time. The fishermen shrugged, spread their arms and shook their heads, invulnerable in their poverty. Nothing worth stealing.

The two who had gone below reappeared, the old man between them, but no Asan. There was more yelling, with all the visitors joining in; but the yelling had a quality of ritual display about it, and the visitors’ eyes were already wandering from the fishermen, looking around at the boat, at the fittings, at Weilin and Little Fu standing by the netting at the stern. Weilin wished he could disappear.

Now Red Bandanna was asking the old man about them, pointing at them, barking short interrogatives. The old man shrugged, mumbling, pointing at Little Fu. Red Bandanna came over to Little Fu. He took the machete from its sheath and held it with the point against Little Fu’s breastbone. Little Fu fainted, actually falling against Red Bandanna, who pushed him back on to the netting.

They stripped Little Fu, tearing his clothes apart by the seams, until he was naked. They found the oil-paper bundle in his shorts. Red Bandanna opened it up, the others clustered round to see. They all whooped at the sight of the bank notes. Little Fu was face-down on the nets, either still unconscious or just prudently feigning it. Red Bandanna looked down at him, said something, and they all laughed. He lay down on top of Little Fu, fiddling with the front of his own shorts; then went into a kind of rhythmic pushing motion—up and down, up and down. Little Fu seemed to come up and down part of the way with him on each motion, but showed no other sign of life.

After a certain amount of this Red Bandanna got up, and the others one by one repeated his actions. Little Fu made no sound during all this. When the last of the four had got up, Red Bandanna lifted his machete very high then brought it down fast, making a tsokk sound. Little Fu’s bare legs, which were all Weilin could see of him from his position, jerked out straight in spasm. Red Bandanna lifted the machete a second time, inky droplets flying from the blade as it rose, and tsokk again. Now Little Fu’s head was rolling along the deck, over and over, passing not six inches from where Weilin was standing petrified. As the head rolled it left a splash of color on the deck, like a footprint, after each revolution, until it came to rest at last against the far railing, to dribble the last of its liquid contents into the scuppers. Two of the men lifted Little Fu’s body, blood still pumping from the neck in braided shafts of vivid crimson, and threw it over the stern. The fishermen were watching the whole thing with, so far as Weilin could make out, perfect lack of interest. Still he dared not move. He felt his bladder go, then his bowels.

Now Red Bandanna came over to inspect Weilin. He looked him up and down without expression for a moment, then his face split in a grin. His teeth were the same dark brown as his skin, his eyes pitiless, the eyes of a demon. Weilin was paralyzed with terror, the gazelle in the jaws of the lion. In the heat of the day he had left off his pants, was wearing only the shorts and T-shirt he used as underwear in the north. Of course the visitors could see that he had voided himself. They thought it a great joke, pointing and laughing. One of them leaned past Red Bandanna to pinch the flesh of Weilin’s arm.

Weilin stepped back from sheer reflex. Red Bandanna frowned, and reached out to grab him; but slipped on the waste that had dropped from Weilin’s shorts, and lost his balance. He grabbed at his companion instead, to prevent himself falling, and Weilin, woken now from catalepsy, turned, ran four long paces, and dived clean over the rail.

When he came up he was twenty meters from the ship. Red Bandanna was at the rail, looking down at him, then turning to call instructions to someone. Weilin was at the rear of the ship, on the opposite side from the other vessel. It took them some time to get the machine-gun to their stern. By the time they could fire at him he was a hundred meters away. The bullets made a cheerful bok-bok-bok as they hit the water.

After three or four bursts the machine-gun stopped. Weilin could hear them shouting, but he did not look back now, only swam, as hard as he could. When he felt sufficiently safe to roll over and look back, the two ships were a very great distance away, and had separated. The one on the right, the pirate vessel, had hoisted its sail. Weilin wondered if they meant to come after him, but they sailed away without turning, disappearing at last in the evening haze. The fishing-boat stayed in view longer, but finally she too slipped from sight, and Weilin was alone in the ocean.

Weilin felt no fear, his capacity for fear having perhaps been exhausted. He recalled that the fishing-boat had been sailing parallel to the coast, their occasional glimpses of land always to the right of their line of travel; so he turned ninety degrees to his right and began to swim.

Darkness came down quickly, sweeping across the water from the east. The moon rose; a full moon, or nearly so, but visible only as a smear of rich silver on the clouds. Weilin swam on. When his arms got tired he paused to float on his back, as he had floated on the river in the far northeast, the river whose name he had never bothered to discover, the current then always taking him back past the laughter of small children to his starting-point on the road home to Mother at Flat All Around. He wondered briefly what currents were active here, out on the great heaving ocean, far from any human sound—but firmly pushed down the thought and its trailing tendrils of terror, turning instead to regret at the recollection of his few scanty possessions left in the fishing boat, especially that last photograph of Mother and Father … but then remembering, with quite disproportionate joy, that he had been carrying Mother’s red plastic hair clip in the pocket of his shorts as a sentimental talisman, and had it still, and could feel it there with his hand if he paused to tread water.

Weilin swam on, without fear or hope. The very motion of swimming seemed inconsequential in the vast movements of the sea, in the slow swell that lifted him up high then lowered him down according to its own immemorial rhythms; and yet there was nothing to do, after all, but swim, for as long as he was able to. At the top of the swell he sometimes saw lights far off. Whether they were the lights of ships, or of the shore, he could not tell. Each light would glimmer for a while at the utmost edge of vision, then disappear. Phosphorescence danced in meaningless patterns on the dark surface of the water. The moon crossed the sky and began to descend. The beginnings of exhaustion tugged at his will; but he would not accept them, still swam on.

And so he swam, all through the long night, under the veiled moon. And as the clouds hid the face of the moon (thus Weilin reflected, in his diminishing spells of clear thought), so they hid Weilin himself from the eyes of Heaven, so that the Immortals above, unable to see him, were indifferent to his fate, whatever it might be, wearily swimming alone out there on the infinite warm dark ocean.

Chapter 12

If You Don’t Love Opera, You’re Not a Human Being

Half Brother Answers Chairman Mao’s Call

Somehow—Yuezhu never understood the details—the different factions in the Cultural Revolution fell to fighting. The fighting went on for months. It would quiesce for a while, then flare up again. From the barracks where Yuezhu’s family lived they could hear the sounds of the fighting in the town. Mostly it was just the crackle of small-arms fire; but once, for several days, they heard a whump-whump sound which Half Brother said was field mortars. Yuezhu was not clear about mortars, so Half Brother had drawn an elaborate diagram for her, explaining the mechanism. Half Brother knew everything.

While all this fighting was going on Father wouldn’t allow them to go out. Half Brother wanted to go out anyway, but the barracks’ perimeter guards sent him back. The army was supposed to keep out of the fighting. This was on the orders of the very senior leaders in Beijing, including Marshal Lin Biao himself, so nobody dared disobey. Of course Half Brother and Yuezhu, being of an army family even though not actually in the army, came under the prohibition. The schools and colleges were all closed in any event, so there was no reason to go out.

Half Brother stayed at home with Yuezhu. He taught her card games like Eight Eyes and Imperial Family, and Chinese chess. He let her sit with him while he listened to the radio, and explained the dramas and news programs to her. Of course Half Brother knew all about history, and could give her the background to what they were hearing: the cruelty of the Japanese during their colonial rule in China, the arrogance of the American Imperialists trying to stifle the brave people of Vietnam, the treachery and dishonesty of the Russian Hegemonists, who had betrayed all of Lenin’s and Stalin’s ideals.

“Only we Chinese have the true spirit of revolution now,” said Half Brother. “It’s our duty, our sacred duty, to carry that spirit forward, to make a new society for the enlightenment of all mankind.”

“But wasn’t that what we were trying to do when we were Red Guards?” asked Yuezhu. “Yet the Red Guards were disbanded, and now we’re not allowed to be Red Guards any more.”

Half Brother smiled at her naivety. “It’s not a simple thing, to make revolution,” he said. “There are many twists and turns on the path. Chairman Mao understands everything, we must listen to him, try to understand his great Thoughts, and follow his instructions.”

Yuezhu didn’t see how she could carry out Chairman Mao’s instructions cooped up in the barracks. Some of Chairman Mao’s instructions were, in any case, very hard to figure out. “Examine the essence of a thing and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the door,” for example. How exactly were you supposed to do that? When she asked Half Brother these things he just laughed and said: “You can’t understand it until you’ve had some revolutionary experience.”

She would have liked to ask Father, who had had even more revolutionary experience than Half Brother, but Father was especially unapproachable at this period. He spent a lot of his time in meetings, from which he always came back frowning and irritable. Yuezhu had the impression, anyway, that Father did not have much taste for political or philosophical matters. There had been some blazing rows in Half Brother’s Red Guard days, Father yelling that revolution meant more than just breaking windows and beating people up, Half Brother yelling back that people like Father, raised before Liberation, could never bring themselves to make a full break with the Four Olds.

On the few occasions when Father expressed himself on public matters, it was with a tone of disgust. “Fucking civilians!” he snarled once, when one of the warring factions, needing weapons, broke into an ammo dump belonging to the army. “Troublemakers!” Another time, while the family was sitting down to dinner, they heard the tramp of many feet and a marching song being sung on the street leading into town, which passed close to the barracks. “I wonder what’s happening,” said Mother. “Oh,” said Father, “one bunch of idiots going to blow up another bunch of idiots, I suppose. In the end they’ll call us in to clean up the mess.”

Father’s mood was not improved by the sudden unheralded arrival of Uncle Fish. Uncle Fish was Mother’s older brother. He lived with his wife, mother and twin adolescent girls in Chengdu, the provincial capital, which was also Mother’s home town. In Chengdu, apparently, the fighting was very fierce. Anybody who had a safe place to go to had left. People had gone to relatives in the countryside. Seven Kill Stele was too big to be considered countryside, and the fighting in the town seemed just as bad as it could possibly be in Chengdu; but everyone knew that an army barracks was the safest place to be living at this point in the Cultural Revolution. So Uncle Fish had packed up his family, with their quilts and cooking pots, and taken a train to Seven Kill Stele to throw himself on Father’s mercy.

Father had grumbled a great deal but could not send his in-laws back to Chengdu while the fighting was going on. Two or three other families in the compound were in the same situation. Some sleeping accommodation was found in the soldiers’ and nurses’ huts, extra rations were approved somehow, and Uncle Fish and his family lived with the People’s Liberation Army that winter and spring.

Uncle Fish was actually named Jiang, which was of course Mother’s maiden name. He seemed decent and kind, if somewhat lost in the military environment, and Yuezhu liked him. However, there was no denying he looked like a fish. His head was flattened in the vertical plane, and had no chin, and his eyes were small and round. It had been Half Brother, always looking for something satirical or derogatory to say about Mother’s side of the family, who had christened him “Uncle Fish.” Once Yuezhu had heard the appellation, she could never think of Uncle Fish in any other way.

The Fishes were at even more of a loose end in the barracks than anyone else. The military people at least had some legitimate occupation: drill, training, political education, maintenance. The Fishes, like Yuezhu and Half Brother, had nothing to do at all. Yuezhu’s parents’ apartment was too small to accommodate them all at once, and the Fishes were never quite at ease when Father was there, knowing they were imposing on him, so they tended to turn up in ones and twos at odd times when Father was at a meeting, to sit and talk, or, in the case of the women, play cards. Half Brother, following Father’s lead, was somewhat standoffish with them and inclined to drop sarcastic remarks about the great good fortune of those whose close relatives have married into the military.

Yuezhu, on the other hand, was always glad to see them. Auntie Fish was an educated woman from a family who had had some position before Liberation. She knew all the old classic novels and stories, which Yuezhu was hardly acquainted with yet, though Half Brother had an abridged, illustrated version of the Three Kingdoms he had allowed her to read. Auntie Fish could recite poetry and sing folk songs. She knew dozens of varieties of Cat’s Cradle, could play foot-shuttlecock better than anyone Yuezhu had ever seen, and knew every card game under the sun. Mother, who had no education and never acted a day less than her age, clearly felt a little oppressed by her sister-in-law, so Yuezhu, from filial piety, deliberately tried not to be too interested in Auntie Fish; but it wasn’t easy.

Uncle Fish was very musical. He could play the flute, so he said, both end-blown and transverse, and the erhu, which he was able to prove, having brought one with him. [The erhu is a two-string Chinese fiddle.] Sometimes he accompanied Auntie Fish in a folk song. His real passion, though, was opera.

The province they lived in, Sichuan, had its own style of opera. The stories were for the most part the same as the ones in Beijing opera, some of which Yuezhu already knew by osmosis; but everything was sung in the local dialect and there were some special instruments and make-up effects not used elsewhere. Uncle Fish knew everything about Sichuan opera. He had even begun to train as an opera singer when he was young, but opposition from his family and the changes in everybody’s affairs that had come with Liberation had put an end to it. Until the Cultural Revolution came up there had been opera performances every week in Chengdu, and Uncle Fish had hardly missed one, he said. He could sing entire operas, taking all the parts. He made a creditable job of acting out some of the roles, too, and even Half Brother could not help laughing at his version of the white-nosed judge in Fifteen Strings of Cash.

“If you don’t love opera, you’re not a human being,” said Uncle Fish, quoting an old saw, after accompanying himself on the erhu through practically the whole of The Jade Hairpin.

“That’s all very well,” said Half Brother. “But these operas you sing are very reactionary. They belong to the old society. We should have some new operas for New China.”

“You are right, of course,” said Uncle Fish, who was a cautious man. “You young people will show us the way.”

After that Uncle Fish told his opera stories with many asides about the darkness and oppression of the feudal society in which they were set, to show that he had a correct attitude. It was clear to Yuezhu, though, even at the age of ten, that these asides were “feet drawn on a snake,” and she discarded them automatically when listening. It was from Uncle Fish that Yuezhu learned all the stories of the old operas, and in later life she often wondered whether her fate had been determined in part, in spite of all her own inclinations, by some gene passed down through her mother’s family, a gene she shared with Uncle Fish.

*

Father’s prediction about the course of events proved correct. Shortly before the Spring Festival the following year—1968, theYear of the Monkey—the loudspeakers around the barracks compound, which for weeks had played only martial music, began broadcasting exhortations to Clean Up the Class Ranks. Squads of soldiers, five abreast, marched out of the gates early one morning, with jeeps towing artillery pieces. Father disappeared for several days, leaving very strict instructions to Half Brother and Yuezhu not to leave the barracks.

The instructions were superfluous. The perimeter guards allowed no-one in or out, and the sounds of fighting in the town were sufficiently discouraging in any case, with fearsome roaring and crashing noises added to the rattle of machine guns and the thump of mortars. The noise did not scare Yuezhu. It was too remote, too abstract, and in any case there were still plenty of soldiers in the barracks to defend them. She only felt scared once, when she was going to the boiler-house to fetch hot water, and happened to see the front gate opened. It was opened for two soldiers pulling a handcart. The soldiers were red-faced, dusty and sweating, trying to run while pulling the heavy handcart, whose heaviness was caused by the presence on it of four or five other soldiers lying fore-and-aft, all covered in blood. The soldiers pulling the handcart were shouting in desperate, exhausted, angry voices, and one of those on the cart was emitting a terrible continuous thin wailing noise, like a ghost. They made off in the direction of the infirmary, and Yuezhu ran back to the apartment, forgetting her hot water altogether.

Father came home at last. His manner was much better, the irritation and disgust apparently dispelled. Everything everywhere was better. The noises of fighting from the town had stopped, and the prohibition on leaving the barracks was lifted. Fighting had stopped in Chengdu, too, according to Father’s information, and the Fishes packed up their quilts and pots and erhu and went home, with many smiling declarations of gratitude to Father and Mother. Yuezhu, though not Half Brother, went to the railroad station with Mother and Father to see them off.

Yuezhu had not often been into the town, and did not know it well, but it seemed to her that some of the buildings had recently fallen down. Around the railroad station there were several ruins, jagged shapeless walls and heaps of rubble. The facade of the station itself was pockmarked all over, and a big round hole high on one side was being roughly filled with bricks and plaster by a team of workers up on bamboo scaffolding. The ticket hall inside was a mess. Big-character posters had been stuck all over the walls and were now being scraped off. Their scrapings mingled on the floor with broken glass from the windows, splintered wood from a hole in the ceiling, fragments of plaster and concrete.

Oddly, Father seemed pleased to see the mess. “They ran like chickens when they saw the People’s Liberation Army,” he said to Uncle Fish, and chuckled. Uncle Fish chuckled too, though without Father’s true enthusiasm.

*

Very soon after this, matters at home became tense again. Father was clearly worried about something. He had a long private talk with Half Brother, and the result was that Half Brother became thoughtful and quiet. Mother, too, seemed to be infected by Father’s worry, whatever it was—rather severely, for Yuezhu heard her weeping one night. It seemed odd that Mother and Father should be so worried, and Half Brother so quiet, as everyone else in the barracks was in high spirits, and all the noises of fighting in the town had stopped. It was a week before Yuezhu could get up the nerve to ask Half Brother what they were all so anxious about.

“Anxious?” Half Brother laughed. “I’m not anxious. I’m certainly ready to answer Chairman Mao’s call.”

“What is he calling for?” asked Yuezhu.

“Why, he wants us educated youth to go into the countryside and learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants.”

This did not seem so very bad to Yuezhu. The peasants were very wise, as everybody knew, and it was quite proper that people should go to learn from them. It was only after several days, from fragments of her parents’conversation she overheard, and from various clues in the speeches on the loudspeakers, that Yuezhu got an idea what was happening.

The Red Guards were all washed up and all the factions had been suppressed. The army was in charge of everything. The Red Guards had gone too far, and those young people who had been the most prominent Red Guards were to be sent to the countryside to correct their thinking by learning from the peasants. Half Brother was one of these young people, of course. Yuezhu was not; nobody had really paid any attention to the Little Red Guards. She felt oddly confused about this. On the one hand she felt annoyed that her Little Red Guard activities, which she had taken very seriously at the time, should count for so little. On the other she felt secretly, guiltily glad that she would not have to leave Mother and Father and the apartment to go and live with strange peasants in a strange place.

It seemed that Half Brother himself did not mind being sent down to the countryside; but that, Yuezhu thought, was his nature—to follow Chairman Mao’s call selflessly, enthusiastically. Half Brother was a true revolutionary! But she was sad to think she would not be able to see him every day, as she had been used to. She knew, of course, that she would not be allowed to go to the countryside with him, though part of her wanted to go, in spite of the separation from Mother and Father. She made the suggestion anyway, but Father just laughed at her.

“You? Eleven years old?” (She was not quite ten at that point, in fact, but Father counted age in the old style: a year old at birth, a year older every Spring Festival.) “What could you learn from the peasants? You’d just be in their way!”

But although she knew that Half Brother was glad to answer Chairman Mao’s call, she perceived that Father and Mother were unhappy about this policy. Mother was unhappy because (she told Yuezhu frankly when asked) she thought the assignment would be permanent, and Half Brother would have to spend all his life as a peasant. Father was unhappy because some of his colleagues had avoided similar situations by getting their sons and daughters into the army by the back door, but Father felt this was against his principles. Father hated these back doors, and even hated to hear anyone speak of them.

“I was too revolutionary,” explained Half Brother over dinner one evening. “If you’ve been too revolutionary, you can’t go into the army.”

Why should Half Brother’s having been revolutionary prevent him joining the army? Yuezhu wanted to know. Wasn’t the People’s Liberation Army the beating heart of the revolution? (Repeating a phrase she had heard at school once.) “The more revolutionary the better, I should have thought.”

Father frowned at her over his uplifted rice bowl—they were all there at the dinner table. “It’s not so simple,” said Mother on his behalf. “There are different kinds of ‘revolutionary.’”

Father, when he had finished shoveling rice into his mouth, waved his chopsticks angrily. “You women,” he said, “keep your noses out of what you can’t understand! He’s going to the countryside, that’s all, to learn from hard experience. It won’t hurt him. Do him good, probably.”

“I don’t mind,” affirmed Half Brother. “Chairman Mao told us we must learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants. Well, I’m ready to learn.”

So Half Brother went to the countryside early that summer. Yuezhu helped Mother pack up some food for the journey, along with his toothbrush, spare socks and underwear, and one or two books. He was getting a ride in an army truck to a village with the peculiar, yet reassuring, name “White Rice,” where the road ended. After that he would have to walk. Three other ex-Red Guards from the town were also going on assignments to that district, so they came to the barracks to ride in the truck with Half Brother. Yuezhu felt sad to see them ride off in the truck. She would have cried, but Half Brother and his comrades were so cheerful, waving to those behind, singing a revolutionary song:

Chairman Mao’s book is the thing I most love to read!

A thousand, ah, ten thousand times

I must apply myself

To understand his Thoughts!

*

In the fall Half Brother fell ill with a gastric infection. Some kind of worm (said Mother to a neighbor), which to Yuezhu sounded dreadful. A worm! Inside Half Brother’s belly! It sounded terrifying and disgusting all at once, and she desperately wanted to go with Mother, but Father wouldn’t allow it. He wasn’t even keen on Mother’s going.

“So much fuss over a bellyache!” said Father. “In my day we just slogged on regardless, and sooner or later you forgot about aches and pains. You kids nowadays are pampered.”

Mother went anyway, walking for days over the rough mountain tracks to the remote unit Half Brother had been assigned to, to take him medicine. But still Yuezhu was not allowed to go, because of school. She fretted and pined on Half Brother’s behalf until Mother came back. Half Brother alone in that remote place, with a black worm inside him! (She had not actually heard that the worm was black; but in her imagination it seemed that it must be so—an evil, black, glistening worm.) What if Half Brother were to die! She hurried the thought away, trying desperately not to think it, because if you could think it, then it could happen, and that would be unbearable.

In fact when Mother came back, tired and thin, with blisters all over her feet, she said that Half Brother was much better and the worm had been got rid of somehow. At once Yuezhu found herself thinking—shamefully, guiltily—that she didn’t want Half Brother to be completely better, for if he needed to convalesce he would probably come home to do so, and she would be near him again.

The reason she had not been allowed to go to the mountains with Mother was that school had restarted in September, and Father insisted she attend to her lessons. Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams had gone round the province restoring order, telling the students that since all the bad elements among the teachers had been purged, they should now return to their books and not disrupt the lessons or put up big-character posters. Some of the students had still wanted to make revolution, but the Teams had criticized them severely, telling them that they, the Teams, had been sent out by Chairman Mao himself. In Yuezhu’s class, after some of the boys had shouted revolutionary slogans at the history teacher, the Team had made everybody spend a whole day studying an article in the People’s Daily written by Marshal Lin Biao, who (as everyone knew) was Chairman Mao’s closest comrade-in-arms and most trusted confidante. Marshal Lin had stressed the need for order and discipline, and asked the young people of the country to emulate the men and women of the People’s Liberation Army, who kept their discipline even under the stress of battle.

“They thought they could run the show without us,” Yuezhu overheard Father say to Mother one evening while she was preparing for bed. “They thought they could run it without us, but they never could.”

*

In April the next year, the Year of the Chicken, when Yuezhu reached her eleventh birthday according to the modern reckoning, Half Brother came home.

He was coming home for good, or at any rate was never going back to the countryside; and the reason for this was that he was to go into the army after all. There had been some shift of policy, and he was no longer considered too revolutionary to be a soldier. The birthday party was really more of a coming-home party, or perhaps enlistment party, for Half Brother.

Father did not altogether approve of birthday parties. He said they were a relic of bourgeois society and the landlord style of living. He would not let anybody celebrate his own birthday; he would not even tell anybody when it was, though Mother said she had heard from his own mother that Father had been born on some date in November, and that his sign was the Dog, the same as Yuezhu and Half Brother; and Yuezhu, working it out by herself from an almanac, had figured Father’s birth year to be 1922. Still, Mother had always managed to make something nice for Yuezhu’s birthdays, and Father had never seemed to mind, so long as there was no great fuss about it.

So now the big circular table was full of dishes, a real banquet. There was chicken, of course, since Half Brother had not been able to share the Spring Festival dinner with them, when they had welcomed in the Year of the Chicken. Fish and round dumplings for the same reason, these being traditional Spring Festival food. Lotus root, because of the saying “Though the Lotus Root is Broken, the Threads Still Connect” (referring to the tiny silken ligaments that run through a lotus root, and to the bonds that keep human beings connected even when physically far apart). Dog meat, because Father, Half Brother and Yuezhu were all Dogs. Sweet round tangyuan ravioli, so that everything should be smooth and round for Half Brother’s career in the army, and for Yuezhu’s twelfth year in the world. There were green vegetables, water chestnuts and sweet potatoes, and a soup made from fragrant leaves. Mother—normally an unadventurous cook—had even attempted some of those small “lip-tingling mouth-burning” delicacies that are the delight of the Sichuan people: spicy granny bean curd, stick chicken, “husband-and-wife” lung slices, wonton in red oil. It was the most elaborate meal Yuezhu could remember. So elaborate she was a little anxious (and suspected Mother was, too) that Father, who detested all kinds of luxury and ostentation, would frown at it.

To the contrary, Father was in the best of good humors. He took down a bottle of Five Grain Liquor which had been on the shelf in their living-room for as long as Yuezhu could remember, and dusted it off and opened it, and poured tiny cups for himself and Half Brother. Half Brother seemed thinner than Yuezhu remembered him, but he had a good tan, and his complexion had cleared up. He seemed happy and excited about going into the army.

“Does it mean you’ll stay here with us for ever?” asked Yuezhu.

They all laughed at her. “Half Brother will have to go wherever the authorities assign him,” said Mother, smiling at her. “It’s not likely they’ll let him stay here. See, your Father joined the army in Shanxi Province, way up in the North; but he’s been assigned all over the country.”

“I’m ready to go wherever they send me,” said Half Brother proudly, reaching over the table for a piece of lotus. “The Party’s will is my will.”

He was so noble! Yuezhu was torn between pride at Half Brother’s courage and revolutionary ardor, and apprehension at his being taken away from them again to be posted to some distant army unit. So noble!—going willingly to the countryside in answer to Chairman Mao’s call, to learn wisdom from the peasants (Yuezhu of course did not know that he had spent practically all his time there prostrate with dysentery), and now ready to don a soldier’s uniform and go to the ends of the earth to defend Chairman Mao and the revolution.

Father made a toast, pouring out the Five Grain Liquor into three tiny cups—Mother, somewhat against her will (she said liquor made her feel ill) joining them in the toast. Yuezhu made the toast, too. She was not allowed to drink liquor, of course. Mother had got a bottle of sweetened pineapple juice from somewhere, and Yuezhu had been drinking that from a beaker. When Father called out “Raise Cups!” she lifted her beaker and the others their cups, and Father made a toast to the Ninth Party Congress, which was just then assembling in Beijing.

“To the leaders of our country and our party,” said Father, “and to the people’s representatives. Success to the Ninth Party Congress!”

“Success to the Ninth Party Congress!” they all repeated.

*

Yuezhu and her classmates heard a great deal about the Ninth Party Congress over the next few weeks. They had to read all the resolutions in class, over and over again, with little in the way of explanation from the teachers. With the best will in the world, Yuezhu found it dull stuff. The only things she could extract from it all, all the resolutions and editorials, were that the army was to cultivate Mao Zedong thought, and that Marshal Lin Biao was more important than ever. Now, when there was a slogan to remember, or a Thought For The Day, it seemed to come from Marshal Lin as often as from Chairman Mao.

In the middle of all this, Half Brother went off to his training unit, in the north of the province. It would probably be next Spring Festival before he could get any leave, he said, and even then leave was not always given. Someone had to defend the country even at Spring Festival, after all.

Mother and Yuezhu went with him to the railroad station. Father did not go, saying it was wrong to make a fuss about these things. The mess in the town had been cleaned up now. The ruined buildings still looked very stark, but were beginning to be softened by grass and weeds coming up around and inside them. The ticket hall of the railroad station was as good as new: broken windows replaced, walls repainted, a huge chandelier installed, and a big framed reproduction of one of Chairman Mao’s Thoughts, in his own script, put high up on the wall: TAKE CLASS STRUGGLE AS THE KEY!

The train did not stop long enough in Seven Kill Stele to allow them to get on with Half Brother. They said their good-byes through the opened window.

“Remember to eat rice every chance you get,” said Mother. “If they send you north it will be hard to get rice. Nothing but noodles up there!”

“Write me a letter as soon as you’re allowed to,” said Yuezhu, on the edge of tears.

“Make revolution to the end!” yelled back Half Brother from the departing train, grinning at Yuezhu—a Red Guard again, for one last time.

Chapter 13

A Startling Demonstration of the Power of Poetry

Peach Blossom Lets Down the School

After Half Brother had gone life seemed very flat and empty again. Yuezhu thought Mother missed him, too, in spite of all the trouble Half Brother had had accepting her. With Half Brother around it had seemed there was always something interesting happening, or about to happen—always some new aspect of the world to be revealed. Now there was only school, the activities associated with school—Youth League, for example—and the apartment in the barracks, seeming so quiet and dull now.

Even school was not as interesting as before. Many of the teachers had been struggled in the Red Guard period and the experience had made them cautious and reluctant to impose discipline. Most of the students were glad to be back at school—there was little else for them to do in Seven Kill Stele—but of course there was a bad element who misbehaved. The Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team was still in the town, and sometimes they came to the school to give a talk or lead the students in some voluntary activity. The leader of the team was a fierce square woman named Cui, with a voice like metal scraping metal. Everyone was scared of her, and when she was in the school even the worst students bent their heads over their desks in silence. At other times, though, it was difficult to work for the talking and laughing in class.

The work itself was much less interesting than Yuezhu remembered. Cowed and miserable, the teachers played safe, saying little, leading the class through rote drills or editorials from People’s Daily. There was no attempt to interpret or explain the material; they just read it, each student taking a turn at three or four sentences, the bolder teachers correcting pronunciation.

There was one teacher, Teacher Bai, who seemed especially to like having Yuezhu read. He called on her in turn, but always let her read longer than the others, and if the whole class had read and there was still time in the lesson he would go back to her. Yuezhu thought it was because her Mandarin was so much better than the others’; but he soon made it plain that it was the voice itself he liked, the actual sound of her voice.

“Such a fine voice!” he exclaimed once to the whole class. “Like a bell! You students should all emulate Han Yuezhu. Learn to speak up bold and clear like her! We want the whole world to know about our achievements under socialism, and about the teachings of our Great Helmsman Mao Zedong! Let’s all sing out loud and clear like HanYuezhu!”

Yuezhu liked this, of course. It was good to be a model student. The others—except the bad elements, of course—would look up to you, and you would be asked to address the school on public occasions. She wished it had not been Teacher Bai who singled her out, though. The students all thought he was a little eccentric. He had been badly struggled by the Red Guards, sent to the countryside for a spell, and his wife had left him, taking herself and their baby—Teacher Bai was no more than thirty—back to her home village. Now Teacher Bai was a “bird who takes fright at the sound of the bow.” He never spoke a sentence without including some revolutionary phrases. Somehow, though, he always seemed slightly off-key with his modes of expression, coming out with things that had been current in ’66 or ’67 but had since fallen by the wayside. “Chairman Mao is the Red Red Sun Shining in our Hearts,” he said once; and one or two of the students snickered. There was nothing definitely wrong with the expression, of course; it had been a favorite of the Red Guards in ’66, and of course they all loved Chairman Mao; it was just that nobody said this any more. All Teacher Bai’s revolutionary rhetoric was like that—like a radio slightly off-station.

History, Literature and Russian seemed to have disappeared from the curriculum. Yuezhu had disliked History and been too young for Russian, which had only been taught to the senior year, but she missed Literature. Before the Cultural Revolution her class had been reading Red Cliff, a novel from the early sixties about the Liberation struggles in the southwest. Yuezhu had thought it exciting, and wanted to finish it; but everyone seemed to have forgotten about it, and she had had no copy of her own. Seven Kill Stele’s only bookstore had been looted, then closed, by the Red Guards, and when it reopened sold only party tracts and technical manuals for the peasants, all about fish-stocking and the diseases of pigs.

*

With Half Brother gone, the spring and summer of that first year back at school were tedious, a gray blur in her later recollection. At the end of the year, however, the students put on a show for the graduating class in the school auditorium. A choir was selected from each class, and they sang revolutionary songs: “Socialism is Good For Us,” “Upholding the Red Flag,” and the “Internationale.” A team from the senior class, directed by their teacher, declaimed some of Chairman Mao’s poems. And Yuezhu, together with three other girls who had been Little Red Guards, danced the “Loyalty to Chairman Mao Dance.” It was the most exciting thing Yuezhu had done since dancing the same Loyalty Dance at the Martyrs’ Monument when she was a Little Red Guard—right up there on the stage, in front of the whole school, with all the teachers and the leaders of the Revolutionary Committee (every work unit now had a Revolutionary Committee to manage its affairs). The dance was well received, the audience clapping their hands for a long time, the Revolutionary Committee all smiling with pleasure.

Presumably as a result of this pleasure the Revolutionary Committee started a dance group at the school. Beginning the following semester the dance group practiced after lessons every Tuesday and Thursday. Yuezhu wished it could have been every day of the week, but the schedule was set by the teachers, who had little enough time to themselves, what with administrative duties, Political Study meetings, and the endless tiresome trudging of streets and standing on line for food, for clothing, for medicine, for repairs, for permits.

Yuezhu’s best friend in the dance group was Taohua. The name meant “Peach Blossom,” but it was not in fact the girl’s real name. She belonged to one of the National Minorities, her people part of the racial salad of the southwestern highlands, and they had their own language and she had a name in that language. She told Yuezhu the name once as they walked together to the refectory for lunch, but it was so strange Yuezhu could not hold it in her mind.

Taohua could speak the local dialect of Chinese—though with an odd, sing-song accent—but Mandarin not at all. She had been brought up in one of the minority villages in the mountains to the west, beyond Mount Tan, but during the Cleaning Up the Class Ranks period her father, who was headman of the village and a Party member, had been assigned to the Minorities Bureau office in the town, the previous staff of the office having been scattered during the factional fighting. Taohua and her mother still went back to the village in vacations, though. She was the youngest of an immense number—eleven or twelve, she was not sure—of sisters, the eldest of whom were married to village men. She often told Yuezhu about life in the village. It sounded very primitive, living among the animals, no electricity or heating, no toilet paper (they used a handful of grass, she told Yuezhu, giggling), strange rituals and ceremonies no-one could remember the meaning of, ghosts lurking in the darkness beyond the cleared area at night.

You couldn’t call Taohua pretty. She had dark skin, thick lips and a flat nose. However, she was a natural-born dancer. She was much better than Yuezhu. Yuezhu knew this in her inmost heart, though she would never have said it out loud. Sometimes, as they went through the group exercises, she felt that everything she did was just striving, striving hopelessly, to attain Taohua’s grace and fluency of movement. Taohua said her people could all dance, and whenever there was a public occasion—a wedding, New Year, harvest home—the whole of her village would dance all night. They even danced at funerals, she said: appropriate dances, grave and slow, accompanied only by slow tapping on a drum. It made Yuezhu’s flesh creep to hear this, but she thought it might not be polite to say anything.

The National Minorities were very primitive and backward in their customs, of course. Under the leadership of the Party they were being shown a modern way of life, but you couldn’t expect them to change all at once. With this settled conviction in her mind—everybody knew the Minorities were backward—Yuezhu was astonished when Taohua told her that the people of her tribe laughed behind their backs at the Chinese and called them The People Who Couldn’t Dance.

Yuezhu herself laughed out loud at the time, at the absurdity of Minority people looking down on their Elder Brother Chinese; and Taohua laughed with her, somewhat nervously, perhaps thinking she had spoken out of turn. Later, alone, Yuezhu felt indignant about the remark, and resolved to show Taohua that she could dance just as well as anyone from a grass hut in some godforsaken mountain village. Along with her indignation, she felt some unease. It was true, after all, that nearly all the dances they practiced were from one Minority or other—Tibetan, Yi, Miao, Dai, Korean. There was only one dance associated with the Han Chinese, the rather feeble yangge, which none of them really took seriously. Well (Yuezhu reflected), it might be true that her ancestors had been somewhat remiss in the field of dance, having been too busy civilizing All Under Heaven; but it was still inconceivable that Minority peoples, who were only half-way from being monkeys, could out-perform Chinese at anything.

For all her backwardness, Taohua was in some ways very worldly. Some of the things she knew, things she knew from her sisters or from living so close to the animals, were really disgraceful. She knew, or claimed to know, everything about the private relations between men and women, for example. One day she favoredYuezhu with a full account.

Yuezhu stared at her, quite unable to credit the fantastic tale. “You’re crazy,” she said, and laughed. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard! Why would people do such a thing?”

“It’s how babies are started. Married people all do it.”

“Nonsense!” Yuezhu could not exclude a fleeting thought about her own mother and father doing this thing—but the thought was too absurd to be tolerated, and she dismissed it at once. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It’s nonsense, I don’t believe it.”

Taohua seemed not to want to press her point. Notwithstanding her worldliness in these particular things, she deferred to Yuezhu, who of course was pure Han Chinese, as being wiser and smarter than herself. She did, however, say: “Well, the thing about the jiba being hard and stiff is definitely true. Sometimes you can see Teacher Bai’s. It makes his pants stick out in front.”

For a week or two after that Yuezhu, in spite of her doubts, could not resist looking at Teacher Bai’s pants to see if his jiba was sticking out. However Teacher Bai was always standing when in class, or walking about, and his dark-blue pants were quite baggy, so she could make nothing out. Soon she forgot Taohua’s absurd tale.

Then one day in early spring, soon before Yuezhu’s twelfth birthday, after giving her a particularly long passage to read out in class, Teacher Bai asked Yuezhu to stay behind when the other students filed out. He was sitting down when she went to stand in front of him, sitting in a chair at one side of the room. In his lap he was holding a battered old book for which he, or some previous owner, had fashioned a dust-jacket of coarse brown paper.

“Han Yuezhu, your voice really has a most remarkable quality. Tell me, have you ever done any singing? I didn’t see you in the graduation choir.”

“Oh, no. I was one of those doing the Loyalty Dance. Since we had to practice the dance we were excused from singing. Now I’m with the dance group, the one they started in September.”

“Ah. You like dancing better than singing?”

“Oh, yes! Singing is very boring. You just open your mouth and … sing. Dancing is much more interesting. To express the idea of a story by movement.”

Teacher Bai nodded. “Well,” he said in his clumsy way, “we must all make what contribution we can to the Socialist Reconstruction of our country.”

“Yes,” saidYuezhu. There was an awkward pause. Teacher Bai coughed to break the pause. The other students had all left the classroom now, though the door was still open and students were passing to and fro outside.

“I wanted to ask you to read something for me,” said Teacher Bai. He held out the book to her. She took it. On the cover, in Teacher Bai’s own rather fussy script, was the title: Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty. Yuezhu had heard the title before—perhaps Mother owned a copy—but she had never read it.

“Page eighty-eight,” said Teacher Bai. “Bo Juyi’s ‘Song of Endless Sorrow.’ Just the last few lines, from ‘She sent by messenger …,’ can you see it? If there’s a character you don’t know, ask me.”

Yuezhu knew all the characters. It didn’t seem like a difficult poem, though very sad. It was about the Xuanzong Emperor, his love for Lady Yang and his grief at her death. As she read Yuezhu could sense Teacher Bai watching her face, nodding slightly to the rhythm of the lines. Yuezhu had often heard poems read—apart from the previous summer’s concert, the Red Guards had held all-day readings of Chairman Mao’s poems—and had a good idea of how it should be done, exaggerating the tones and caesuras.

When she had finished she looked up to wait for Teacher Bai to dismiss her. He was not looking at her now, he was looking down and to one side. There was another uncomfortable pause, in the middle of which Yuezhu saw, to her horror, that Taohua had been right. Teacher Bai’s jiba was sticking up inside his pants, making a sort of tent. Worse yet: at the apex of this phenomenon the blue pants showed an elongated oval of darker blue—a stain, a wet stain. Shocked, disgusted and embarrassed all together, Yuezhu flushed. Teacher Bai looked up now, but seemed not to perceive her consternation.

“Thank you,” he said. “Such a lovely voice! Thank you.”

Yuezhu could not resist telling Taohua about this. Taohua expressed muted triumph at the vindication of her extraordinary theories.

“I told you,” she said. “It’s big and stiff with a shining round pink head. If you jiggle it with your hand the juice squirts out.”

The shining round pink head was a new detail. Something about it, about the way Taohua introduced it, made Yuezhu want to ask: And have you done this yourself? Have you jiggled one and watched the juice come out? But she had an awful suspicion that the answer would be Yes. The Minorities were so backward! And the whole topic was really too shameful and disgusting to pursue.

*

That year was Half Brother’s second year in the army. He had been away the whole of the first year doing his training, coming home only for four days at Spring Festival. When he came home he was quite changed. He looked fit; in fact he looked younger than when he’d left, with his head shaven and his cheeks shining like a country boy. But his high spirits seemed to have deserted him. Yuezhu wanted to hear all about his training, but he would only say: “Very hard, it’s very hard.” When she pressed him to tell her some of the things they did, he snapped back irritably: “These are military things, our country’s National Secrets. Do you think I can talk openly about them to a kid?”

Father seemed pleased with him, anyway. He and Half Brother had long talks together in the living-room, Father smoking cigarettes one after another and sipping tea from his covered cup, Half Brother eating sunflower seeds (he did not smoke), nodding as Father talked, adding some words about his unit, the commanding officers, the advantages of certain kinds of assignments. Yuezhu did not pay much attention to the little she overheard. She gathered that Half Brother had the ambition of getting into some Special Security unit, though what exactly that meant she did not know.

It was also Yuezhu’s last year in elementary school. In the second semester, after the Spring Festival, she threw herself into dance training and rehearsal. The dance group was to give a big show at the graduation ceremonies, with a program of four different folk dances. The group had lost two of the original eight girls and no less than five of the eight boys (all but one of these latter the result of ridicule by their classmates, everyone said), but the nine remaining were all keen, and persuaded the school to shift to three nights’ practice a week—Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

As a further mark of approval the Revolutionary Committee endowed the dance group with a gramophone and a stack of records, so now the group no longer had to rely on the handful of students and teachers who could play flute or erhu. The gramophone and records had been found, covered in dust, in a storage room somewhere. The gramophone itself was a fine Russian model in a dark-wood cabinet, with doors at the front that could be opened to regulate the volume. The records were not altogether satisfactory, being mainly heavy orchestral music in the western style; but further searching turned up some revolutionary and folk tunes suitable for dancing, and the group considered themselves imperially well-equipped.

One of the dances they were to do was from Taohua’s own nationality. Part of it involved Yuezhu and Taohua dancing together while the others knelt down low in a circle around them. The dancers were supposed to be water sprites, the others water lilies. This was the dance Yuezhu concentrated on most. It showed her together with Taohua, their skills in direct and obvious comparison. Yuezhu knew she was not as good as Taohua. She knew that Taohua knew this, too; and also that Taohua would never be bold enough to speak directly about it. The dance teacher, a middle-aged woman teacher named Ma, was not so shy.

“Pull your head further back, Yuezhu! Your arms won’t take the correct position unless your head’s up. Watch Taohua, look at how she holds her arms.”

I don’t see how I can pull my head back any further. I feel as if I’m swallowing my chin already. This was only thought, not spoken. Only the very worst elements among her classmates would have talked back to a teacher’s criticism.

“Do you want to do this dance or don’t you?” Teacher Ma continued. “Come on, again! One, two, three …”

Yuezhu could not dislike Taohua, did not want to dislike her; yet the conviction grew on her that her dancing would look poor next to her friend’s. She thought of giving up her place in the duet, but by the time the thought gained any traction rehearsals were too far advanced. She resigned herself to ignominy. Then, one stifling Monday evening in late June, two weeks before the performance, Taohua was gone.

“She has gone back to live in her village,” said Mrs Ma. “We’ll have to cope without her.”

“But … how could she leave now, so close to the show?” they all asked. The dance group were puzzled and dismayed. Taohua was their best dancer, and they were proud of her, even those who were also jealous of her.

“Is she ill?” asked Yuezhu. She had not seen Taohua all that day; but that signified nothing, as they were in different classes.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs Ma, bent over the gramophone to set a record on the spindle. “I don’t know anything. She’s gone, that’s all. We’ll have to cope without her.”

Apparently the school had to cope without Teacher Bai, too. He disappeared at the same time as Taohua. Yuezhu never saw either of them again. Her classmates gossiped that something disgraceful had happened, something very dirty; but nobody really knew anything. Yuezhu wondered if Taohua had jiggled Teacher Bai’s jiba and somehow been found out. However, she said nothing about it. She didn’t know whether Taohua had spoken to anyone else about the jiba business, and didn’t want to implicate herself in any way.

Since there was no time to train anyone else to do the water-sprite dance with her, Yuezhu did it alone. She was nervous, though, and embarrassed somehow for Taohua’s absence, and lost the music a couple of times. The applause was no more than polite.

Chapter 14

Moon Pearl Makes the Acquaintance of Yellow Tiger

A Situation in the Affairs of Our Country

The middle school had no dance group. Yuezhu did not mind this as much as she would have expected to. The fiasco of the graduation performance had dulled her interest. Besides, beginning that fall, some change had come over her. She felt a lassitude, a distance from her surroundings. There was no reason for it that she could understand. The only real physical symptoms were sudden, brief spells of heat and an occasional fierce pain in her lower belly that seemed to exist only by and for itself, never resolving into vomiting or diarrhea, just coming and going without warning.

In the winter months, when the little town was folded in dull clammy mists, she sometimes practiced her dances alone in the apartment after school. Her heart was not in it, however, and she soon stopped, stopped dancing altogether. Her heart was not in anything. She wanted to sleep all the time, and had trouble rousing herself from her customary afternoon nap. In the spring, when Youth League activities started, she excused herself time and time again, to go home and sleep. Normally this would have been frowned upon. Youth League activities in the spring were mostly concerned with trooping out into the countryside to help the peasants, and this was all supposed to be a key part of one’s political education. But Teacher Zou Liuye, the leader of Yuezhu’s section, seemed to be very understanding about Yuezhu’s pains and flushings.

“It’s part of growing up,” she said each time Yuezhu asked to be excused. “Go home and rest.”

Comrade Zou was a popular teacher, one of the few who did her work with any enthusiasm. A single woman in her twenties, she always had an air of energy and purpose about her. She loved all kinds of sports, and during the winter months had tried without success to interest Yuezhu in volleyball.

“Chairman Mao says we young people are the luckiest people in the world,” she had said to Yuezhu on one of these occasions. “Working together, with all our youth and health, we can build communism very quickly. Sport is one way we can practice working together, don’t you see?”

“Yes,” said Yuezhu. “It’s just that I am so sleepy. And my skin feels hot, as if I have a fever.”

“It’s part of growing up,” said Comrade Zou. “Better go home and rest.”

Yuezhu thought it very odd to hear Comrade Zou say “we young people.” Up to that point she had thought of adults in general, and teachers in particular, as a separate species. Now she saw—it was obvious once seen—that Comrade Zou, and by extension other teachers, other adults, were merely larger versions of herself.

Yuezhu thought the real reason she got off so lightly was that her father was a military man. It was dawning on her that other people looked up to the military, and to everyone associated with it, and were keen to show consideration to her on this account.

A great many things were dawning on her all at once. It seemed now, in spite of the languor oppressing her spirit, that every month brought some little revelation of this sort, some awakening. Father himself seemed to be changing in front of her eyes, though she was vaguely aware that the change was mostly in herself.

Her dimmest memories of Father were happy ones. When she was very small he had loved to cuddle and kiss her, calling her his Precious Pearl (the second character of her name meant “pearl”). She had used to sit on his knee while he listened to the radio, sometimes falling asleep there, her cheek against the rough green serge of his uniform. Later, perhaps as a consequence of his advancing in rank and taking on more responsibilities, he had retreated to become a gruff, remote presence, not often home and disapproving of most of what Yuezhu liked to do. He had not liked her being a Little Red Guard, for example, though he had made no move to stop it.

Now she detected in him a new attitude, something of tenderness and concern. It was pretty well hidden by his habitual outward manner—she perceived now how much he liked to see himself as a plain, no-nonsense man of action, his finer feelings all set aside the better to make revolution. Now, just visible beneath that carapace, were these new aspects. Perhaps not really new, perhaps they had always been there, and she was only just noticing.

Certainly there was more opportunity to notice: she was at home more, and so was he. Father’s chief—the commander of the military region which included Seven Kill Stele—had fallen out of favor with the leadership in Beijing, was being given no responsibilities and seemed to be keeping quiet, hoping for a change of policy. The chief’s uncertainty and passivity had transmitted itself to his subordinates, as will always happen in an army; and with all the Red Guard factions now thoroughly suppressed, there was little for Father’s unit to do.

At Yuezhu’s thirteenth birthday party in April he had made no complaint, referring to it frankly as a birthday party, letting Mother make a full table of food, and bringing down the Five Grain Liquor again. He even poured a tiny cup for Yuezhu, and bade her drink it.

“You’re old enough now,” Father said. “Not a child much longer.”

From the words, and the look he gave her across the table, it seemed that he was offering a valediction, as if she were going away on a journey, never to return. Yuezhu felt sad, terribly sad, though she really did not know why. Seeing her sadness, Father smiled to reassure her.

“Still, you will always be my Precious Pearl,” he added, as Yuezhu’s eyes watered and her throat burned from the liquor.

Mother clicked her tongue. “So sentimental!” she said, perhaps misreading Yuezhu’s tears. “How long since you said such things to your wife?”

“I’m celebrating youth here,” replied Father, smiling at Yuezhu again. “We are husband and wife, but we are no longer young.”

Mother’s attitude was curious too. As Father seemed to be moving closer to Yuezhu, Mother was retreating to a distance. Several times when Yuezhu was alone with her she thought Mother was on the point of saying something, but at the last moment would turn away and lapse into irritability.

As Father’s disapprovals melted away, Mother seemed to acquire a few of her own. She thought Yuezhu’s clothes were too tight. She let out what could be let out, and took in two of her own blouses for Yuezhu to wear. Yuezhu thought them much too baggy, but had no energy to protest.

Mother also disapproved of Mustache. This was Yuezhu’s best friend at the middle school. Mustache was a boy, of course: a town boy, whose father worked as a foreman in the textile factory. The same age as Yuezhu, and in the same class, he was big-boned and dark-skinned and sported a line of dark hairs on his upper lip, from which of course the classmates had awarded his nickname. Altogether he looked rather a rough type. At first Yuezhu had thought he really was a rough type, and avoided him on that account. Once, in the schoolyard, she had overheard him say “dogfuck,” the local dialect’s all-purpose expletive. This had put her off, and she had rebuffed his first attempts at friendship. Mustache took this in a good humor, and waited for his chances to walk to class with her, to sit next to her at meetings, to help her with mathematics (which Yuezhu could not cope with at all), and quickly showed her that he was in fact a sensitive and sympathetic companion. He liked her a lot, she knew. He took obvious, unconditional pleasure in her company, was a good listener, and had a fund of jokes and stories that made her laugh.

Some of Mustache’s opinions were very shocking, though. He declared perfect lack of interest in politics, which he said was just a kind of game played by the leaders in Beijing.

“But don’t you love Chairman Mao?” asked Yuezhu in bafflement when Mustache first shared his heresy with her.

“Old Mao? Oh, he’s all right.”

Yuezhu thought this outrageous. “All right? All right? He’s the Great Helmsman of our country! Of all the workers and peasants all over the world! The greatest Marxist-Leninist that ever lived! How can you be so disrespectful, calling him Old Mao?”

Mustache laughed. “Do you think Old Mao cares about you?”

“Of course he does! He cares about all the people!”

“What, all eight hundred million of us? He really must have his time cut out then, mustn’t he?”

“Don’t you think he cares about us? About you?”

Mustache shrugged. “Heaven is high, the Emperor is far away,” he said, quoting an old proverb.

Shocked as she was by Mustache’s careless skepticism, Yuezhu now found herself thinking critically about matters she had never questioned before. China was so vast, with thousands of counties, towns and villages—not to mention the big cities like Chengdu and Beijing. Could Chairman Mao really watch over all of it all the time? Probably not. The very thought scandalized her; yet it kept coming back. Beijing was, as Mustache said, very far away.

She dared not share any of Mustache’s opinions with Mother, much less with Father, but Mother disapproved of Mustache anyway. The grounds of her disapproval were, apparently, just that Mustache was a boy. Yuezhu couldn’t see why this made a difference. She had been friends with boys before, and nobody had seemed to mind. Now Mother minded.

“You should be careful with boys. Don’t let them take any liberties with you.”

Yuezhu didn’t understand what this meant. What liberties might Mustache take? She prompted Mother to explain, but Mother only replied: “Be careful. Men are like porcupines, you mustn’t get too close.”

*

In the summer there was a work camp for all the middle-school students. It was out in the countryside, attached to one of the larger production brigades. It was too far for them all to walk, so a truck came from the production brigade to fetch them. The students thought this very exciting. Most of them had never ridden in any motor vehicle before, other than a bus. To stand in the open back of the truck, bowling along at thirty miles an hour with the air—so still and humid at this season—rushing over your skin like a mountain breeze, was thrilling to them. They stood there waving and calling to people they passed on the road.

The truck left town on the road that turned past the college. Here there was the bamboo grove where Yuezhu had played with Liang Weilin, back when they were children together. She had hardly thought of him since that time. His father had turned out to be a counter-revolutionary, so Weilin must have been a counter-revolutionary too—unless he had denounced his father, of course. There had been a struggle meeting—she remembered now—and Weilin’s father had been beaten black and blue, which of course was no more than he deserved, and when the righteous anger of the masses had boiled over she had been trampled, and the skin had been scraped from her leg. It had got infected and taken ages to heal. However, she couldn’t remember whether or not Weilin had denounced his father. It didn’t matter, anyway. It was a shameful thing, to have been so friendly with a counter-revolutionary, or even with the son of a counter-revolutionary, whether he had denounced or not. She hoped nobody else remembered it. Watching the bamboo grove dwindle through the cloud of dust in the truck’s wake, she recalled hearing someone say that the Liang family had left the town, gone to live somewhere else. So that was all right, probably nobody would ever know she had been friends with a counter-revolutionary.

Further along the road was the place where the actual Seven Kill Stele had stood, the one the town was named after—unofficially, at any rate. The town appeared on maps, and was always referred to by the leaders, as Hibiscus Slope. It had been awarded this name—rather arbitrarily, as the town itself was quite flat and was not adorned with any very striking quantity of hibiscus—after Liberation, the authorities perhaps feeling that Seven Kill Stele was too gruesome a name for a pleasant country town. The local people, however, like country people everywhere, were very conservative. They considered that, as inauspicious as the old name might be, the town had prospered pretty well under it, and they would be inviting bad luck by discarding it.

Like everyone else, Yuezhu always referred to the town informally as Seven Kill Stele, but she had never thought about the name, or inquired its origin. She had not known that the stele was a real stele until Mustache pointed the place out to her. The stele itself was not there any more, having been pulled down after Liberation; but its great square plinth was still just visible in the long grass at the roadside, thick with lichen and moss. Mustache told her the story of the Seven Kill Stele.

The Seven Kill Stele

First you must know the story of Zhang Xianzhong, the Yellow Tiger of Sichuan.

During the disorders at the end of the Ming Dynasty the warlord Zhang Xianzhong seized control of the western provinces. There he ruled as King of the West for several years. Zhang was a fierce and cruel man, known as Yellow Tiger, from his yellow eyes and his cruelty.

At first Yellow Tiger was a routine end-of-dynasty warlord: liberating the peasants, rewarding his followers, and suppressing landlords. Then his mind turned some dark corner and he began killing people wholesale. First he killed all the scholars of the western regions, inviting them to a ‘special examination’ in his capital, then massacring them. After that he killed all the Buddhist and Taoist priests. Then he just started killing everybody. He killed everybody his men could find. Only people who escaped into the high mountains survived. He even developed a hatred of the inanimate world, burning forests and destroying buildings.

When the Manchus had conquered north China and declared their dynasty, they turned their attention to the west. Hearing that their advance parties had been seen at the borders of his kingdom, Yellow Tiger called his men together at a mass assembly. “We shall soon fight our greatest battle,” he told them. “In order that you may fight as soldiers should fight, without hesitation, without looking back, without any regard for yourselves or those who depend on you, I command you now to kill all your womenfolk and children.” Yellow Tiger then slew his own eight wives right there in front of his men, to give them a good example. Such was the loyalty (or perhaps just terror) he inspired that his men all followed him, hacking their women and children to death in a frenzy of slaughter until there was no inch of ground not soaked with the blood of these unarmed innocents.

Yellow Tiger then rode out to his borders to meet the Manchus. The Manchus, however, were the world’s finest archers. Spotting Yellow Tiger at a distance, a Manchu scout let fly an arrow, which found its mark. Seeing their master fall from his horse, his men fled and his power collapsed.

Such was the fate of Zhang Xianzhong who, at the height of his power in the west, set up the Seven Kill Stele. The stele was a response to one of his generals, who had asked: “Sire, why do you take such joy in killing?” Replied Yellow Tiger: “I’ll show you why.” He then had a stele erected in the middle of the desolation he had made. On the Stele were carved three columns of characters in his own handwriting. The characters said:

Heaven has brought forth a myriad things to nourish mankind.

Yet men do not do one good deed in gratitude to Heaven.

Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill.

This was known all over the southwest as the Seven “Kill” Stele. When it was ready the general who had asked the question was staked out on the ground and the great stone plinth lowered slowly down onto him.

The work camp was not as poor a place as Yuezhu had feared. The production brigade it belonged to was, in fact, one of the richest in the province. And it was fun to be there with all the classmates, working together. The weather was sunny—an unusual thing in this region where, according to the folk saying, dogs barked at the sun, being so unused to seeing it through skies turbid with humidity. In the evenings the leaders would organize community singing, or bring in some of the older peasants to tell colorful stories about their lives before Liberation.

The brigade did not actually let them do any important work, as it would only have had to be done all over again when the students had left. They sent them into the hills to get firewood, had them dam a stream to make a fish-pool, let them help with a tree-planting project. None of this was very arduous, though Mustache and another boy were nearly drowned when their first attempt at a dam broke. In the stifling heat of August the pace of life in the production brigade was in any case very slow. The peasants rose early, worked until the heat of the day became oppressive, then disappeared for three or four hours. Yuezhu was of course used to taking a one-hour nap after lunch; but here the long still afternoons, with not a soul to be seen, seemed to drag out to infinity. She lay on her mat in the girls’ house, looking out through the window at the hot brassy sky, sleeping fitfully.

Strange daytime dreams troubled her. Time and again she was in the bamboo grove with Liang Weilin, the counter-revolutionary boy. Once he had a great halberd, like the one Duke Guan, the God of War, is always portrayed with. Weilin was holding the shaft of the halberd, and its blade was buried in Yuezhu’s belly. Oddly, it drew no blood; but the pain it gave her was terrible. She twisted and turned, trying to free herself from the halberd, but the more she twisted the worse the pain got, and she woke with the pain, and it was with her all the afternoon and evening. In another dream Weilin had no halberd, but was floating a foot or so off the ground, equipped with huge iridescent butterfly wings. The colors of the wings shimmered and danced in a way that was horrifying yet hypnotic, but which did not altogether distract Yuezhu from noticing that Weilin was entirely naked. His skin was very smooth and golden; and the whole dream was delicious and thrilling, and shameful and terrifying, all at once.

There was a classmate, one of the girls, whose father was a worker at the college in Seven Kill Stele, the college at which Weilin’s father had been a Professor. Not understanding why she was having these strange bright dreams about Weilin, Yuezhu wanted to ask the girl what had happened to him. She did not like the dreams, did not want to have them. She wanted to know that Weilin really had left the town, preferably for somewhere far away. Several times she was on the point of asking the girl, but each time the fear of it being generally known that she had been friends with a counter-revolutionary family deterred her. When the time came to go back to town for the fall semester, she still had not asked. Driving back in the truck, Yuezhu deliberately turned her head away when they passed the bamboo grove, calling out to Mustache to distract herself: “Elder Brother! Look at the birds!” and pointing up to where a flight of geese were passing high, high overhead.

*

When school restarted everything seemed different. It was as if she had grown physically during the vacation. The classrooms were all smaller than she remembered, the teachers more abject and dull. Dullest of all were the political study meetings. Yuezhu could never have said she found political study interesting, but she had always done her best with it, sure it must be important, determined to try to understand Chairman Mao’s Thoughts and exhortations. Now she found herself dozing as the Branch Secretary droned away, unable to make any sense of his words at all, and not really wanting to.

Then, late in September, there was a political study meeting that was not dull at all, that she remembered for the rest of her life.

Something had been in the air for several days, though no-one could say what it was. Father was summoned to meetings which lasted all day and far into the night—Yuezhu heard him coming home at two, three o’clock in the morning. The handful of teachers who were Party members—including sporty Comrade Zou—were summoned to a big meeting at county headquarters, along with all the Party people from the administrative staff. Then the other teachers, the non-Party members, had an all-day meeting, from which they emerged looking even more cowed than usual. Everyone knew something was going on. Mustache gave it as his opinion that it was a movement, a new movement.

“Oh,” said Yuezhu. “And shall we be Red Guards again?”

“Perhaps,” said Mustache. “Or perhaps we shall all be counter-revolutionaries this time.”

Yuezhu chided him for his cynicism, at the same time reflecting that she really did not want to be a Red Guard again.

When at last the political study meeting was called, it was a big one, for the whole school, held in the auditorium. Instead of a teacher or a branch secretary of the Party, the students were addressed by Secretary Bu, the Party Secretary for the whole town. He looked very grand up there on the stage, flanked by the school’s own secretary and branch secretaries, and some cadres from the town office, and two men in military uniforms.

The school secretary mumbled an introduction. “Classmates! Comrades! There has been a situation in the great affairs of our country. These cadres have come to tell us about it.”

Some of the students frowned and exchanged glances, but no-one said anything. Yuezhu felt dizzy from the heat of the auditorium. She had suffered badly from the cramps in her belly that morning. Now the cramps had gone, but had left her weak. They had been bothering her occasionally for months now, and she thought perhaps she would go to the clinic with them, or at least tell Mother. Here in the heavy, still auditorium, she wanted to lean back and rest; but the bench she and Mustache were sitting on had no back.

The school secretary stepped to one side and Secretary Bu went into his address at once.

“Comrades! There has been a plot against our country! Against our Party! Against our great leader Chairman Mao!”

Someone cried out at the far side of the hall. Near Yuezhu, several students gasped. A murmur rose up, rippling back and forth across the auditorium, until Comrade Zou clapped her hands to restore silence.

“Fortunately the security forces of our country discovered this plot,” Secretary Bu continued. “The ringleaders have been arrested. Chairman Mao is safe! Our revolution is safe!”

“Long Live Chairman Mao!” called out one of the students. Some others echoed him.

“The leader of this plot, in collusion with foreign hegemonists and imperialists, was Marshal Lin Biao.”

What? What? Now the buzz of talk started up again. “Lin Biao? Lin Biao?” people were saying. Nobody could believe it. Comrade Zou had to clap her hands several times before Secretary Bu could go on.

“Masquerading as a protector of the revolution and comrade-in-arms of Chairman Mao, the treacherous Lin attempted to overthrow the Party and establish personal dictatorship. But he and his clique have been destroyed. The danger is past. Long Live the Communist Party of the Chinese People’s Republic! Long Live Chairman Mao!”

He stepped back abruptly, nodded to the town cadres, and they all turned and left the stage. Yuezhu, like most of her classmates, was stunned. When the school secretary had mumbled his way through a long speech about safeguarding the People’s Democratic Dictatorship and upholding the General Line, Yuezhu turned to Mustache.

“Marshal Lin Biao!” she whispered. “Can you believe it?”

“Of course,” whispered back Mustache, affecting nonchalance. “As I’ve often told you, it’s just a game.” But Yuezhu could see that even he had been shaken by the news.

It seemed that she herself had been more affected than she knew. When the meeting was over and she stood to go, she almost fell. Her head span, her ears rang, and she felt she was losing her balance. Somehow she stayed upright, and turned to file out between the benches. Behind her, she heard Mustache gasp.

“Little Sister!” he croaked, in a voice she could hardly recognize.

“What? What is it?”

He was looking down at the bench, a very strange expression on his face, something she had not seen before.

“Little Sister … your seat …”

“My seat?” But even before she looked down at the bench where she had been sitting, Yuezhu became aware of the sticky wetness. Involuntarily she put a hand behind her, feeling at her pants. The tips of her fingers came away crimson; and now she was looking at the bench, at the oval pool of blood beginning to drip onto the floor.

Chapter 15

A Young Man’s Tears Flow at Parting

An American President Makes Little Impression

The family was to move to Beijing. It happened all at once, a few weeks after the downfall of Lin Biao. Father announced the move over dinner one evening.

“The whole brigade’s moving up there,” he said. “Part of the Consolidation.”

Yuezhu had heard this word “Consolidation” several times the past week or so, in Father and Mother’s talk or on the barracks loudspeakers, but she had no idea what it meant. Father explained it all, speaking very frankly, as he did to her nowadays, and with obvious satisfaction.

“My chief, Divisional Commander Hu Pinghui, you’ve often heard me speak of him. Old revolutionary from the Long March. Well, he grumbled about the Cultural Revolution, like a lot of others. When the Ninth Party Congress came along he was frozen out by Lin Biao. Lin wanted to get all his own people in, everywhere important. That’s why we’ve been sitting out here on our rear ends these two years past, watching the bamboo grow. Now since Marshall Lin’s downfall there’s been a big shake-up going on. You know the saying: ‘When the lips are gone the teeth are cold.’ All the people Lin moved up are under suspicion of being in his plot, so the leaders want some good reliable old soldiers around them, people they know had nothing to do with Lin. People like my chief. That’s why we’re going to Beijing.”

“Shall we be able to see Half Brother?” asked Yuezhu at once. Father smiled and nodded and said he hoped they would, Half Brother’s unit currently being stationed in Hebei Province next to Beijing. However, he added, things were in such a state of flux that no-one in the military could be sure where he’d be posted to this time next week, soYuezhu should not get her hopes too high.

Lying awake under her mosquito net that evening, the full glory of their new posting came home to her. To Beijing! Capital of the People’s Republic! Where Chairman Mao lived! Where he had proclaimed the People’s Republic from Heavenly Peace Gate! Where Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had built the Great Hall of the People! Where there were all the best schools, best movies, best parks, best restaurants! There would be a new middle school—surely, in Beijing, a school with a dance group!

Sleeping, Yuezhu dreamed of Beijing (which she had never seen): the red walls of the Imperial City, boulevards a hundred meters wide, the Summer Palace with its stone boat and seventeen-arch bridge. Sometime in ’66 or ’67, in one of the public rooms at the barracks, she had seen a wall calendar with a picture of one of the great Red Guard demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. In the picture, the sky above Heavenly Peace Gate was full of bright red balloons, each trailing a streamer with one of Chairman Mao’s Thoughts on it in gold script. Now, in her dream, she mingled with the throngs in Tiananmen Square—everyone smart-dressed, everyone handsome—and the air above them full of bright red balloons.

She was full of the excitement of it when she told Mustache, walking between classes the morning after Father’s announcement. To her surprise, Mustache looked stunned. He stopped dead, stared at her in obvious dismay for a moment or two, then, in a voice oddly hoarse, asked: “How long will you be in Beijing?”

For ever, I hope, was Yuezhu’s inward response; but seeing poor Mustache’s face, she could not say it. “I … I don’t really know. These army postings, you know … they’re unpredictable.”

Mustache was still looking at her with that devastated expression. All her life, through much greater trials and revelations, Yuezhu was to remember his expression at that moment. At last he lowered his eyes, turned, and continued walking. Having seen his distress, Yuezhu’s joy was eclipsed. Mustache was in love with her! It was clear to see now, and she wondered why it had never occurred to her before. She could think of nothing to say, and they walked along in silence to the door of their classroom. Just outside the door, still out of earshot of the classmates, Mustache stopped, looked at her again, and said in his normal voice: “I hope you will write to me from Beijing.”

“I will. Of course I will.”

That was Tuesday. Mustache did not come to school on Wednesday or Thursday. Yuezhu sought out his sister, in one of the junior classes. Mustache was ill, said the sister. Nothing serious, only a sore throat.

The family was to leave for Beijing on Friday morning. On Thursday afternoon all the classmates came up to Yuezhu to say farewell. There was no great ceremony about it. Students—especially those from army families—arrived and left all the time. Yuezhu thought Mustache might come in for the purpose, but he did not appear.

Instead he came to her parents’ apartment that evening. He would not come in, so Yuezhu stepped out into the corridor to say good-bye. Mustache had brought gifts for her: a neat little boxed set of writing paper and envelopes, a fountain pen, a little pack of Shanghai candies, a pretty plastic barrette for her hair, and a fine thick exercise book with a pink plastic cover. Inside the exercise book, on the first page, written in Mustache’s somewhat clumsy, ill-proportioned characters, were two lines from a well-known untitled poem by the Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin:

Silkworms cease making silk only when they die;

Candles end their weeping only when burned away.

[“Making silk” being a sound-pun on “thinking of you.”] When she had read the lines and closed the exercise book, Yuezhu looked up at Mustache to thank him. Mustache’s face bore an expression of utter hopelessness; and before she could actually say anything, he started to weep.

Yuezhu could think of nothing to say to comfort him. Clearly he was in the grip of very strong emotion; but she herself felt nothing, except embarrassment and a sort of incipient irritation. She had thought they were just friends. How was she supposed to know he was in love with her?

“Zizhong,” she said, using his personal name. “Zizhong … I’m sorry. I didn’t know …”

She put the exercise book back into the cloth bag with the other gifts, and set the bag down on the bare concrete floor. Mustache had his hands over his face now, pressed flat against his face. Yuezhu reached up tentatively and touched his arm.

“I’m sorry, Zizhong.”

“Not your fault,” mumbled Mustache. “My fault.”

“You should have told me.”

“Wanted to. You didn’t seem … I didn’t think … Oh, Yuezhu!”

Mustache took her hand with one of his. His hand was all wet from tears. His face was wet, too, all over, and his eyes were red. So many tears!

“You will write to me, won’t you?” said Mustache, looking at her with his red eyes.

“Of course I will.”

“Use the paper I gave you.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I will come to see you in Beijing.”

“Yes. Good. All right.”

He had a wild look now, and for a terrifying moment Yuezhu thought he was going to grab her and kiss her. But he just turned and went off down the corridor, leaving her standing there with her bag full of treasures. It was the most embarrassing thing Yuezhu had ever experienced. If this was the love between men and women that was spoken of in the old stories (Yuezhu reflected, letting herself back into the apartment), she wanted no more of it.

*

They traveled to Beijing by train, hard sleeper class. With the rank of Colonel, Father was actually entitled to travel soft sleeper; but he chose hard class anyway, saying that the People’s Liberation Army should always stay close to the common people, and not seek privilege or favor. It was a long trip: up and through the Qinling Mountains, the peaks glittering white in the clear cold air; down into the valley of the Wei, where civilization first took root and the Yellow Emperor, first ancestor of their race, rode in his chariot to court; on to Xi’an, the ancient capital of the Empire, from which Li Longji, last truly great Emperor of the glorious Tang dynasty, fled in ignominy from the armies of the rebel An Lushan, purchasing the loyalty of his own troops with the life of his dearest concubine; along the Yellow River plain, dust and donkeys, to Zhengzhou; then northward over the rich heartlands to Beijing.

They had been assigned an apartment in the West Wall area, where high cadres and military people lived. The apartment was grand beyond Yuezhu’s wildest imaginings. There were huge soft armchairs, such as you saw in newspaper photographs of the nation’s leaders playing host to foreign delegations. In the kitchen was a refrigerator—a monster of a thing in gleaming white, made in Poland, humming and clanking to itself in odd unfathomable rhythms as if to impress them with its grandeur and their own provincial backwardness. Most astounding of all, there was a TV—Chinese this one, made in Shanghai. Yuezhu turned on the TV at once, as soon as they had all their bags in the apartment. At first there was nothing on the screen; then a random fuzziness, and a rising hiss from the speaker.

“They only broadcast certain hours,” said Father. “It’s too early.”

Disappointed, but still thrilled at the family’s new status, Yuezhu switched the thing off. So much to learn!

Her new school was at first as intimidating as all else in this mighty city. It was new-built, fine stylish modern buildings in glass and concrete, with large asphalt areas for games and drills. There was a science laboratory with balances, retorts and bell jars locked in glass wall cases. There was a grand modern auditorium with a piano, and an entire library of books, most of it unfortunately closed since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Arriving several weeks into the fall semester Yuezhu had of course expected to find herself behind in lessons, but the situation was much worse than she had feared. Though there was, technically, only a single middle-school curriculum for the whole country, from the frozen rivers of the far north to sweltering Canton, from the lush fields of the Yangtse delta to the dusty steppe of Turkestan, in reality the Beijing schools were far ahead of the provinces. Even now, five years into the Great Cultural Revolution, with the nation’s intellectual life in ruins, the ruins were far more imposing in the capital city, and much better inhabited. Even when classroom studies of history and society have been reduced to the parsing of newspaper editorials, the parsing can be done with or without style, the Thoughts interpreted with or without understanding of thought in general, the barren slogans of despotism served warm or cold.

The very speech of her teachers and classmates set Yuezhu at a disadvantage. Practically everyone was a Beijing native and spoke with the knowing, supercilious drawl of the capital. Yuezhu had been raised to speak Mandarin, which was the only dialect permitted in the military; but it had been book-Mandarin, an abstract construct in the same relation to the speech of the capital as the geometer’s ideal points and lines to the strokes of an artist’s brush, and in any case modified by the southwestern sounds she had been immersed in all her life. Here she became painfully aware that the cutting winter wind beginning to sweep down from Mongolia was ferngr, not fong; and that “l” and “n” were two perfectly different and distinct consonants; and, in short, that her tongue betrayed her as a hopeless bumpkin.

There were, of course, compensations. Instead of Russian, the usual foreign language in provincial middle schools, West Wall District Number 14 taught English, with no less than three teachers on staff. An American pingpong team had visited China that spring and the Beijing people all understood, with their instinct born of living at the center of power for generations, that America was now a friend and Russia an enemy, even though these facts had never been publicly announced. Everybody was keen to learn English, to the degree that several teachers sat in on the lessons, chanting the rote phrases and copying out the exercises with all the others. A year behind, Yuezhu started at a great disadvantage, but there were two other pupils in the same situation, and elderly Teacher An (in Beijing, apparently, it was quite all right to refer to people as “Teacher,” or even as “Mr” and “Mrs” instead of the more proper, revolutionary “Comrade”), gave them catch-up lessons after school. Yuezhu discovered an aptitude for foreign languages, quickly piling up a big vocabulary which she carried everywhere with her in the smart, durable exercise book Mustache had given her, running her eye down the word lists when other classes got boring, until every word, and even its position on its page, were fixed in her mind.

Teacher An’s obsession was phonetics. “You can have ten thousand words of vocabulary,” she would say, “but they are just fart gas, no use at all, unless people can understand what you’re saying.”

“Every people has its own way of making speech sounds,” she would say. “An English ‘t’ is by no means the same as a Chinese ‘t’; an English ‘a’ is quite different from a Chinese ‘a.’”

“Air comes out from the lungs through the mouth and nose,” Teacher An would say. “If there is nothing to obstruct it, it comes out silently. To make a sound, you must obstruct it. Only four things can obstruct it: the lips, the tongue, the soft palate, and the vocal chords. Of these four, only the tongue is really capable.”

Teacher An could draw the standard phoneticist’s diagram—the cross-section of the human speech apparatus—almost instantaneously, with a few swift strokes of the chalk. She drew a dozen or more each lesson, showing the human tongue in all its versatility: the tip advanced or retracted, the surface high or depressed, the body of the organ bulked back or forward.

“If you can always know what your tongue is doing, you can speak any language perfectly,” Teacher An asserted.

Yuezhu was fascinated by all this. She had never in her life given a moment’s thought to what her tongue was doing. It was just there, in your mouth, sometimes getting in the way when you chewed things, its surface an index of your health for doctors of traditional medicine. Now she realized that she had all these years been harboring a wild beast, bucking and writhing in its narrow dark cave. Diligently she tamed the creature, working it round the twelve English vowels and the eight diphthongs, holding the sounds for as long as she could, teasing and coaxing it a millimeter here, a millimeter there. She thought at last she had attained the state of grace sought by Teacher An, in which she always knew what her tongue was doing. She applied this new facility to her Chinese, easily turning her southern dz, sz, ts to the soft round retroflexes of Beijing: zh, sh, ch.

“Observe Han Yuezhu,” said Teacher An to the whole English class one day at the end of the first year. “She has mastered her tongue. The rest is nothing, just listening and memorization.”

“Learn from Han Yuezhu!

Her tongue knows what to do!”

was Baoyu’s own tribute to her accomplishment. Baoyu was the first real friend she made at Number 14. He was the star of the school’s dance group.

The dance group at Number 14 was a much more serious affair than the one at Seven Kill Stele. Teacher Li, who ran Number 14’s dance group, had actually been a professional dancer herself in her younger days, with one of the Army’s entertainment units. She not only knew the folk dances and revolutionary dances, but even some foreign-style ballet, which she had learned during a spell in Russia in the 1940s. Baoyu pestered her once to teach then some foreign-style ballet, but she claimed she could not.

“You need a barre,” she said, “and full-length mirrors. A floor of sprung wood, special shoes with rosin for the soles. And lots of foreign-style music, which of course is considered counter-revolutionary nowadays. Quite correctly so, I mean,” she added quickly.

For “barre” she used a Chinese word, wuba, that none of them had heard before. It sounded slightly ludicrous in Chinese, and some students giggled.

“It’s a long wooden rail set against the wall, with mirrors all around,” said Teacher Li. “You hold onto it for support while you exercise your free limbs.”

Yuezhu caught the idea immediately. From then on, when she did warming-up or practice exercises, she tried to find something to hold on to, to balance herself. There were no mirrors, of course, but when at school she asked Baoyu to judge and correct her positions.

Baoyu had introduced himself to Yuezhu at the first session she attended, in November that first year. He went over to her directly when she walked in to the practice room, where the group were standing round waiting for their instructor.

“You’re a new girl!” he exclaimed, as if this were an occasion for great joy. “How wonderful! You are so pretty!”

He held out a hand to her. The hand was slim and delicate, but held hers firmly.

“My name is Cao Gang, but everybody calls me Baoyu, because I like to make friends with girls.”

Baoyu is the name of the main character in Red Chamber Dream, the greatest of classic Chinese novels. He cared only for the company of girls and completely neglected the serious, manly side of life, to his father’s anger and disgust. Baoyu means “Precious Jade,” because in the novel Baoyu was said to have been born holding a tiny piece of jade in his mouth. Yuezhu of course understood the allusion at once. Anybody who could read knew Red Chamber Dream, even if only through popular illustrated versions.

Baoyu was the same height as herself, but somewhat younger. He was quite extraordinarily good-looking—beautiful, you could say—large mobile eyes in an angel’s face, his frame lithe and wiry, posed now with his feet at an obtuse angle, like a foreign-style ballet dancer.

“I’m the best dancer in the group,” he went on, striking another pose, arms curved above his head now in perfect form. “None of the others can compare with me!”

Yuezhu laughed at his naive immodesty, and told him her name, explaining the characters.

“It’s a lovely name!” exclaimed Baoyu, his mouth puckered in admiration. “Moon Pearl—sounds just like one of Baoyu’s handmaidens! Will you be my handmaiden? I hate my own name. It’s Gang meaning ‘steel,’ you know. My father thinks everyone should be hard as steel, to serve the revolution. Actually I just want to dance.”

“Well, there are many ways to serve the revolution and serve the people,” said Yuezhu, thinking (the cynicism of the capital already beginning to penetrate her sensibilities) that perhaps she sounded somewhat priggish. “If you dance well and give pleasure to others, isn’t that serving the people?”

“Of course it is!” cried Baoyu, pirouetting away across the room. “Look at me, everybody! I’m serving the people!”

Yuezhu soon got used to Baoyu. She thought him the sweetest of all the boys she had known. He was vain, of course, and sometimes silly, but there was no malice in him, nothing at all secretive or indirect. It was impossible to imagine Baoyu telling a lie—he wouldn’t have known how. He had an odd way of speaking, which added to his charm: when the mood took him, he would lapse into impromptu verse, or at any rate doggerel—little rhyming couplets or quatrains, like the jingles in infant story-books or the duilian pairs of harmonized mottoes that country people stuck to their doorposts for Spring Festival, black or gold characters on red paper.

*

It was with Baoyu that she first saw Red Detachment of Women. This was one of the revolutionary ballets that had come up since the Cultural Revolution began. It was about some peasant women in Hainan Island during the war against Chiang Kaishek, who had liberated themselves from their cruel landlords and formed their own army unit. A movie had been made of the ballet the previous year, but Yuezhu had left the southwest before the movie was shown there. When Baoyu knew this he got tickets to the movie at one of the Beijing theaters, and they went to see it together. He had seen it before, when it first came out in the capital, but said he didn’t mind seeing it again.

“When you’ve seen foreign-style ballet,” he said, “these folk dances we do seem very tame.”

Yuezhu had never seen foreign-style ballet before. Red Detachment of Women overwhelmed her. The thrilling leaps and turns, the precision of the ensembles, the vigor and crash of the music, all left her breathless.

“So beautiful!” she sighed to Baoyu coming out of the movie theater. “Why can’t we learn this kind of dancing?”

“Needs too much equipment to learn it, just as Teacher Li said. That would be ‘expert.’”

Politics at this time was dominated by a conflict between the adjectives “red” and “expert”—an antithesis that the ingenious Professor Bauer has traced back to the religious controversies of the Bronze Age. To be “red” was to dedicate oneself heart and soul to Chairman Mao and the revolution. To be “expert” was to believe that specialized knowledge or technique was more important than political ardor. The Party had declared that redness, with some allowances, was to be preferred to expertise.

We must all be red!

Never mind learning skills.

Chairman Mao’s Thoughts

Will cure all ills!

as Baoyu put it—speaking, so far as Yuezhu could tell, in all seriousness.

Baoyu could always get tickets for anything. His father was an important official in the Public Security Bureau, who had somehow avoided the purges and reorganizations of the late ’60s. He had access to all kinds of privileges.

Seeing how much Yuezhu had liked Red Detachment of Women, Baoyu pulled off his greatest coup. In February, when the American President Nixon came to visit China, the national leadership put on a performance of this very ballet for their distinguished guest in the Great Hall of the People. Baoyu’s father was invited, along with most of the senior cadres in the capital, and somehow found two extra tickets.

It was the greatest experience of Yuezhu’s life to that point. Not the fact that the American President was there (from their position they could catch only a glimpse of him—a very smart-looking man with surprising dark-brown skin the color of coffin-wood and very white teeth) as that she herself was. The Great Hall was magnificent, the seats upholstered in red velvet, the stage vast, the ceiling as remote as the sky itself. And the performance, when at last it began (everyone except the most senior cadres had had to seat themselves two hours early so that everything was in order when the President arrived) surpassed the movie version a thousand, ten thousand times! You could see the dancers, their actual faces and bodies, actual people, and hear the thump of their feet on the stage. The orchestra seemed to come from everywhere, all around, rolling and crashing from the walls and the ceiling so high. Yuezhu watched in a trance, completely taken out of herself, her soul merged into one soul with the bright colored stage, the leaping dancers, the rolling, crashing music.

Yuezhu’s course in life was set. She was to be a dancer, a dancer of foreign-style ballet, on the stage before an orchestra. However, she did not say this to anyone, not even to Baoyu. So intense was that experience at the Great Hall of the People, so deeply did the longing to dance then enter into her adolescent soul, she cherished the knowledge of her destiny as an intimate thing, an utterly private thing, to be shared with no-one yet.

*

Half Brother came home for her fifteenth birthday in April ’73. It was his first home leave for a year and a half. Now four years in the army, he was an officer, a Lieutenant, and seemed to Yuezhu taller, broader and better-looking than ever. He interrogated her about her schoolwork, especially about her English.

“I can speak English very well now,” Yuezhu said in English, to show off.

Half Brother grinned. “I also can. Good Morning! Thank you very much!”

“Oh!” Yuezhu laughed, putting her hands to her face in surprise. “Where did you learn?”

“My unit. We have some Special Duties.” Half Brother frowned, to show the gravity of his Special Duties. “Of course I can’t tell you anything about them. But we have to study English for these Duties.”

“Everybody likes to study English now,” said Yuezhu. “Since President Nixon’s visit.”

“Oh, from even before that, I think. We had a big shock in ’69, you know. It brought the true world situation home to us.”

“Why, what happened in ’69?” Yuezhu could not think of any important event in that year. But she had been only eleven, not really paying attention to public affairs.

“The Russians attacked us on Black Dragon River, up in the far north. There are some disputed islands there, in the river. They hit us with very advanced weapons, terrible weapons.” Half Brother frowned again and shook his head in disapproval of the terrible weapons. “Frankly, we took a beating. From that point our leaders understood that we can’t live in isolation, just devoting all our energies to class struggle. The Imperialists and Hegemonists will wipe us out if they have the chance, if we don’t modernize ourselves. It’s like the Three Kingdoms …” [referring to a period of division in Chinese history, A.D. 220 to A.D. 265] “… the weakest of the three will be swallowed by the other two, as Shu was swallowed by Wei and Wu. We have to make ourselves stronger. For that we need more knowledge, knowledge of foreign things and techniques. And for that we need English, because it’s the international language.”

Part of Yuezhu, the part that had been a Little Red Guard, wanted to say: “Yes, but we have Mao Zedong Thought, which can conquer everything.” But she now understood that this was very naive, that important people—and clearly Half Brother was set fair to become an important person—did not take such ideas seriously any more, if they ever had.

She invited Baoyu to her birthday party. Father was absent on a mission, and it seemed too thin a gathering, with just herself, Mother and Half Brother. Baoyu was a perfect guest, chattering easily about school, about Beijing, about the dance group. He flattered Mother’s cooking, making her smile, and was properly deferential to Half Brother. The People’s Liberation Army wore no marks of rank at this time, but Yuezhu had already told him Half Brother was an officer.

“The army has a very good dance troupe,” he said to Half Brother. “We saw them in a movie last fall, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.”

“The army exists to serve the people,” said Half Brother. “We have all kinds of singing, dancing, and entertainment units. If the masses like to see dancing, of course the army should be involved in it.”

“Oh! That’s just what your sister said to me! Your family’s thinking is very advanced! Until then I’d thought dancing was just for personal fulfillment. My attitudes were really very bourgeois!”

Baoyu’s feigned self-criticism made everybody laugh. “Perhaps you can come and give political instruction to my regiment,” said Half Brother. Later, when Baoyu had gone home, he said: “Your friend seems more like a girl than a boy.”

“That’s just his manner. He’s very athletic, actually.”

“Hm, well. ‘After he’s spoken three sentences you know his calling.’ He’s obsessed with dancing, isn’t he? Unusual for a boy. But I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in the army.”

Chapter 16

Big Ten Bestows Favor on the Han Family

Moon Pearl Encounters a Potent Demon

Teacher Li told them about the Academy, one evening just before the Spring Festival vacation, when they were all assembled for dance class.

“The Academy of Dance will reopen in the fall,” she said. “They’ll be taking applications after Spring Festival.”

The remark did not register with Yuezhu at first but Baoyu picked up on it right away. He jumped to his feet, face all alight.

“How do we enter? Is there an examination?”

“Of course not. In revolutionary China we have no more examinations, you all know that. Big Ten abolished them.”

Big Ten was the Tenth Party Congress, which had met the previous summer, the summer of ’73. The publicity had been terrific, and the students of Number 14 had spent weeks going over the resolutions in class. On the top landing of the stairs that led up from the main entrance lobby of the school there was still a huge wall poster exhorting the students and faculty to STUDY BIG TEN!

For all the publicity, Yuezhu would not, in the normal course of things, have given a moment’s thought to Big Ten, other than what was required of her in class. People nowadays—certainly it was true of her fellow-students at Number 14—paid no more attention to public affairs than they were obliged to. There was supposed to be a movement going on, in fact: the “Criticize Confucius, Criticize Lin Biao” movement, but nobody seemed to know what it was all about and nobody paid it any attention, other than to go through the necessary motions at Political Study sessions. Everybody was just tired of movements. Yuezhu knew now, without being quite ready to say it to herself in words yet, that Mustache had been right: the movements were just games played by leaders, with the common people as pawns.

Big Ten, however had had some rather direct effects on Yuezhu’s life. For one thing, the faction favored by Father’s chief had strengthened its position. Everyone associated with that faction had benefited. Father himself was now a Brigadier, and the family had the right to use a part-time maid, so that Mother would no longer have to cook. There had been a big fight about the maid, Father saying it was a Bourgeois Thing, that an officer of the People’s Liberation Army shouldn’t employ menials, Mother responding that menial work was just as honorable as any other kind, that (as by this time they all knew) the Party leaders all had lots of servants, and that she was tired of cooking. Father won the argument, of course, so they did without the maid, but it put Mother in a bad mood for weeks.

Big Ten had made balancing concessions to the other, more revolutionary, faction in the national leadership. One of them was the abolition of all school examinations. This had come about in the following way. A student in the northeast had handed in a blank examination paper. The school authorities had marked him at zero, of course; but he had protested to his local Revolutionary Committee, arguing that paper examinations could not measure revolutionary spirit, which was the only important thing. The Committee had upheld him, and someone in the national leadership, one of the revolutionary faction, had got to hear of the matter. This person praised the student for a correct revolutionary attitude, and so the policy had been pushed through. This was the policy Teacher Li was referring to when she gave them the news about the Dance Academy.

“I expect they will look for some physical ability,” she continued. “But of course, the main thing will be to have a correct attitude to dancing.”

“I have a correct attitude!” Baoyu struck an exaggerated pose. “I dance to serve the people!” He pirouetted, ending with a graceful bow. All the students laughed and applauded.

“Where is this Academy?” asked Yuezhu.

“In the Conservatory of Music. It’s all part of the Fine Arts Institute. The Conservatory has been closed these last seven years, so that the teachers and students could get some revolutionary experience in the countryside. Now, after Big Ten, I guess the leaders feel they have had enough revolutionary experience, so they are fit to teach their music in a proper revolutionary way.”

It was said with no inflection of irony, but several pupils giggled. This was still, well into her third year in the capital, somewhat shocking to Yuezhu. The Beijing people were so irreverent and cynical. Everyone said the right things, of course; but they had a way of saying them that always seemed to be making a sly joke. Jing youzi was Father’s expression for this: “capital oil,” meaning that the people of Beijing were slippery and smooth. Ba mian linglong was another phrase he used: smooth and polished on all sides, meaning that the people here always showed the appropriate face to everyone, without any sincerity. The Beijing people had seen so many invaders come and go—Manchus, Europeans, warlords, Japanese, Nationalists—they had learned to bend with the wind.

*

At Spring Festival Yuezhu told Father about the Dance Academy. “I want to apply,” she told him the first evening of the vacation. “I want to be a dancer, Daddy. It’s the thing I want most in the world.”

“Well, if that’s what you want, of course it’s what we want for you. Do you have the ability to get in, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Teacher Li said it’s our attitude that counts. And I guess … of course, our class background.”

“No problem there,” said Father. “But from what I remember of Big Ten, they’ll be allowed to give you an ability test, even if not a full examination. That’s how things are being done, anyway.”

At this point Yuezhu did not have the nerve to put it to Father frankly that a word from him, a senior military man, might make all the difference to her application. She knew Father’s feelings about those indirect methods of doing things.

She found out where the Conservatory of Music was from Teacher Li, and went there with Baoyu. They went twice: the first time right after the actual festival, while they were still on vacation from school. On that occasion the Conservatory was closed, and no amount of hammering on the gate or calling out could raise anyone inside.

They went again at the beginning of the summer semester. The Conservatory was in an old Japanese-style building over in the Haidian district, near the University. It had a high brick wall with a wooden gate in it. This time the gate was open. There was a courtyard beyond, and the main building, its entrance doors also open. From the door, down the steps and halfway back across the courtyard was a line of people, waiting.

“To get an application form for the Dance Academy,” said the scholarly-looking man at the end of the line. “For my niece in Tianjin. She’s dance crazy.”

The woman in front of him nodded. “My daughter, too. They all want to be dancers, since this revolutionary ballet came up.”

Yuezhu experienced the first risings of that resentful irritation we feel when we discover that our most cherished private dreams are in fact commonplace. “I wanted to be a dancer long before the revolutionary ballets came out,” she said to Baoyu—loud enough, she hoped, for the woman to hear.

“Me, too, elder sister.

I wanted to dance

When it wasn’t allowed.

When at last came the chance

I was lost in a crowd.

It seems the world has caught up with us now.”

The clerk who handed out the forms told them nothing, but everyone assumed there would be some sort of audition or interview.

To prepare herself for this interview Yuezhu concentrated on her dancing, never missing a lesson. She understood now that the folk dances they had been doing these three years past, and those she had done at Seven Kill Stele, belonged to an inferior form. Real dancing was ballet, foreign-style ballet, with special shoes and dresses, foreign-style music, mirrors and a barre. She longed to dance that way, she and Baoyu both longed to, but Teacher Li disclaimed any ability to teach foreign-style, and the two devotees were reduced to practicing what few steps they could remember from Red Detachment of Women and such other revolutionary ballets as they were able to get tickets for.

The interview came in June. It was a very odd business. One of the interviewers—they did not deign to introduce themselves by name—was a foreigner, or at any rate had the appearance of one. She was a woman of about fifty, brown hair beginning to turn gray, cut straight across the forehead and cropped short all round. Her eyes were blue and round, her skin fair; yet she spoke perfect native Mandarin, with a slight northeastern accent. You would never have known from her speech she was a foreigner. Not that she had much to say; most of the interview was monopolized by two very revolutionary-looking types, a man and a woman, neither more than thirty, clothes rumpled, the man’s shirt with a carefully-located patch on the front. They spoke alternately, complementing each other, like the xiangsheng comedians on the radio that Yuezhu could remember from before the Cultural Revolution.

“Not much revolutionary experience!” barked the man. They had obviously had some access to her file. The man’s hair was sticking up at all angles around his head. He had a big sharp nose and an Adam’s apple that stuck out.

“Not much evidence of a desire to serve the people!” shrilled the woman, who was slightly cross-eyed and sported a faint mustache.

“I’ve always tried to study Chairman Mao’s thoughts and carry out his instructions,” said Yuezhu, apologetic in spite of herself.

“Since your best subject is languages, why do you want to study dancing?”

“Since your people are Army, why not enlist instead of going to the Dance Academy?”

“I feel that it’s through dancing that I can best serve the people.”

“Since you were raised by the People’s Liberation Army, tell us what the Three Rules of Discipline are!”

“Tell us what the Eight Points for Attention are!”

Yuezhu rattled off the Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention, early instructions of Chairman Mao’s which were now taught as the basic creed of the PLA.

The fourth member of the panel, an older guy with a rather haughty, aristocratic kind of face, who had seemed to Yuezhu to be asleep, suddenly spoke up.

“What are the fundamental principles of Dialectical Materialism?”

Yuezhu’s heart sank. They had been doing Philosophy in school this last year, and she had struggled gamely with the gibberish phrases, but nothing had stuck.

“Well … There’s the, um, the Interpenetration of Opposites …”

“Oh, let’s see if she’s suitable to be a dancer, why don’t we?” It was the foreign-looking woman, speaking with ill-disguised impatience.

“Carry out the instructions of Comrade Zhao,” muttered the young man, slumping back in his chair.

“Follow the directions of Comrade Zhao,” pouted his echo, beginning to riffle through some papers on the table in front of her.

The foreign-looking woman, who was apparently Comrade Zhao, had Yuezhu walk up and down a few paces, swinging her arms; then told her to touch her toes, continuing downwards for as far as she could bend; then made her do the splits, which Yuezhu could accomplish easily; and finally asked her to go from a standing position to a lying one as gracefully as she could, by any means she chose. Lacking specific instructions, Yuezhu made rather a mess of this, and did little better at the reverse movement. Standing there under the cold blue eyes of Comrade Zhao after this latter evolution, she felt desperately awkward.

“You will be notified,” said the young man.

“Successful applicants will be announced,” said his ghost.

Comparing notes afterwards with Baoyu, the interview seemed to have been standard. For the lying-down business, Baoyu had said he pretended to be dying, as in the Uighur folk dance “Flying Goose Crossing the Desert,” and by concentrating on this idea had attained a graceful movement.

“I wish I’d thought of that,” said Yuezhu. “I really believe I made a mess of it. That foreign woman with her cold blue eyes. I lost my nerve.”

“She’s not foreign. My father found out. She’s Chinese, from the northeast. Her parents were Russian immigrants, when they built the railroad. They stayed in China after the 1917 Revolution. Then they sent her to Russia and she danced with the Bolshoi Ballet. But there was some trouble, I don’t know what, and she came back to China. She’d married a Russian guy, a choreographer, but she left him in Russia when she herself came back, and he’s still there. She got struggled in ’66 for being too expert and worked on a farm in Zhejiang Province, but now she’s been reinstated.”

Baoyu’s father knew everything about everyone, it seemed. But that was his job, that was what the Public Security Bureau was for.

*

For the pre-graduation exercises the dance group at Number 14 was to give a performance to the whole school, and they had begun rehearsing it after the Spring Festival break. The dance was a folk dance from the northwest, based on the story of Shining Lady Wang, which everybody knew.

Shining Lady Wang

Shining Lady Wang was Wang Zhaojun, one of the four great beauties of Chinese history. Some say she was the most beautiful woman that ever lived. Although of humble birth, she was chosen for the Imperial harem by those officials who toured the country looking for suitable material.

The ruler at this time was Liu Shi, tenth emperor of the Han dynasty. His harem was so big he could never get round to looking at them all personally, so he had one of his eunuchs, a man named Mao Yanshou, paint portraits of them all and make the portraits into a book. When the Emperor wanted female company he would leaf through the book until one of the portraits took his fancy.

Now this Mao Yanshou was very venal. He would paint a beautiful portrait of a lady only if she gave him a bribe. Shining Lady Wang, trusting in her own beauty, refused to pay him the bribe, so he painted a very unflattering portrait of her. Because of this, the Emperor never chose her for companionship, and she languished in the harem unnoticed.

Liu Shi made a treaty with the King of the Huns, a wild tribe who lived beyond the Wall. In return for peace, the King of the Huns asked for a Chinese bride to take back with him to his encampment on the steppes. Looking into his harem book, the Emperor spotted the portrait of a plain, rough-looking lady, and said: “This will be good enough for the King of the Huns.”

Of course, the portrait he had chosen was that of Shining Lady Wang. He sent a servant to ask Shining Lady Wang if she would be willing to be a bride to the King of the Huns. Shining Lady Wang said: “Yes, I am willing. Better to be a Queen among barbarians than to waste away neglected in the Emperor’s harem.”

At the ceremony to present the King of the Huns with his bride, Liu Shi saw her for the first time. He was overwhelmed by her beauty. However, he had given his word to the King of the Huns, and could not break it. So Shining Lady Wang went off to live among the Huns, to drink mare’s milk, dress in animal skins and dwell in smoky tents made of felt.

She proved, in fact, a very good Queen, teaching the Huns to farm and weave. She wrote many songs for the guitar, which she liked to play while riding Hun-style on horseback. If you see a lady playing the guitar on horseback in a Chinese painting, it is Shining Lady Wang. When she died she was buried, by her choice, on the barbarian side of the Wall. The grass on the barbarian side of the Wall is yellow; but in the place where Shining Lady Wang is buried it is always green, as in China.

Yuezhu, Number 14’s best girl dancer, was to be Shining Lady Wang; Baoyu, the Hun King. Teacher Li had rechoreographed the dance to make it more revolutionary, eliminating solos in favor of group movements; but still there was a brief section where Yuezhu and Baoyu danced together. This they practiced endlessly until every least lift of the head and turn of the hand were second nature. They both felt now that these folk dances were childish and would soon be behind them; but (as Baoyu said) that was all the more reason to show that they had mastered them completely.

The performance was a big success, the rows of students, teachers and Party Secretaries all clapping, clapping and smiling up at them from the auditorium. Bowing in the newly-approved style to acknowledge the applause, as the cast of Red Detachment of Women had bowed in the Great Hall of the People, Yuezhu could not help but think that her destiny was set, that she was fated to be chosen for the Dance Academy, to spend her whole life like this, rehearsing until her very body—the muscles and joints themselves—had memorized the movements, dancing and bowing for endless rows of smiling faces.

*

Selections to the Dance Academy were to be posted in the second week of July. On the appointed morning Yuezhu went with Baoyu to the Music Conservatory.

The whole courtyard was full of people, two or three hundred, most middle-school students like themselves, the rest older people, presumably parents or representatives of out-of-town applicants. It seemed far more people than had been there for the application forms.

“Is this only for the Dance Academy?” she asked Baoyu, who knew everything about the process.

“Yes. The other departments post at different times.”

“Oh, Heaven! What chance do we stand, with so many?”

“I bet there are even more than this. Think of all those out in the provinces who can’t get here. Some of these people represent a dozen or more, you can be sure.”

“Heaven! To select only forty!”

Baoyu, irrepressible, laughed at her. “Such a low spirit, Elder Sister! We shall go through that big door together next September, I feel sure.”

“I wish I did.”

At last, an hour late, a functionary appeared carrying a bucket of paste, a roll of white paper under his arm. With insolent slowness—savoring his rare moment in the spotlight—he scrutinized the wall where notices were posted, shook his head, and went back into the building. The crowd groaned. Twenty minutes later he came out again carrying a little folding ladder which he set up, with infinite fuss, at the foot of the wall. Another disappearance, another re-emergence, paste and paper again. Painstakingly—interrupting himself twice to shift the ladder an inch this way, an inch back, carefully setting down the paste and paper each time—he pasted his single roll to the wall and withdrew.

The crowd pressed forward. “Ah!” and “Oh!” and even one clear “Motherfuck!” in broad Beijing dialect sounded from the front; but Yuezhu was too far away to see the names.

“Baoyu, Baoyu! I can’t see! Are we selected or not? How can we get to the front?”

The crowd went into a sort of slow fermentation process, those at the front who had finished scanning the lists elbowing their way back, those at the back struggling forward. Lists of this sort were always ordered by the number of brush-strokes in a person’s name. Yuezhu’s family name had twelve strokes, so she knew to look in the lower part of the list. Baoyu’s name had eleven strokes, so would be just above hers. When she was close enough she saw his name first, then—struggling to keep her feet in the heaving mob—scanned downwards for her own. She couldn’t see it. Had the names been listed in some irregular order? Out of order? No, she could see the first name on the list, someone named Bu, which had only two strokes. A heave of the crowd pushed her suddenly closer, and she could read all the names. Hers was not there.

Turning to look for Baoyu, as if in appeal, she met his eyes, and saw his distress. Distress for her, of course, dear Baoyu—neither of them had ever doubted he would be chosen. But neither had she had ever allowed herself to doubt that she would be chosen; yet she had not been. It was a fact in the world, the world which now had no meaning.

Walking home with Baoyu (who was close to tears on her behalf), it seemed to Yuezhu that she was a kind of dupe, the victim of an illusion. The name of the illusion was Hope; or, more accurately, Hope was the agent of the illusion, the demon who had conjured it up, capering around her in her sleep, whispering in her ear so that she would never, never imagine not being able to go to the Dance Academy. The demon Hope—it seemed so clear to her, a new understanding. She could almost visualize him, one of those figures with wild, evil faces from illustrated versions of Journey to the West, to be outwitted by Sun Wukong the Monkey. But she was not Sun Wukong, she did not know how to outwit the demon.

Chapter 17

Words of Encouragement Beneath the White Stupa

An Old Revolutionary’s Principles Come Under Siege

In August Yuezhu went off to a camp organized by the army, helping the peasants in Hebei Province. These peasants, though kindly, were even less willing to be helped than those in the southwest, and it was quite easy to avoid work altogether. Yuezhu took long walks along the raised paths between the fields with a fellow-sufferer, a girl a year older than herself who had been deeply attached to a boy from the Mongolian nationality until her parents found out and forbade the friendship.

“You shouldn’t be so close with people from other races,” the girl’s parents had said. “They are not like us. You are storing up trouble for the future. ‘The eagle doesn’t mate with the crow.’”

The two girls wandered the endless rectangles of raised yellow earth, united in self-pity.

The start of the new school year brought no relief. It seemed to Yuezhu a thwarting of fate, a violation of nature, that she was at West Wall District Number 14 Middle School, not the Dance Academy. The lessons were mere drudgery, the dance group sessions without purpose. The dances themselves seemed puerile now, irrelevant to the real business of dancing, which Baoyu was now engaged in at the Academy, which she herself should have been engaged in if she had not made a mess of the lying down and getting up at her interview. So unfair!—after all her years of dancing, of acquiring these skills, after all the applause, to be failed on a ten-minute interview!

She missed Baoyu, somewhat to her surprise. She perceived, through her gloom of solipsism, that the other members of Number 14’s dance group missed him, too. He had been silly, of course, often ridiculous, sometimes annoying; but he had given their activities a spirit and color they did not now have. He had been an inspiration to them, too, his skill and grace setting a mark for them all.

Baoyu came to visit her, appearing at the compound one Sunday in October. Sunday was the Dance Academy’s one day off, apparently. They went to Bamboo Park, and sat on a grassy bank watching rowers on the lake.

“So unfair!” she complained to him, unrolling her train of thought (very nearly her only train of thought nowadays). “They didn’t see me dance at all.”

“You’re certainly good enough for the Academy,” agreed Baoyu. “There are dancers there less capable than you.”

“They probably got in by a back door. Everyone says that’s how things work nowadays.”

Yuezhu did not know whether or not Baoyu’s father had opened a back door for him. If she asked him he would certainly tell her, but she did not want to ask for fear of poisoning their friendship. Certainly Baoyu’s father was powerful enough. On the other hand, Baoyu’s abilities were so obvious, and the dearth of male applicants so acute, he had really had no need for a back door.

“Well, why not?” Baoyu shrugged. “If the selection process is so unfair, why not try by any means to circumvent it? You should apply again, but this time have your father speak to Secretary Kang. He’s the head of the Revolutionary Committee for the whole Conservatory. He’s an older guy, not an idiot like most of them. An old soldier, I believe. I’m sure if your father speaks to him he’ll accommodate you.”

“My father has very strong principles. He wouldn’t even accept a maid, although we are entitled to one. Everywhere he travels he goes hard sleeper class. He would never open a back door for me. He hates back doors.”

“But you’re his only daughter. I’ve heard that a clever daughter can always bend a father to her will.”

“You don’t know my father and his principles.”

“Well, the heart can rule the head, if the pressure is strong enough.

The sternest father’s heart will melt

Faced with a weeping daughter.

You know, when all is said and done,

Blood is thicker than water.”

Father, as it happened, was away from home on a mission until December. By the time he returned, Yuezhu had resolved to follow Baoyu’s advice. She tackled Father at once, as soon as he was rested from his journey. Father was sitting in one of the plush armchairs after dinner, reading Reference News, of which he was now entitled to a personal copy. Yuezhu kneeled on the rug in front of him, in a position which she thought would touch him, a supplicatory position.

“I’m going to apply to the Dance Academy again,” she said. “You always taught us never to give up, Father, to persevere through all difficulties. So I’m following your instructions.”

Father put down his paper and smiled at her benignly. “Good, good, Precious Pearl. I’m sure this time you will succeed.”

Yuezhu lowered her head. “Perhaps not,” she said, addressing the rug. “Having rejected me in ’74 they’re not going to look kindly on me in ’75. It will be more difficult to get accepted this year. Last year they’d only just started classes, not many people knew. Now everybody knows. They’ll be getting thousands of applications from all over the country.”

“Well, then, you must redouble your efforts,” said Father.

Yuezhu allowed a strategic pause to develop. Then (still looking at the rug) she said: “The head of the Revolutionary Committee at the Conservatory is an old soldier, Comrade Kang Yimi from the Eighth Route Army. Perhaps you know him?”

She heard Father getting out of his chair. Looking up, she saw that he was furious. His eyes were bulging and his lips were pressed tight together. Hastily she got to her feet. Father was already yelling by the time she got upright.

“You dare to suggest this? Knowing me, knowing my principles, you dare to come to me with this filthy back door business?”

“I’m sorry, Father. It’s only …”

“You think I struggled and bled all those years just to bring a new aristocracy into the world? You think the Communist Party just rode on the backs of the people to establish a new dynasty?”

“Father, please …” Yuezhu was close to tears. Hearing the noise, Mother came in from the kitchen. She stopped just inside the doorway, watching them.

“Now you want me to take gifts to this Kang character? What do you think I should take—a watermelon, perhaps? Or a carton of cigarettes? And ask him to open a back door for my daughter? Pei!”

Father flung down his paper to the floor with great vehemence.

“I’ve spoilt you! I’ve raised you the wrong way! You’re a xiaojie, a little Princess, aren’t you? Never tasted bitterness, never suffered hardship, never faced defeat or disappointment.”

Yuezhu actually was crying now. “Father, don’t be so cruel. How can you say I’ve never faced disappointment? Don’t you know what I’ve been suffering this last few months? Don’t you know …”

“Suffering? You want to talk to me about suffering?” Father jabbed a finger at himself, at his nose. “Ts! I’ve walked across mountains covered with ice, wearing shoes made from straw. I’ve gone five days with no food. I’ve got up and walked twenty miles with a raging fever. I’ve seen men die screaming, with their guts hanging out of their bellies, and places the Japanese had passed through, the people impaled on stakes along the road, little children skinned alive. You talk to me about suffering? It’s a word you don’t know the meaning of!”

“Old Han, Old Han, calm yourself.” Mother had come forward to stand with them, and addressed Father in the style of old revolutionaries. She raised an arm, putting it between the two of them. “It’s only a small thing she asked. No need to make such a fuss about it.”

“No need? My principles …”

“Yes, yes, we all know your principles. But it wouldn’t hurt you to put in a word for her. Everybody does it nowadays.”

“Everybody does it! If everybody hangs themselves, must I hang myself, too?”

“I thought you might help me,” said Yuezhu, recovering her courage a little after seeing that Mother supported her. “Such a small thing for you, and it means so much to me.”

Father looked from one of them to the other, apparently speechless now. Then he bent to pick up his newspaper, sat down in the armchair again, and reopened the paper with a snap, shutting both of them out.

“Come help me in the kitchen, Yuezhu. There’s no talking to him when he’s like this.”

*

After seeing the depth of Father’s intransigence, Yuezhu did not dare raise the subject again. She sank into depression.

“You shouldn’t be so discouraged,” said Teacher Li at dance class one evening. “You can apply for the Academy again this year. You’re not too old. They’re taking applications right now, for next year.”

“What’s the use?” asked Yuezhu. “My chance is less next year than it was this year.”

“Nonsense. They’ll know you’ve had a year’s more training. They’ll give you the same consideration as everyone else.”

Yuezhu didn’t believe it, but she applied anyway. The application, once filed, only depressed her more. She felt she was applying for another rejection. At last her low spirits made her ill. Mother took her to the army doctor, who examined her tongue and throat with a flashlight. “Tonsillitis,” declared the doctor. “They’ll have to come out. A few days’ discomfort, that’s all.”

When she woke from the operation Yuezhu at first felt nothing. Then she sniffed to clear some mucus from her nose, and the muscular movement caused the back of her throat to burst into flames. She cried out, or tried to—all that emerged was a croak, and it was some minutes before the fierce dry burning in her throat subsided to ordinary dull pain.

She had a room to herself, at least; and the hospital was much better appointed than the dark, grimy Number One in Seven Kill Stele, where she had once visited a classmate stricken with gastritis who had, in fact, subsequently died. Here there were no peasants milling in the corridors, no broken windows or scurrying rats. The walls of her room were fresh painted, the bare concrete floor swept clean. There was a bedside table with a plain white water-jug and a glass tumbler. She tried to drink a glass of water, but the pain of swallowing was too great. She ejected the mouthful she had taken into the glass where it swirled brown, flakes of clotted blood settling very slowly like tea-leaf fragments.

Mother came to visit that afternoon, bringing some cold rice gruel seasoned with ginger, and tea in a flask. With patient coaxing she got Yuezhu to swallow half a dozen mouthfuls of gruel.

“Half Brother will be home for Spring Festival,” she said. “His unit has given him leave.”

Half Brother! If Father would not yield to her, perhaps she could enlist Half Brother to the siege! There had been a time—when?—somewhere in her early childhood—when Half Brother and Father had fought over Half Brother’s admission to the University in Chengdu. She could remind him of that, try to bring out the arguments he had used at that time. Half Brother was doing well in his unit, this she vaguely knew. He could confront Father not as a rebellious kid, but as a fellow-soldier—much inferior in rank, to be sure, but a comrade in arms nonetheless.

When Father himself came visiting next day, Yuezhu played the invalid for all it was worth. She smiled wanly at his clumsy words of encouragement, made feeble croaking noises in response to his questions, and at last fell back on her pillow in feigned exhaustion, one hand to her throat.

The effect was better than she had dared to hope for. Rising to leave, Father took her hand and pressed it between both of his, looking down tenderly into her eyes. This was the most demonstrative she had ever seen him since she was an infant.

“The conditions here are very good,” said Father. “Don’t worry, they’ll soon have you well. You must rest, Little Pearl. Rest, and don’t worry about anything.”

Yuezhu almost felt she had succeeded right there, but Father said nothing about her application. He said nothing about it next day either, when he visited her again; but he brought a gift with him, to raise her spirits. The gift was in a luxurious box made of shiny white cardboard, like something from a foreign country. Inside the cardboard was airy white tissue paper perfectly clean, and beyond the tissue paper was a brand-new pair of ice skates. Baoyu had ice skates, and used to go skating on North Lake. Months ago, when the previous winter was already ending and the lake no longer safe, Yuezhu had expressed a wish to try ice-skating, without really expecting anything to come of it. It was that that Father had remembered.

“When you’re better you can go skating with your friend,” said Father. “They’re a product of our own country, look—made in Harbin, in the northeast.”

The skates were indeed very fine—glossy black leather lacing up high, with brilliant silver blades. “Thank you, Father. Thank you, dear Father,” croaked Yuezhu, reaching out with her hands to take his. Father squeezed her hands, clumsily. Now she saw his love for her, and the guilt he felt, despite himself, for having refused her. Still she thought she had not sufficient courage to raise the subject of her application directly with him, but she resolved to try the Half Brother strategy at Spring Festival.

She told Baoyu about this when, recovered from the tonsillectomy, she went with him to North Lake, behind the Forbidden City, to try out her new skates. They were permitted to skate only on a restricted part of the lake, encompassed by the shore, Jade Island, and the two bridges leading to the island. Yuezhu had never skated before, but with Baoyu’s encouragement and a dancer’s aptitude, she was soon gliding along confidently. It was a wonderful motion, like something one might do in a dream, like flying almost; and the dreamlike quality was enhanced here by the surroundings: a faint ice-mist hanging over the lake, bare trees on the shoreline, above all towering the White Stupa, a hundred feet high and three hundred years old. The stupa did precisely what it had been designed to do: it impressed upon those playing beneath it their utter insignificance, the transient and illusory nature of everything they thought important, and it induced the peace and inner silence that can be attained only by acceptance of these truths.

Baoyu was all encouragement. “I miss you very much,” he said. “Dear Moon Pearl. We danced together so well. Do you remember when we did Shining Lady Wang?”

“If I get in I shall be a year below you,” Yuezhu pointed out. “We’ll be in different classes. Perhaps we’d have no opportunity to dance together.”

“Oh, but we’re encouraged to do extra practice in our own time. We could practice together. You’ll love ballet. So much to learn! Different positions, different movements, different kinds of music.”

“First I have to get admitted. My only chance is if Father will open a back door for me.”

“If your Half Brother will cooperate, it will be three against one. I don’t see how your father can resist.”

*

Half Brother appeared the very day before Spring Festival, the last day of the lunar year. His appearance was dramatic: he was driven to the compound in an army jeep, right into the courtyard of the compound with a squeal of brakes, where he leapt out and up the steps to the entrance hall. Yuezhu did not see this but Mother did. She happened to be at the window. “Wa!” she said aloud. “He has his own driver now!”

Yuezhu ran to open the door. When Half Brother came up onto their landing she threw herself into his arms.

“Little Sister!” he boomed, his voice much louder and stronger than she remembered. “So big now! What, almost seventeen!” He lifted her off her feet and held her, his face six inches from hers. He was very handsome now, handsome and smart, in spite of the severe military cut of his hair.

Father was not yet home. Half Brother embraced Mother, who had been gazing adoringly at him, and laughed merrily at her queries about his health, his diet, his conditions.

“The life of a soldier is a good life,” he declared. “Always something interesting! Always something new!”

Yuezhu took her chance right away, before Father came home. In this huge apartment, Mother in the kitchen preparing the evening feast, there was room to speak without being overheard.

“It’s the main thing that matters to me. The only thing,” she explained, filling her voice with urgent emotion. Her voice still had a hoarse edge on it from the tonsillectomy, and she worked this for effect. “I can’t shift him, but perhaps he’ll listen to you.”

“I don’t know.” Half Brother frowned. “His principles are very rigid, you know.”

“But don’t we have to adjust our principles sometimes, to deal with changing circumstances? America was always our great enemy; but when Mr Nixon came to China, we showed him a friendly face.”

Half Brother laughed. “It’s a good argument. I’ll see what I can do.”

Yuezhu supposed he would take Father aside some day during his visit and try to persuade him. She was caught unawares when he brought up the subject that very evening, at the family’s New Year’s Eve dinner.

They had had two toasts in Five Grain Liquor, Yuezhu joining in the second toast at Father’s encouragement. He touched his liquor cup to hers, smiling into her eyes with the smile he had for her nowadays, and said: “Drain your cup!” Perhaps seeing Father’s kindly affection toward her inspired Half Brother to speak.

“Why don’t you put in a word for Little Sister at the Dance Academy? You know she’s set her heart on getting accepted.”

Yuezhu held her breath in fear that Father would explode again; but he was only silent for a moment, reaching with his chopsticks for some bean curd.

“It’s not the right way to do things. You all know my feelings about that.”

“Right or wrong, it’s the way things are done,” said Half Brother. “If you stick so doggedly to your principles, you will just get left behind. You, and your family. What will Little Sister do with her life if she can’t be a dancer? It’s the only thing she cares about.”

Mother was saying nothing, just watching Father warily. Yuezhu, once she recovered from the shock of Half Brother’s boldness, could not help adding her own supplication.

“Father, please. Half Brother’s right. If I don’t get into the Academy I really have no future. I’m not good at anything else, only dancing.”

“You’re good at languages,” said Father. “The best in your class, is what I heard.”

“How can I make a living from that? Be a teacher? You know what a poor life they have.”

“I don’t know. A translator, perhaps.”

“What, sitting in a dark office at a desk, turning English into Chinese all day long? I should die of boredom!”

Mother spoke up, using Father’s full name as she sometimes did, for gravity. “You should help her, Han Dingguo. Blood is thicker than water.”

“And then what will happen to our revolution? Are we to fall back into the ways of the old society, man struggling for advantage against man, without regard to method?”

“No, Father,” said Half Brother. “It’s nothing to do with going back to the old society. If you don’t open a back door for Little Sister, someone less qualified than her will get in in her place, because her people were willing to do what you won’t do.”

“Then that person will come to a bad end. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“Father, honored Father.” Half Brother leaned forward on the table, tapping his left index finger against his palm to make his point. “The revolution is over. Those battles have been fought and won. Now we have a new battle, and we need new strategy. Our country’s leaders know that. Listen: in my unit we have to review a lot of foreign material. Since Nixon’s visit we are getting more and more material from America. We have all been shocked by this material. None of us realized how far behind our country is. They are so advanced! Everyone in China is proud of the Yangtse Bridge, right? Well, let me tell you, in America they have a bridge so long that you can’t see one end from the other! Everyone in America has a car, even ordinary working people. It’s true. I didn’t believe it at first, but it’s true. The workers have big houses, surrounded by gardens and trees. They have color TV, they have washing machines—everybody! Yes, you are right: our society is no longer one where man exploits man. Now we have a fair and just society. But the big world—the world outside China—is not fair and just. It is a competition, a battle. If our country is to advance, to compete with these other countries, we must put forward our best people in every sphere.”

Father listened carefully to all this, chewing slowly on his food. “All right,” he said at last. “I can agree with what you say. Of course our country needs to bring forward our best dancers. But how do we know she is one of the best? Aren’t the authorities at the Academy best qualified to judge that?”

“No, they’re not. They can see her abilities, they can ask about her political attitude and background. But they can’t see her enthusiasm. Oh, Father, we are both soldiers. We know what makes a first-class unit, don’t we? It’s the enthusiasm of the men. Nothing can compare with that, nothing can compensate for that if it’s absent, isn’t this true? Suppose you were recruiting men for a special mission. Wouldn’t you leap at the chance to include a man with this kind of spirit, this kind of enthusiasm? Look at Little Sister. She would do anything to get into that Academy. She’s crazy to dance. Now, tell me: will the Academy be better off with such a student, or not? Will our country be better off, or not?”

Father looked at Half Brother. Then he looked at Yuezhu. He was not angry, but nor was he at ease in his mind. He looked levelly at Yuezhu for a moment, then turned his gaze to Mother.

“Blood is thicker than water,” said Mother.

Father sighed, and looked down at his bowl. He was silent for a few beats; then he made a short laugh.

“Ha! Blood is thicker than water! Ai, ai, ai! Yes, I suppose it is after all.” He looked up at Yuezhu, smiling his fond smile now. “I suppose it is. All right, Precious Pearl, all right. I’ll speak to Secretary Kang.”

Chapter 18

Moon Pearl Seeks Divine Assistance

Strange Portents Foretell Great Changes

On the night before her first day at the Dance Academy, Yuezhu knelt by her bed and made a prayer. She had never made a prayer before, and did not feel at all sure of the correct procedure. She knew she should fold her hands together in a bai gesture, and bow her head—that was all. So, feeling very self-conscious, even though there was no-one to see her, she knelt by her bed, clasped her hands in front of her, lowered her head, closed her eyes, and prayed.

First she prayed to Guanyin, the White Goddess. It seemed most natural, and she knew Guanyin was the goddess the peasants most liked to worship. She asked Guanyin to help her succeed at the Academy, and promised Guanyin that she would forgo all pleasures, spurn all delights, if only she could succeed.

After praying to Guanyin she said another prayer, for extra insurance. This one was to Shangdi, the god of Heaven itself, the god people worshipped in the West. The fact that he was worshipped in the West counted against him, of course. It might be counter-revolutionary to pray to him, she thought—not that anyone would know. On the other hand, Half Brother said that the Western countries were very rich and successful, so presumably Shangdi was quite potent. Well, you could never be too careful when dealing with the supernatural. Respectfully, she asked Shangdi to grant her good fortune.

She should (Yuezhu soon found herself reflecting) have prayed not for fortune but fortitude. The schedule at the Dance Academy was more grueling than anything she was used to or could have imagined. Classes began at 6 a.m. and ended at 9 p.m., with only two hours for lunch and a nap. On Saturday classes finished early, after lunch, and on Sunday there were no classes at all. The school was always open, however, and the keener students came in early to practice unsupervised, left late, and were there on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.

Yuezhu had supposed she would be able to live at home and take a bus to the Academy every day, but this left her so little time for sleep she moved into one of the dormitories belonging to the Conservatory, going home only on Sundays for dinner with the family. Rising at five, she was at the barre early in time for a few minutes loosening-up, yet still she was never the first student there. Some of the others were very keen, rising at four to get a whole hour and a half in before lessons officially began. Yuezhu tried this for a while, but it was too much for her. The schedule was sufficiently exhausting as it was. Day after day she danced until her joints ached and her limbs could barely move. It was a different world from the leisurely, informal dance groups of her previous experience.

As well as being long, the schedule was very varied. They practiced dance, of course, four or five hours a day; but that was the least of it. There was dance history, dance theory, folk dance study, dance drama theory and practice, choreography and choreology, physiology and health, political study of course, English—everybody was learning English now—and music.

A consolation was that she was able to attend some classes with Baoyu. Boys and girls at the Dance Academy had quite different schedules. The boys had to do a lot of physical training—weight-lifting and calisthenics—to strengthen their bodies, so that they would be able to lift their partners without effort. In foreign-style ballet, Baoyu told her, the male dancers needed to be very strong. Consequently, some of their classes on theory were run a year behind. For dance history and music the two friends were able to study together.

It was the music Yuezhu found most difficult at first. She had been reading music for some years, but only in the Chinese number notation. Now the students all had to master western notation, bass and treble, sharp and flat, crotchet and quaver, tempo and key. Yuezhu found it horribly difficult, the dense black symbols spread over the staves reminded her of the heavy black characters seen in peasant almanacs foretelling the weather, the harvest, setting out the right day to wash your hair or conceive a child.

“I’m so confused by it all,” she confessed to Baoyu coming from music class one day. “‘In the key of  …’—what does that mean, to be ‘in the key of  …’? How can I tell whether a piece is in the key of A, or B, or what?”

Baoyu laughed. “Oh, Elder Sister, it really doesn’t matter. So long as you can move with the music, it really doesn’t matter if you’re tone deaf.”

“It matters to Teacher Fang,” said Yuezhu. “He scolds me every lesson.”

“Teacher Fang is a dusty old pedant.”

“Yes, but I have to pass his course.”

Yuezhu did pass his course, though, that first semester, and all her other classroom courses. Not sensationally well, but well enough. To her dismay, it was the dancing that gave her real trouble. Before going to the Academy she had always reckoned herself a good dancer. In every dance group she had been in there had been someone better than her; but if she was not first, she was always among the best. Now, at the Academy, she was one of a group selected largely by merit from across the whole nation, and most were better than she. Yuezhu gritted her teeth and concentrated on the ballet exercises, where she was weakest: barre-work, center-work, corps drills.

Madame Blaitsky herself took charge of them for two hours each afternoon, to teach them fundamentals: the five positions of the feet, the eight positions of the body, the five positions of the arms, and all their many variations. Madame Blaitsky was the Russian woman with the cold blue eyes, who had interviewed Yuezhu for both her applications. She used the surname Zhao in Chinese, nobody knew why, but her students all called her Madame Blaitsky. She was a stern teacher, and threw them straight into the peculiar foreign vocabulary of their art with the barest minimum of explanation.

“En avant, Han Yuezhu, cinquième en avant! You’re not concentrating!”

Absent Teacher An’s phonetic guidance, Yuezhu’s foreign language skills could not engage the French words, or perhaps had just been exhausted. She could hold them in her mind only by making absurd Chinese mnemonics of them. En avant sounded like “unforgettable”; the body position effacé became “prone to fever”; en bas transformed itself into wang-ba, a low-class insult meaning “turtle”; and the knee bends Madame Blaitsky called pliés were pili, the crack! of nearby thunder. Still she could not keep ahead of Madame Blaitsky. As soon as a movement, or a sequence of movements, and the bizarre foreign names for them, became second nature, they were pressing on with the next.

“Glissade a demi-plié, you stupid girl! If I’d wanted you to croisé I would have said so!”

They were all scared of Madame Blaitsky. Yuezhu had the impression that even the other teachers were scared of her. She would march into classroom studies sometimes, interrupting the lesson without warning, to speak to a student—for she took a strong personal interest in the students’ lives, her object apparently being to make quite sure they had no interests of any kind whatsoever outside the world of dance.

At first Yuezhu felt that Madame Blaitsky was picking on her, as one of the weaker dancers in the first-year class, and this fed her sense of inadequacy. In fact, Madame Blaitsky had the same effect on everyone—even on Baoyu, who had endured her attentions the previous year.

“I thought she really disliked me,” said Baoyu. “Then I saw that the other students all felt she disliked them. It’s just her way of driving you forward.”

“I hope you’re right. Sometimes when she’s watching me do exercises, I feel her eyes can see right into me, into my soul. See all my innermost faults.”

“That’s her job, to correct your faults. It’s nothing personal. It’s Sunzi drilling the palace ladies, that’s all.”

Baoyu was referring to an old story about the great military strategist Sunzi.

Sunzi Drills the Palace Ladies

King Helü of the state of Wu read Sunzi’s book and asked for a demonstration of his training methods. “Is it true that you can train anyone at all to be a disciplined soldier?” asked the King.

Sunzi said: “It is true.”

“All right then,” said the King. “Let me see you make soldiers out of my palace women.”

Sunzi frowned. “Do I have the authority of Commander-in-Chief for the purposes of this test?”

“Certainly,” replied the King.

The palace ladies were brought out on to the parade ground and made to stand in two companies. Sunzi appointed the King’s two favorite concubines as the two company officers. He explained to them how to move to the front, to the rear, to the left, to the right, and taught them the various signals for these movements.

When everything had been explained five times, Sunzi asked: “Is it clear?”

“Yes, Sir,” replied the ladies.

The drums were rolled for a right turn. Instead of carrying out the movement, the ladies all began laughing.

Sunzi said: “When the orders are not completely understood, this is the commander’s fault.” Again he explained the orders five times, and asked if all was understood.

“Yes, Sir,” said the ladies.

The drums were rolled for a left turn; but again the palace ladies fell into laughter and could not carry out the order.

Said Sunzi: “When the order is not clear, it is the commander’s fault. When it is clear but not obeyed, that is the officers’ fault.” He thereupon ordered the two company officers to be killed.

Hearing this order, King Helü hastily sent an order to Sunzi. “These are my dearest companions,” he said. “Without them my food would lose its taste. Please cancel your order of execution.”

Sunzi replied: “The commander must use his judgment, and the ruler must trust the judgment of his commander.” Thereupon he had the two ladies killed, the next in rank being promoted to company officers. When the drums rolled again the ladies’ performance in advancing and withdrawing, turning to the left and right, was faultless. None dared utter a sound.

Sunzi reported to the King: “The forces are trained and ready. Your Majesty may use them as he wishes. Even if you drive them into flood or fire, they will not falter.”

*

For all the pain and effort, Yuezhu believed she had found her life’s purpose. Even when her self-esteem was at its lowest, when Madame Blaitsky had singled her out for criticism three or four times in a single afternoon, she never doubted that she was doing what she was meant to do.

There was a morning that December, shortly before the western New Year, when she was walking down the path from her dormitory to the main building. It was pitch dark, of course—little more than five thirty—and the ancient city was quiet under its night-time haze of ice mist and coal smoke. The only sounds were the faint rattle of bicycles on the road beyond the outer wall. Inside the main building some lights were on, one of them in the practice room where the keenest students were already loosening up. Coming down the path, Yuezhu could make out one of the dancers in the room practicing ports de bras, and she automatically checked off the movements: première, seconde, demi-seconde, troisième … The particular aspect of things at that moment—the beams of light from the windows cutting through the smoggy dark, the dancers all unawares beyond the glass, the distant rattle of bicycles, the silence and peace, even, somehow, the prospect of an arduous day’s work under the unforgiving eye of Madame Blaitsky—it all came together with her own mood in an instant of perfect dedication. This is my fate, it all said. This is where I should be.

A great swell of emotion lifted up her heart; not merely satisfaction on her own behalf, but unselfish things—love for dancing, and determination to do her best at it, whatever that best might be. Submission to her art, with all its tribulations. And gratitude—to her father, who had betrayed his principles for her, to her teachers, most of all to Chairman Mao, who had swept away the cruelties and hopelessness of the old society and created the opportunity for her to fulfill herself, to serve the people by enriching their lives with beauty. She had always loved Chairman Mao, of course, but she had rarely felt her love for him as deeply as she did at that moment. The cynicism of the capital, and indeed of the time, which had been settling on her like the gritty winter dust of Beijing, all fell away for a moment, and she loved Chairman Mao with all her heart.

*

It was not Chairman Mao, however, but Prime Minister Zhou Enlai who forced himself on Yuezhu’s attention that winter.

In January the Prime Minister died. The Dance Academy students got the news at the beginning of Teacher Fang’s music class one Friday morning. Several students burst into tears right there. Everybody had liked the Prime Minister. The people all loved Chairman Mao, of course; but the love one felt for Chairman Mao was more in the nature of devotion, as one might feel for a benevolent deity—devotion mixed up with awe, gratitude, submission and respect. People’s feelings for the Prime Minister were more on the human level. He could not part the seas and open the sky, as the Chairman could; but there were many stories in circulation about his acts of kindness and selflessness towards the common people, stories of a kind that were never told about Chairman Mao. Father liked the Prime Minister, Yuezhu knew that. She had the impression—of course, Father would never had said such a thing out loud—she had the impression he liked the Prime Minister more than he liked the Chairman.

Yuezhu herself had long since given up paying attention to current affairs. She was astonished at the emotions that appeared when the Prime Minister’s death was known. Several of her classmates were red-eyed and distraught all that day. One or two of them could not dance. They went back to the dormitory and stayed there, sobbing into their pillows.

“It’s the ones from intellectual families,” said Baoyu. “They suffered a lot in the movements, and they always felt the Prime Minister stood up for them. My father says the ones who loved the Prime Minister most really hate Chairman Mao. They blame him for the movements.”

Yuezhu was shocked by the words “… hate Chairman Mao.” She had never heard this combination of syllables before. It sounded like an obscenity. “How can anyone hate Chairman Mao?” she asked, almost by reflex.

Baoyu shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what my father said.”

Baoyu had even less interest in public affairs than she had, though because of his father’s position he always knew the latest gossip about the country’s leaders.

On her Sunday visit home, Yuezhu could see that Father was worried about the situation. It was a negative for his chief’s faction, somehow. When the lips are gone, the teeth are cold, Yuezhu remembered him saying at the time Lin Biao died. But Lin Biao had been plotting against Chairman Mao, so of course it was necessary to purge all his followers. Nobody had ever accused the Prime Minister of plotting; indeed, the newspapers they read in Political Study class were full of eulogies for him. So why should Father’s chief be affected? Yuezhu read one of the eulogies again, in the quiet period before dinner, and noticed now that it was less than unrestrained, had in fact a sort of guarded quality to it. These things were so deep, who could understand them?

Father said nothing to enlighten her. Yuezhu thought she would ask Half Brother when he came home in April. It was a firm family tradition now that he would come home for her birthday in April every year. It was not so easy for military people to get leave at Spring Festival, but her birthday was only a few weeks later, so it was almost the same thing.

Before Half Brother could come home, however, there was an incident. Yuezhu was never clear about the origin of or reasons for the incident, but it made a big sensation in the capital.

The incident happened at the Qingming Festival, early in April. Qingming was not a public holiday. Indeed, it was not officially a festival at all. It was associated with filial piety, and with sweeping the graves of one’s ancestors. These were, of course, ideas and practices left over from the old society, and so they were officially frowned upon. Still, it was surprising how many people seemed to be away from their posts on Qingming. Yuezhu had noticed it even at West Wall Number 14, where every other student was the child of some senior party or army official.

This particular Qingming fell on a Monday. On Sunday, the day before, some of the people of the capital used the festival to express their devotion to the late Prime Minister. They took big pictures of the Prime Minister to Tiananmen Square, set them up on the Martyrs’ Monument in the middle of the Square, and banked them with flowers and memorial placards and poems.

Yuezhu herself did not see this. Her class had been issued their first real dance shoes the day before, and she and the other girls spent Sunday morning in the dormitory sewing on the ribbons that laced up around their ankles. There was a special way to sew on the ribbons—Madame Blaitsky herself showed them. You folded down the heel of the shoe, which was made of soft satin, and marked the corners where the fabric turned on itself. Those were the right points at which to tie the ribbon.

After fixing her shoes, Yuezhu hastened over to West Wall District to see her family. Sunday was her only chance in the week to be with Father and Mother, and she wanted to hear news of Half Brother, to know whether and when he would be able to get leave for her coming birthday. At home Father was pacing the floor, looking at his watch. He acknowledged her entrance with a grunt, then went back to pacing.

“It’s his chief,” said Mother in the kitchen. “You know, his chief follows Comrade Deng Xiaoping, and it looks as though Comrade Deng’s in trouble.”

“Yes. He’s a capitalist roader,” said Yuezhu unthinkingly. It was something they’d learned in Political Study class. Actually, Comrade Deng Xiaoping had not been named in the article they had studied, but everyone knew the piece was about him.

Mother laughed. “Is that what they say? Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about these things. But your Father says if they push old Deng out, we might have to leave the capital.”

Father’s car arrived, and he left. Nowadays his unit always sent a car for him. He had still not returned when Yuezhu left to go back to the Academy, and the family had had no news of Half Brother. It was late evening, but the streets seemed to be full of people, all walking northwards, away from the Square. It seemed that something was in the air, though Yuezhu could not have said what it was. Father; Half Brother; the unexpected throngs of people drifting silently up from the Square—things were unsettled somehow. It brought to her mind the catalog of natural disorders in the first chapter of Three Kingdoms Romance, that heralded the fall of the Han dynasty: earthquakes, tidal waves, poultry changing sex, strange mists and vapors seen in the halls of the Imperial palace.

On the part of the bus route that ran along White Stone Bridge Road she witnessed something astonishing. A car went by, one of the shining black cars that party leaders and senior officials were chauffeured around in, exactly like the one that had come to fetch Father that afternoon. There were still people on the sidewalks here, not as many as nearer the Square, but groups and lines of them walking north—ordinary-looking people in rough workers’ clothes and caps. One group stopped to shout at the car. Yuezhu could see them clearly, shouting and shaking their fists at the car as it sped by. Their faces were angry. Incredibly, one young man jumped into the road to shout at the car’s back as it sped away. Yuezhu felt afraid even to have seen the incident. The other people on the bus looked afraid too. They were all looking down, pretending they had not seen.

Next day there was an announcement in mid-afternoon: students were to stay in the Academy grounds. Most especially, nobody was to go to the Square. The students all talked about it in the dining hall that evening, but no-one knew what was going on. It was two days later, Wednesday, that everything became clear. Yuezhu heard it from Baoyu, who had gone home on Tuesday evening.

“All the wreaths and memorials people left in the Square on Sunday,” he told her over lunch. “Public Security took them all away Sunday night. When people went to the Square on Monday and saw everything had gone, they were angry. There was a big demonstration. Some police cars were burned. The people smashed up some government offices. Public Security had to restore order. My father was out all night.”

“Wa! People feel so strongly about the Prime Minister!”

Baoyu shrugged. “Sure. Everybody loved the Prime Minister.”

“Then why did they take away the people’s offerings?”

“I’m not clear. Something to do with Chairman Mao’s wife. She never liked the Prime Minister, you know.”

Of course, Yuezhu did not know. She did not know anything about these high matters, and felt uneasy hearing about them. “Just think,” she said, not really thinking herself, just wanting to get back to generalities. “If this is the reaction when the Prime Minister dies, what will people do …”

She stopped herself short. Of course, Chairman Mao would have to die some time; but it was not very respectful to talk about it. Baoyu caught her meaning though, and smiled at her.

“If what my father says is true, we shall soon find out.”

*

After the Incident, things quickly went from bad to worse. The official named Deng Xiaoping, to whom Father’s chief was attached, was now being vilified by name at Political Study classes. Apparently the leaders blamed him for the Qingming disorders. A prudent man, he took himself off to the South, and Father’s chief went with him. Father had no choice but to follow, and the Han family had to give up their apartment.

“It needn’t affect you at all,” Mother told her, when she went to help them pack, on the very Sunday they should have been celebrating her birthday. “You’ve got accommodation in the dormitory. You can come down to see us in the vacation.”

“It’s easy to say,” said Yuezhu. “But you know that I’m only at the Academy because of Father. If he’s disgraced, I may get thrown out.”

“Nonsense. They’ll respect your ability. Nothing that happens to Father will reflect on you.”

Baoyu was less sanguine. “It’s a movement,” he said, “a big movement. The leaders are all struggling for position when Chairman Mao dies. Even my father doesn’t feel secure, I can see. Nobody knows what will happen.”

In fact nothing happened, except that Comrade Deng Xiaoping was now vilified by name in the editorials they read at Political Study. It was clear to Yuezhu now—it seemed to her that she had been dull and stupid not to have thought it through before—that Father’s chief, and therefore Father himself, and therefore the entire Han family, were attached to this Comrade Deng Xiaoping, about whom she knew next to nothing, and that their fortunes would rise and fall with his. For the first time since she had been a Little Red Guard, politics now had some content for her—entirely negative content, at this point. To further discomfit her, Half Brother made no appearance for her birthday, and sent no explanation for his absence.

It really seemed that there was a movement in the air. On top of the regular Political Study sessions, the leaders at the Conservatory held two mass meetings. The main point of the meetings was to get all the students and teachers to criticize Comrade Deng Xiaoping, which of course they all did. In the field of music (said their final resolution), Comrade Deng Xiaoping had spoken disparagingly of the model revolutionary ballets and operas of the last few years, had sponsored productions that distorted the image of workers, peasants and soldiers, and, in short, had opposed what the proletariat supported and supported what they opposed. The students and teachers of Beijing Music Conservatory unanimously called upon the leaders of the Party to publicly condemn the revisionist and capitalist-roader Comrade Deng Xiaoping.

“At least nobody got struggled,” said Baoyu. “I really used to hate those struggle meetings.”

“I’m only afraid they’ll close down the Conservatory again,” said Yuezhu.

The Conservatory did not close. The Dance Academy ended its formal summer term in a whisper of anticlimax, there being no graduation ceremony because the Academy had only been reopened two years before so no-one was yet ready to graduate. After a few days’ uncertainty Madame Blaitsky told them the practice rooms would be open all summer, but there would be no classroom teaching. Nobody minded this latter; all the students wanted to stay to practice; so there was little difference between term-time and vacation-time as far as Yuezhu was concerned, except that she had some leisure, and freedom to come and go.

She welcomed the opportunity for extra practice. It was clear to her now that, even with her best efforts, she was in the bottom third of her class so far as dancing ability was concerned. This she was determined to improve. Through all the stifling heat of July she rose at five, exercised all morning, alternating barre and center-work, took a long nap after lunch, then went back to the practice rooms for another three or four hours dancing. Madame Blaitsky had gone to her home in the northeast for the summer, and the other teachers were not much in evidence. Baoyu, careless in his superiority, came in no more than two or three times a week, but there were always students in the practice rooms, ready to help, criticize, encourage.

*

Half Brother appeared one sweltering day in mid-July just before noon, walking right into the practice room where Yuezhu and two other girls, enervated by the heat, were struggling through enchaînements together—five minutes of dancing alternating with ten minutes of fanning themselves and gossiping.

“I went to your dormitory, Little Sister, but they told me you were practicing. Such dedication! Have you eaten?”

Half Brother looked very fine and handsome, wearing a shiny brown leather belt over his smart green uniform. There was a gun holster in the belt, with the polished wooden butt of the gun visible beneath the cover.

He had come in a military jeep, with a driver. Now he tookYuezhu off across the city on a thrilling ride in the jeep, the air rushing past her face to cool and refresh her. Yuezhu had traveled in the backs of trucks, but never before in a car of any kind. To speed along Eternal Peace Boulevard in the jeep, past the vermilion walls of the Forbidden City, the driver sounding his horn at the scattered cyclists, seemed to her the grandest thing in the world.

They came at last to an old mansion in the Front Gate district south of the Square. Half Brother helped her out of the jeep, then led her through a leafy outer courtyard to a small reception room in what must once have been the servants’ quarters. From here a waitress in a starched white tunic led them through the inner courtyard to a clean, airy dining-room set with small tables, each table covered with a white cloth. On the wall at the far end of the room was a large landscape painting in the old style. Most of the tables were occupied, small groups of people—mostly men—in shirt-sleeves or T-shirts, bottles of beer on the cloth in front of them, glass tumblers, dishes of food in various stages of consumption.

“Southwestern cuisine,” said Half Brother as the waitress led them to their table, “the best in the capital.”

“It looks very bourgeois,” said Yuezhu. “What would Father say?”

Half Brother laughed. “Father’s ideas are out of date now,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer who think like him.”

“Isn’t it expensive, though? Are you sure you can afford it?”

“Not a problem. I want to make up for missing your birthday.”

The food was very good indeed. Not really fancy, just varied and well-made. All the dishes were southwestern specialties: pickled eggs, savory bean curd, sliced chicken with a blistering hot black pepper sauce. Half Brother ordered beer, but Yuezhu would drink only tea.

“You should take a break from your dancing,” said Half Brother. “Go down to Guangzhou to see Father and Ayi. They seem to be well settled in now.”

“To tell the truth, I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that my family’s in Guangzhou with Comrade Deng Xiaoping. I don’t know what they’d put in my file.”

Half Brother laughed, selecting a choice cube of bean curd. “It’s nothing. Comrade Deng will soon be back in the capital. You’ll see.”

Yuezhu was surprised to hear him speak so easily and carelessly. He, a military man! She looked round a little nervously, but no-one was in earshot.

“I don’t think you should make so light of it,” she said. “Comrade Deng’s in deep disgrace. Every unit in the country has denounced him. The Party’s turned away from his path, left him behind.”

Half Brother chuckled knowingly. “Little Sister. Don’t try to make a chicken from fragments of bone. The Party …” he gave the words a sarcastic spin, throwing them back to her, “… is waiting for a certain very important person to die. So that the ruling faction, who have that person’s support, can be sent off to be managers of cement factories in Gansu Province” [naming a remote and impoverished region of the northwest].

“I can’t believe you’re serious,” said Yuezhu. “How can you know such things?”

“Oh, the army knows everything. What’s the Party without the army? The Chairman said it himself. ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ There’s nothing goes on that my seniors don’t know about. And then, sooner or later, it trickles down to the officers’ mess. Trust me, Little Sister, Father’s setback is only a temporary one.”

“But how can you be sure? It could be years before …” Instinctively, Yuezhu looked around again. “… before anyone important dies. The Prime Minister only just died in January.”

“It won’t be long,” said Half Brother emphatically, and took a drink of his beer.

“I can’t imagine what our country will be like without … when that person has left the world.”

“Don’t worry.” Half Brother wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Our country will prosper. There’ll be no more of these foolish movements. We shall accelerate Socialist Reconstruction. Our country will be the richest and strongest in the world. All the other countries will fear us. Even America—they will shake with fear!” He laughed, so loud that some people at nearby tables looked over, and Yuezhu wondered if the small quantity of beer he had drunk might be having a bad effect on him.

“Well, that would be wonderful,” she said cautiously. “Of course, I hope you are right. But the immediate situation is that Comrade Deng is in disgrace, and our father’s chief along with him.”

“The masses support Comrade Deng,” said Half Brother firmly. “Do you know about the demonstrations at Qingming earlier this year?”

“Yes. I even saw something of them.”

“Well, that’s the mood of the people. This leftist faction can’t control them. ‘When the rulers are wise, there is harmony under Heaven.’ Soon we shall have wise rulers again, and our country will be strong and happy.” He grinned across the table at her, the old clever grin she knew from her earliest memories. “Trust me, Little Sister.”

Whatever the worth of Half Brother’s insights, the general tension of the country’s political situation had by now communicated itself to everybody, even to those who gave no thought to large matters from one year’s end to the next. Everyone was nervous, but of course no-one wanted to speak about these things for fear their words might come back to them at a struggle meeting.

And at last—the great affairs of mankind being linked to the natural world as they are, in ways no human mind can fathom—at last that tension penetrated the crust of the earth itself.

Chapter 19

The Stage Trembles As a Great Man Departs

The White-Haired Girl Takes a Victim

Yuezhu woke in the middle of one stifling hot night to the sound of voices shouting, glass breaking. Along with the noises she noticed the smell: an odd smell, something like chalk dust. There was nothing to see, though. All was pitch black. “What is it?” she heard a sleepy voice say nearby. “Is it thunder?”

Yuezhu shared a dormitory room with seven other girls. They slept in four bunk beds, two against each wall. Three of the girls had gone home for the summer vacation, or were away for some other reason. The other four were all awake, to judge from the sounds of movement in the darkness around her.

“What is it? What is it?” voices were saying all around. Nobody knew what was happening. Yuezhu sensed the girl in the upper bunk above her sliding down to stand on the floor. But she lost her balance somehow and lurched over to fall on top of Yuezhu where she lay. As she fell she screamed.

“Earthquake!”

Instantly the word was in the air all around them. Running feet in the corridor outside, and the word—shouted everywhere now: “Earthquake! Earthquake!”

Yuezhu struggled out from under the other girl and tried to stand. As she did so, the floor yawed sideways beneath her, and the window blew out as if hit by a truck. Someone crashed into her in the darkness, one of the other girls. “We must get out,” gasped the girl, trying to push past. “Outside, we must get outside.”

They were on the third floor of a six-floor block. The whole building was swaying and they could hear the concrete cracking. Hear, and also smell—that was the brick-dust smell, everywhere in the air around them now, as they ran along the corridor to the stairwell.

The stairwell was already crowded with students from the three upper floors, which were all male dormitories. One or two of the more enterprising students had flashlights—one above Yuezhu, one below her—and the occasional flickering light showed a heaving sea of faces pushing down the stairs, white faces, each illuminated for only an instant, every one a study in cold terror. The air was full of dust from the strained concrete, and the flashlights made white shafts through the dust.

It was difficult to keep one’s footing on the stairs, in the darkness, with people pushing in panic all around. Yuezhu got down the first flight; then, on the landing, with students streaming in from the second-floor rooms, there was another sideways jolt from the earth, and several fell. Yuezhu kept her balance at first, but was pulled down by someone grabbing at her. Someone else fell across her; heavy bare feet stepped on her, hard on her kidneys, and she screamed. Straining to rise, she felt a sharp pain in her back, then was knocked down again. People were screaming. “Let us get up! Wait, please wait, people have fallen!” But no-one was inclined to wait, the crowd pressed forward to the last flight of stairs, all naked bodies it seemed, glistening silver in the random play of the flashlight beams, the stink of their sweat filling the narrow stairwell. Yuezhu was carried with them, half-standing half-crawling. Reaching wildly for something to hold, her fingers met the damp concrete wall, and by sheer friction of her palms on the wall managed to right herself. She was down the steps and outside, sobbing, sobbing.

Near the building the ground was covered with broken glass. It seemed all the windows had blown out. Further away there were the vague forms of people standing around in the darkness, groups sitting on the ground or standing in little clumps, picked out by occasional flashlight beams. It was a hot night and people were wearing just what they had gone to sleep in: the girls, thin cotton pajamas, the boys only shorts.

Yuezhu tried to pick out someone she knew, but could not. She sat on the ground, which was bare hard earth. Now she was aware of having injured her back somehow in the scramble down the stairwell. She twisted and turned her body, flexing to find the source of the pain, and at one point sent a sharp spasm down her right leg all the way to the ankle. Nothing serious, she thought, nothing a few days of light warm-ups wouldn’t fix; and remembered Madame Blaitsky, in one of her rare lighter moments, telling them that if they wanted to strike up a conversation with a professional ballet dancer, one infallible technique was to inquire about the dancer’s latest injury.

Someone near by, a girl student, was wailing about her family. “Mama! Baba! Didi! Where are you? Are you all right? Oh Heaven, please be all right!” Yuezhu supposed the girl must have her family in Beijing. Her own were safely in Guangzhou, thank Heaven for that, and Half Brother too. She wondered about Baoyu, who lived with his family, off campus—had he survived?

As the night wore on the campus area filled up with residents of the buildings all around—it was the largest open space in the area. People brought oil lanterns and candles. A group of four classmates from the Dance Academy located Yuezhu. Together, they wandered among the crowd looking for other classmates. Three or four times the earth trembled; people fell silent and clung to each other until it stopped.

“Everyone’s saying it’s a sign,” said one of the classmates, a pretty willowy girl from Jiangxi Province. “It means Chairman Mao is about to die.”

For “die” she used the antique word beng, which was applied to the Emperors in olden times, or to collapsing mountains. It sounded odd to hear the word spoken, though it turned up occasionally in historical movies. They all had to stop and think what it meant.

“I think that’s absurd,” said another girl after this pause for thought. “It’s feudal thinking. I don’t think we should allow such beliefs in New China. Long live Chairman Mao!” But her voice cracked on the penultimate syllable, and the others knew she did not believe what she was saying. She knew, like everyone else, that such an event cannot be without meaning.

*

As everyone said that terrible night, so it was proven: six weeks later Chairman Mao left the world.

By that time the capital had got itself into some sort of order, as if the earth intended its omen to have sufficient time to properly impress itself on people’s minds. Teams of engineers were going round inspecting the large buildings, to see if they were safe for habitation. They had not yet reached the Conservatory, but the army had come and put up tents on the campus, and the students were all living in these tents. The beginning of school was postponed until the state of the buildings could be determined; but the staff, and those students who had not lived on campus in the summer, had all come back.

The second-year dance students heard the news soon after Madame Blaitsky came back from the northeast at the beginning of September. The few days she had been back Madame Blaitsky spent in setting up a dance practice tent, using the biggest tent the army would give her and enlisting all her students to work fitting it out with barre and mirrors.

“Couldn’t we just wait until the engineers have certified the main buildings?” asked one of the bolder spirits.

Madame Blaitsky impaled her with a Siberian glance. “You are here to dance,” she replied. “There’s no reason why an earthquake should interfere with your dancing.” She made the earthquake sound like something trivial—a sore throat, a bruised shin.

The practice tent was just complete when Chairman Mao died. The second year, Yuezhu’s year, practiced in it for the first time the day before. The tent was made of heavy army canvas. It was stuffy and hot inside, and smelt of dust and canvas. Teacher Li, their ballet instructor for the morning sessions, taught them soutenu. Then they had a class in choreology from Teacher Zhang, an eccentric old pedant who had been a professional pianist until the Red Guards broke all his fingers. After lunch there was an hour’s siesta, then an English class, then practice at the barre. Madame Blaitsky had supervised the army men setting up the barre inside the practice tent, making sure they drove the uprights deep into the earth of the campus to make the barre rigid. After barre came center work, then music reading, then the evening meal. After evening meal the students did their small chores—laundry, mending, letter-writing. The period between small chores and bedtime was usually given over to free practice, and the keener students went back to the tent. Yuezhu did not. The weather was still very hot, water supplies were problematical, the tent was stuffy, and Yuezhu did not like going to bed covered in sweat. She filled the time with some isometric exercises on her bunk, going over her English lesson, and gossiping with roommates before lights out. She went to bed wishing they could have their proper facilities back soon. When she woke the loudspeakers were playing death music.

She realized at once that one of the leaders must have died. They had played the same music when the Prime Minister died. It was a peculiar piece of music: basically a dirge in the traditional Chinese style, played on traditional instruments, but with a lot of foreign influence.

Oddly, Chairman Mao did not come to mind right away. She had never thought of Chairman Mao dying. Such thoughts seemed improper, disrespectful. Hearing the death music, Yuezhu supposed it must be one of the other leaders, several of whom were very old. But as soon as she got out of bed the other students in her tent told her. Then the loudspeakers interrupted their dirge to give the news. “Great Leader Chairman Mao Zedong has departed from this world … ” It chilled her to hear the words. As soon as they had started she wished they would stop. She wished for it not to be true. Chairman Mao dead! It was too big a thing, her mind could not encompass it.

Many students were weeping, but Yuezhu could not weep. Her grief was of the sort that is beyond weeping. She was overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair. What was the use of being alive, if Chairman Mao was dead? That day Yuezhu was actually ill, a terrible heavy lethargy settling on her; and it was several days more before she could bring herself to dance with any enthusiasm.

*

The pain in her back was a serious nuisance. The days of confusion following the earthquake gave Yuezhu the opportunity to rest up, and the pain was no longer continuous. Still it came back to torment her every dance practice, every time she bowed, or landed from a jump. She should go to Madame Blaitsky with it, she knew, but was afraid to do so. She had felt sufficiently insecure about her dance skills before Father’s chief’s disgrace. Now she did not know what the consequences might be if she confessed any weakness or disability. She spoke of the problem only to Baoyu, who showed her some light stretching exercises the male dancers used when they got strained muscles from their weight-lifting.

Half Brother’s theory that Comrade Deng Xiaoping, and consequently Father’s chief and Father himself, would return to power after the Chairman died, seemed to have been wishful thinking. A new Chairman was announced, a man named Hua Guofeng. Baoyu said the leaders didn’t take him seriously.

“He’s just a nonentity from Shanxi Province,” said Baoyu. “He happened to be in the room when Chairman Mao died, and he got the Mandate of Heaven.”

“Well, that was a great stroke of luck,” said Yuezhu.

“Yes. But he can’t last. Your half brother was right. My father says the same thing: Comrade Deng Xiaoping will come back.”

But Comrade Deng Xiaoping did not come back. The new man, Hua, had the leaders of the previous faction arrested and put caps on them, calling them the Gang of Four and blaming them for the Cultural Revolution. There were meetings to denounce these people, and resolutions to support Chairman Hua. Comrade Deng Xiaoping, and Father’s chief, and Father, remained in their exile in Guangzhou. Yuezhu got a brief, uninformative letter from Mother once a month.

It seemed that Father’s faction would never be rehabilitated. The insecurity of her situation preyed on Yuezhu’s mind, as the back problem plagued her body. Other than Baoyu, there was no-one she could speak to about either.

In November they moved back into the buildings, now passed as safe by the engineers. At once Madame Blaitsky announced that the Dance Academy would put on a public performance of The White-Haired Girl the following spring. This was one of the revolutionary pieces promoted by the late Chairman’s wife, who had been one of those arrested by the new Chairman. Apparently the fact of her having been arrested did not reflect upon the ballet.

TheWhite-Haired Girl

Xi’er was a peasant girl who lived before Liberation. Her father could not pay his debts, so he was beaten to death by a cruel landlord named Huang Shiren. Then the landlord took Xi’er in lieu of the debt, and made her work as a servant in his house.

Xi’er’s fiancé ran away from the village to join the Eighth Route Army. Xi’er’s sufferings became so great her hair turned white. She ran away from the landlord and went to live in a cave.

The fiancé’s unit liberated the village and rescued Xi’er from the cave. The landlord was led away to receive the People’s Justice. Xi’er joined the army and went off with them to make revolution.

The rumor soon spread among the students that the new Chairman himself would attend the first performance, but Madame Blaitsky would not confirm this. The students began rehearsals in late November, as the people of Beijing were disappearing into cotton-padded jackets and winter hats. Actual roles would not be announced until the spring, though everyone assumed Baoyu was to dance the part of the fiancé. Yuezhu had no real chance of dancing Xi’er, but still hoped for a good role.

Now there were not enough hours in the day. Yuezhu made an arrangement with the night-watchman at the dormitory. She tied a piece of string to her ankle and let it out over the top of the door of the room she shared with five other girls. At four thirty the watchman would come up to the door and yank on the string. In this way Yuezhu found she could get another half-hour’s practice in with the keenest of her classmates.

Every morning, every dark winter’s morning, the building heat not yet on, she worked at the barre. At first she worked without music, for the gramophone records were locked in a cabinet at night. She tried to hear the music in her mind, or sometimes read through it—at least in the first weeks, until she knew it by heart—waiting for Baoyu to come in at six to keep her company and help with the supported movements. Then Madame Blaitsky, perhaps moved by Yuezhu’s intensity, relaxed the rules and the early-bird students could dance to music at all hours.

All through the winter Yuezhu danced on doggedly, up at four thirty, never missing a class, coming back to the practice room after evening meal. She danced through both New Years, solar and lunar, wearing out one, two pairs of dance shoes, stubbornly ignoring the pain that shot down her side and right leg when she landed in certain positions, or angled her body a certain way. Baoyu marveled at her dedication.

“I really think you may be chosen for Xi’er,” he said. “Your technique has improved so much!”

One evening in late February she was alone in the practice room with Baoyu. It was after nine, and the other dancers had all left to go to bed. But the roles for The White-Haired Girl were to be announced the following week, and Yuezhu grudged every moment not spent in practice. Baoyu began to chide her, as he often did, for taking things too far.

“You’re not moving very well. Losing the tempo. Perhaps you should call it a day.”

“Just half an hour. Some light exercises to unwind. Watch my pas de chat, tell me if I have the right positions now.”

She waited for Baoyu to find the right place on the record, then began with the music. Dancing out on the floor, away from the barre, Yuezhu felt her weariness. Perhaps Baoyu was right, perhaps she was overdoing it. Demi-plié, arms to seconde, jump left. After the roles were announced, whatever the results, she would take it easy for a while. “Pull back and regroup,” as Father liked to say. Demi-plié, arms en bas, seconde, demi-seconde, jump.

“It’s awful,” said Baoyu. “Looks like a fish flapping its tail. You’re too tired. Come on, you’re overexerting yourself.”

“Watch! Watch my pas de chat!”

Pas de chat is not a difficult movement. Madame Blaitsky had taught it to them in the first year. You travel sideways by a series of two-footed jumps, landing in the position called demi-plié, knees slightly bent for shock absorption. Yuezhu thought she could do pas de chats in her sleep. Indeed, this was very nearly the situation. But coming down from one jump, her feet got tangled. She fell, awkwardly, putting out an arm to save herself, but failing to do so, and landing rather hard on her hip.

Baoyu was at her side immediately. “Elder Sister, I warned you. You’re really overdoing it.”

He offered her his arm. Yuezhu marveled, as she always did when she noticed him now, at how muscular he had become. She got up on one knee; but when she went to straighten her body, a shocking pain went all the way down one side, from waist to foot. The pain was so sharp it brought tears to her eyes. “Ai!” she yelped; and tried again to straighten, and again couldn’t.

“Elder Sister!” Baoyu’s face showed alarm. “What is it?” He took her arms with his and tried to lift her, but the pain made her cry out again. She was stuck, bent over down there on one knee, on the floor.

“Elder Sister! Elder Sister!”

“It’s all right. I’ve just pulled something. Give me a minute. It’ll be all right.”

But it wasn’t all right. At last Baoyu had to carry her in his arms, still doubled over, wrapped in a coarse school blanket, across the courtyards of the Conservatory, through the gritty cold air, back to her dormitory, and set her carefully on her bed—against all regulations, as boys were not allowed in the girl’s dormitories. Three other girls were already in the room, sitting on their beds talking. They gathered round Yuezhu, murmuring sympathy.

“I’ll go and get Comrade Shao,” said Baoyu, referring to the dance physician who tended to their injuries.

“No,” gasped Yuezhu, struggling to straighten while lying sideways on the bed. “No, it’ll be all right. Don’t make a fuss, it’ll be all right.”

But it wasn’t all right at all.

Chapter 20

Comrade Deng Xiaoping Finds Food for His Soul

Father Returns to His Principles

“It’s a judgment,” said Father, nodding to emphasize his words. “It’s Heaven’s judgment on me for going against my principles. I knew, I always knew no good would come of it.”

“You don’t have to say that now, husband. The poor girl’s upset. What use is it to tell her these things?”

“It’s my fault too,” said Half Brother gloomily. “I was the one who persuaded Father.”

They were assembled at the dinner-table for Yuezhu’s nineteenth birthday. Some great political shift was under way, and Father’s chief’s faction was in the ascendant. Father and Mother had returned to Beijing the month before, to a spacious new apartment in the elite district between Jade Abyss Lake and the Temple of the Moon.

The move had rescued Yuezhu from a painful decision. The physiologist at the Conservatory had declared her unable to dance, at any rate for the foreseeable future. Since she had no home to go to in the capital, she had stayed on in the dormitory. For a while she had even continued to attend the classroom lessons, and apparently could have gone on doing so indefinitely; but the sympathy of her classmates had become too much to bear. Having been explicitly barred from dance classes by the physiologist, by mid-March she had ceased participating in the life of the Academy altogether, and occupied her days with solitary expeditions to the capital’s many parks and monuments. There was a general assumption by everyone concerned that she would eventually pack up and leave to join her family in Guangzhou. In fact she had not even told them in her letters anything about what had happened. Some part of her, deep in her deepest heart, longed for and believed in a miracle that would restore her health—and then, how foolish it would have looked, to have written letters saying her dance career was finished! But Father had been reassigned to Beijing, to this splendid new apartment, and Mother had come to the Academy to tell her about it, and of course the state of affairs could not then be hidden.

“Oh, what does it matter?” Yuezhu poked listlessly at the bean curd in her bowl. “I can’t dance any more, that’s all.”

Just hearing them talk about it sent her to the verge of tears. She didn’t want to hear her misery talked about. She wanted to suffer it alone, in silence, toting her burden of despair through the unpeopled splendors of the Summer Palace, limping with them beneath the blossoms at Purple Bamboo Park, under the unbearable bright skies of spring.

“From a bad action there’s bound to be a bad consequence,” Father continued, pursuing his theme. “I should never have let Eldest talk me into it.” (“Eldest” was his word for Half Brother.)

“We don’t know for sure,” Mother pointed out. “The army has the best doctors. Perhaps you could have them look at her. There may be some cure.”

“There are certain doctors at the Beijing Medical Institute the senior leaders call on sometimes for an opinion,” said Half Brother. “It might be possible …”

“What’s the use?” said Yuezhu. “If there was a cure that would let me dance, wouldn’t the doctors at the Academy know about it? Whatever another doctor did, we’d have to persuade the Academy to accept his result. By that time I’d have lost the rest of this year. I was old already when I entered, for a dancer. They won’t accept me again at nineteen, to start my second year over. It’s hopeless.”

Yuezhu was unhappier than she had ever been. She had not known—not truly known, in her blood and marrow—how much dancing meant to her, until she heard those terrible words from the physiologist: You will not be able to dance, not for a long time. The sentence rang in her head like the doleful note of a temple gong, reverberating in the sounding-box of the skull, the ring of bone. She had dreamed of a miracle during those lonely last few weeks at the Academy; but somehow, once her family knew about her injury, denial turned to resignation, and she had sunk into fatalism. Hope, the demon Hope, had deluded her again.

Still she could not altogether resist his susurrations. Father and Half Brother between them somehow arranged for her to see Professor Piao, a specialist at Beijing Medical Institute. Professor Piao was one of the most renowned practitioners in the field of spinal injuries. During the most fevered period of the Cultural Revolution (so Half Brother told it) he had been sent down to the countryside to learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants; but had been recalled after only a few months to attend to the daughter-in-law of a very senior personage, who had slipped a disk while six months pregnant. Since then he had held his position at the Institute through all the varying political winds, and had several times been called to Zhongnanhai to attend to the country’s leaders.

Professor Piao ordered some X-rays taken. When they had been developed he favored Yuezhu with a personal examination. Her X-ray pictures were right there in Professor Piao’s examination room, fixed to panes of white frosted glass lit from behind. The panes glowed creamy white in the spaces between the pictures. Also in the room was a stainless-steel sink, a chair on which she had deposited her clothes, a tall apparatus of tubular metal and webbing straps whose purpose Yuezhu could not guess at, and Professor Piao. Yuezhu lay face-down on the vinyl couch, quite naked, facing the unfathomable apparatus, while the old man—Professor Piao was at least seventy—prodded her back with his bony fingers.

Apparently satisfied, Professor Piao turned to the sink and began washing his hands. “You were studying ballet,” he said to the faucet.

“Yes. At the Academy of Dance.”

“Well, you’d better forget about that.” Professor Piao flicked a cold glance at her. “Put your clothes on.”

Yuezhu climbed down from the couch and began dressing. She had been a little shocked at taking her clothes off in front of Professor Piao, and had tried to maneuver herself on to the couch without letting him see her private parts. His manner was so distant, however, she had lost her self-consciousness before he finished.

“There’s nothing to be done?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” replied the old man irritably. “There is an operation, zhuiban qiechu shu.” Apparently feeling this was sufficient information to divulge to a patient, he fell silent, drying his hands on a spotless white towel.

At first Yuezhu did not understand the expression. Professor Piao was from Shanghai, and spoke Mandarin with a heavy accent. Qiechu she recognized at once, with alarm, for it meant “amputate.” Shu was a surgical operation …

“Amputate … what? The disk?”

“Yes. It’s ruptured. The juice inside is seeping out, and pressing against the nerve. This kind of tissue cannot really heal. You will always have some problem with it. The only solution is to remove the disk. Remove it, and then join together the bones of the spine, above and below it. You will be a few millimeters shorter, of course.”

Professor Piao chuckled. He had been quite cordial with her, Yuezhu reflected, considering that he had dealt with the most senior of the country’s leaders, and she was merely the daughter of a Brigadier. She had been rather afraid of him, expecting that he would be brusque or plain rude with her—as, of course, considering his position, he was entitled to be.

“And that … that will let me dance again?” The demon was chittering wildly in her ear now.

“Dance? Oh, no. I shouldn’t think so. There will always be a certain stiffness. For a year or two, until the bones are fused, you will have to move quite carefully.”

Professor Piao was nodding at her, smiling as he spoke to take the edge off his words. “As I said, you had best forget about dancing. In fact, this operation is quite new, and the results not always predictable. All that can be said for sure is, that in the case of a severely ruptured disk, it will remove the main cause of pain. In a case like yours, where the pain is not crippling … I really would not recommend it.”

“So my case is serious enough to stop me dancing, but not serious enough to justify an operation?”

Professor Piao stiffened a little. He turned away, dropping the used towel into a stainless steel pedal bin. “There is no question of you doing any kind of gymnastics, athletics, or advanced dancing, operation or no operation. Not this year, not next year. Possibly never. You had better reconcile yourself to the fact.”

*

Reconcile herself Yuezhu could not. She accepted the situation now, but not the blank empty condition in which it left her life. No-one and nothing could comfort her. Mother tried her best, but was constitutionally incapable of understanding the depth of her loss. Mother’s own life had been one of resignation and duty, almost (Yuezhu reflected, now having ample time to reflect) almost like a woman in the old society. The saying in those times had been san cong si de—the three obediences and four moralities. The three obediences were to one’s father before marriage, to one’s husband after marriage, to one’s son when the husband was gone. Mother would never have let such a feudal expression pass her lips, but she had been brought up in the old society—had been sixteen at Liberation—and her thinking was set in that mold. She had never had any strong ambition for herself, had easily subsumed her own will to that of her parents, her husband, the Party.

Looking at Mother, listening to her clumsy efforts at consolation, Yuezhu even developed some real feelings of guilt about her passion for dancing. After all, that was what they were supposed to be like, all of them, everybody: selfless, sacrificing personal considerations for the good of all, Serving the People, rustless cogs in the great machine of History. Personal ambition was bourgeois, probably counter-revolutionary. Perhaps her present misery was, as Father had said, the judgment of Heaven on her.

Father himself was very busy, sometimes coming home at nine or ten in the evening. Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s position, and therefore Father’s chief’s, was waxing stronger day by day, and Father was in meetings all the time. Half Brother had gone back to his unit, whatever it was—even Father did not seem to know. Baoyu called on her two or three times in April and May, to walk with her in North Lake Park or by the Jade Abyss Lake, but his visits only made her more desperately miss the discipline and companionship, the sense of purpose, of the Academy, and she found it difficult to talk to him. On the last occasion she was actually quite rude, and Baoyu was clearly hurt; but they parted before she had made any apology, and she thought he might not come again.

Into this void of despair and self-pity, one day late in May, stepped Fate’s messenger, in the improbable form of Madame Blaitsky.

The compound Yuezhu’s family now lived in was in the nature of an elite barracks, and non-military visitors were not allowed past the gatehouse without invitation. On this particular afternoon, as Yuezhu and Mother were starting their siesta, one of the guards from the gatehouse came knocking, saying there was a foreigner to see them. Mother went to investigate. Five minutes later there were voices in the corridor, Mother and someone else, a woman with a northeastern accent, whose voice for some reason Yuezhu did not immediately recognize. Go away! Go away! willed Yuezhu, fanatical now in her seclusion. But the visitor did not go away. Mother called through to the bedroom, and Yuezhu had to go and be polite. To her surprise it was Madame Blaitsky. Yuezhu offered a courteous greeting.

“How is your back now?” asked Madame Blaitsky. And even this simply query, kindly intended, pierced Yuezhu with more pain than the disk had ever given her.

“It’s much better,” she said. “So long as I don’t try to dance.”

Seeing Madame Blaitsky brought back to her the training, the barre and mirrored walls, the endless repetition, the smell of the other dancers’ sweat, all the hope and challenge and attainment and camaraderie of the school … everything, everything. Please, please go away! she inwardly shrieked.

“It’s really a tragedy,” Madame Blaitsky was saying to Mother. “I could see how she loved to dance. Same as myself at her age, nothing else in her head but dancing.”

“It’s a shame,” agreed Mother. “But our daughter has many abilities. Her foreign language skills are excellent. She may become an interpreter or translator.”

“Really?” Madame Blaitsky looked over at her, eyebrows raised somewhat. “Would you be satisfied with that, Little Han?”

“The Party’s will is my will,” replied Yuezhu mechanically.

“Of course, of course.” Madame Blaitsky cleared her throat, and addressed herself to Mother again. “Well, the damage is done, I’m afraid. Our doctors all agree: your daughter cannot dance.”

So why have you come here to torment me? But Yuezhu only said: “The doctors were very kind. I’m really grateful to them.”

Madame Blaitsky nodded appreciation of this little act of grace. Catching her eyes, Yuezhu suddenly saw the older woman’s sincerity. It came right through, lancing the armor of her selfish despair. Madame Blaitsky knew her pain, understood it perfectly! Not to be able to dance—she understood! Yuezhu’s heart warmed to the kindly woman, with her round Slavic face and strange blue eyes.

“I’ve come to make a suggestion,” said Madame Blaitsky.

These words, and the sincerity on Madame Blaitsky’s face, and the very fact of her having taken the trouble to come visiting, reawoke the demon Hope, and he at once began whispering in Yuezhu’s ear. The doctors have a cure, after all! There is a special Russian medicine to heal the disk! Some special exercises you can do! A few months of these exercises and you will be back at the school!

Mother was smiling expectantly at Madame Blaitsky. Yuezhu should likewise have waited politely for her to deliver her suggestion; but the murmuring of the demon was too insistent.

“I will do anything I can,” she said. “Anything I can, to come back to the Conservatory.”

“Right,” said Madame Blaitsky, looking at her very tenderly. “To the Conservatory. But you know, there is no possibility of your coming back to the Dance Academy.”

“Our daughter has already resigned herself to that,” said Mother.

“However,” continued Madame Blaitsky, “there is another possibility open to Little Han at the Conservatory. Since she has already studied music.”

“I don’t understand,” said Yuezhu. “I can read music, but I can’t play any instrument.”

“No. But you have a beautiful voice. Everybody notices that. Beautiful, and very strong.”

They looked at her: Yuezhu, fast slipping back into despair, Mother altogether baffled.

“They are starting a new department at the Conservatory, you see. To train young people in foreign-style opera.”

Mother frowned. “Foreign-style opera? I didn’t know there was a foreign style. Our country has so many different opera styles of her own. Why would we need to train singers for the foreign style? What’s the use of that? It sounds like ‘Copying the Handan walk.’”

This last was an idiom, the name of a story from the Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi.

Copying the Handan Walk

In the period before our country was decisively unified there was a state named Zhao, whose capital city had the name Handan. This Handan was regarded by all the other states as a center of fashion. In particular, the gentlemen of Handan had developed an exceptionally graceful and dignified gait. Everywhere under Heaven, people wanted to walk like the men of Handan.

Some young men from the neighboring state of Yan journeyed to Handan just for the purpose of learning the Handan walk. They took lodging in the city, and every day they went out into the streets to observe and imitate the famous Handan walk. Try as they might, however, none of them could master it, and in their blundering approximations to the Handan walk just made themselves look ridiculous, not only to the stately walkers of Handan itself, but even to the merchants and travelers from other states who were resident in the city.

Worse yet, when the young men of Yan returned to their own country, they found that in striving to copy the Handan walk, they had forgotten the customary gait of their native place. Not only had they made themselves ludicrous to the people of Zhao, they were now laughing-stocks in Yan herself. They had failed to learn the foreign style, and lost their own style.

Madame Blaitsky smiled—the smile of one who understands large affairs so much better than her listeners.

“You don’t appreciate how fast things are changing, Comrade Han. Comrade Deng Xiaoping recently attended a concert given by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra down in Guangzhou. Do you know what he said to them afterwards? He said: ‘That is what I call food for the soul!’” Madame Blaitsky paused for dramatic effect. Then: “There is a new wind blowing through the cultural affairs of our country, Comrade Han. The Conservatory is to receive an increase in funding next year. A very large increase.”

“Well …” Mother was, of course, eager to show her approval of whatever wind was blowing. “Well, it’s a good thing.”

“Yes. It’s a good thing. All kinds of foreign performance arts are to be encouraged now. The American Ballet Theater will visit us this fall. To perform in the Great Hall of the People!” She turned to Yuezhu. “If you want a ticket, I can …” But she caught the expression of anguish on Yuezhu’s face, and stopped dead. There was an unhappy pause.

“So you are suggesting that my daughter can join this foreign-style opera department?” Mother had gathered things together.

“Yes. Well, I mean, she can apply for admission. Since she has some training in music, she has an advantage. Of course, experts will have to listen to her voice, to see if it’s suitable. There will be a special interview, I understand. But, to tell you the truth …” she made a small laugh, “… the competition will not be very intense. I am one of the first to know of it. It’s all being done in a hurry, of course. They want to start classes in September—only three months! There is hardly time to get the word out. Most of the students who might be interested are committed to other schools. And frankly, it’s such a new thing …” the laugh again, “… not very many will be interested anyway. When the style is better known, of course, it will be popular. But right now …” she shrugged. “Well, the first year of admission, if they really start this September, the first year—perhaps even the first two years—will really be just to get things started.”

“A new thing,” repeated Mother, somewhat blankly, with the air of one who thought that in spite of its being a new thing, disaster might yet be averted somehow.

Madame Blaitsky turned to Yuezhu. “What do you think, Little Han? If you want to apply, I can put your name forward.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have another plan for September? All the schools and colleges will be open, you know. They’re taking students now. There will be nation-wide examinations in December for all colleges. Starting next year it will all be done by examination. If you want to go to college on an interview, a good political record and …” she glanced at Mother, “… if you don’t mind me speaking frankly, on a word from your father, this is the last chance.”

The news about the foreign-style opera department had hardly penetrated Yuezhu’s gloom. It was interesting, in an abstract way, but so what? She didn’t want to be a singer. She wanted to be a dancer. And she couldn’t. Therefore life had no purpose. What use to talk about singing? Nobody in China listened to foreign-style opera, anyway.

Madame Blaitsky was watching her, reading her thoughts. “There is no hope of your dancing,” she said softly. “No hope at all. The Conservatory won’t accept you back in the ballet department. But you may be able to come back as a singer.”

“I have no experience as a singer,” said Yuezhu. “Not in that style.”

“Who in China has? You are at no disadvantage.”

“I don’t know,” said Yuezhu. “I don’t know.” Meaning: I don’t care, I don’t care.

*

Yuezhu had no spirit to do anything about the foreign-style opera school. After Madame Blaitsky had left she did not even think about it. But when Father came home and they were sitting at dinner, Mother brought it up. Before she had finished a couple of sentences, Father began shaking his head wildly.

“I won’t do anything! I won’t do anything! No matter what you say! No more back doors!”

“I don’t care,” said Yuezhu, in all truth. “I haven’t asked you to do anything, have I? I don’t want to go to singing school anyway. Singing is very boring. I’ll be a teacher, or a translator. I don’t care.”

Father looked at her, still angry. “Bad deeds have a bad result, haven’t we seen it proven? I’m not going to any Party Secretary with gifts to get you in. You’ll get in on your own this time, or find something else to do!”

As much to assert herself against Father as from any real desire to be a singer, Yuezhu applied to the new school, going to the Conservatory to sign her name. It made her ache to be there again. Crossing the courtyard she could not help but see the window of the dance practice room, and recall that still frosty morning in her first year, when love for this place, and for her part in it, and for Chairman Mao, had filled her heart. Now she was banished from that Eden, and Chairman Mao was dead, and nothing mattered very much at all.

In less than a week she was called to interview.

The interview was much more businesslike than either of the ones she had had for the Dance Academy. There were four people in the room. Three were sitting behind two teacher’s desks pushed together. There was Second Secretary Wang from the Party committee for the whole Conservatory; Professor Zhao from the Department of Performance Music, and a middle-aged woman Yuezhu had never seen before. The middle-aged woman was writing on a pad of Conservatory paper. She glanced up only for a moment when Yuezhu came in.

The fourth person was sitting on a stool next to an enormous brand-new concert grand piano at one side. The first thing Yuezhu noticed about him was his beard. It was an actual goatee, shaped to a point, with a trim little white mustache to match. His grayish hair was long, swept back across his head and down over the collar of his shirt; but the other real oddity in his appearance was his fingernails, which were unusually long, long and curling. Most unsuitable—even inconvenient—for a pianist, Yuezhu thought.

Professor Zhao smiled encouragingly at her. “Little Han. We were sorry you had to give up dancing. Madame Blaitsky said you were so promising.”

“Thank you. She is too generous. My ability was not very great.”

Professor Zhao nodded. He turned to the middle-aged woman. “This is Comrade Zhang. She studied Russian and German opera at the Leningrad Conservatory. And this is Professor Shi. He is an expert on the Italian opera. He studied in Moscow in his youth, under Italian teachers.”

Professor Shi, sitting sideways on his piano stool to face them, smiled suddenly, laugh lines springing out all round his eyes and mouth. He had narrow blue teeth like a rodent.

“We have your file, of course. We know all about you.” Professor Zhao laughed uncomfortably, realizing that this phrase was not very appropriate, sounding, as it did, like one of those things that used to be said to the subject of a struggle session. We know all about you! Confess! Now, when it was dawning on people that that might be all over, everyone was so sensitive to phrases of this sort. “I mean, no need to go into your school record here. We just want to find out if your voice is suitable. All right? Professor Shi?”

Professor Shi nodded at him, then at Yuezhu. “I want you to sing me some scales,” he said. “Just sing ‘do, re, mi,’ following the note I give you. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“I just want you to sing naturally, without straining at all. Just naturally, with the voice you feel comfortable with. Good, strong, loud notes—but not forcing or shouting in any way. Understand?”

“Yes.”

He struck a note. It caught Yuezhu by surprise, and she just stared at him. Everybody laughed.

“Again.” Professor Shi struck the same note, a middle C. Yuezhu sang a scale. He nodded and struck another. She sang. Another, another. Professor Shi never once looked at his keyboard. He was watching her, listening very intently. Another, another. She sang twenty or more scales, from all over the keyboard. Finally he seemed satisfied.

“Now,” announced Professor Shi, “I want you to be loud. I will strike a note, and you will sing that note. Just that one note, but loud. As loud as you can without losing melodic value. Without shouting or straining. Loud and long. Hold it at the same volume as long as you can, until the breath fails. Fortissimo, tenuto. Understand?”

“I think so.”

He struck an A. Yuezhu took a deep breath and sang out the note, stopping when she felt her breath failing. This exercise, too, was repeated all over the keyboard, until Yuezhu began to feel dizzy from hyperventilating. Professor Shi stopped suddenly and stood up. He was no more than five foot two. He came out from behind the piano and approached her, stopping three paces away.

“Let us investigate your acting ability, young lady. You were trained as a dancer, ha? So you can express emotions using your body.”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Show me some of these emotions. Show me angry.”

Yuezhu adopted the posture and expression of a peasant girl accusing the landlord who had oppressed her. To her surprise, Professor Shi laughed. His laugh was merry but rather high-pitched, like a girl. “He he he he he! All right, now show me proud … Good, good; now joyful …”

At last Professor Shi seemed satisfied. He thanked her and bowed low, bowing from the waist with his arms straight down, like a Japanese.

“Thank you very much,” said Professor Zhao, nodding to her. Comrade Zhang was writing again. Yuezhu left. Leaving, she closed the door, and so was quite unable to hear Professor Shi saying: “This one! We must have this one!”

That same day Comrade Deng Xiaoping returned to the capital, and Father was promoted to Major-General.

Chapter 21

A Great Party Shows Symptoms of Decline

Moon Pearl Receives a New Name

When the visitor had gone, Secretary Kang walked back the length of his office to the window that looked out across the campus. Now—it was early April—the trees he’d had planted last year were beginning to be in leaf. Planting trees was a pet project of Secretary Kang’s. Some new ones were being planted along the walkways that crisscrossed the campus. There was a cart with some of these new trees laid out in it right under his window, their root structures wrapped in burlap. A donkey was harnessed to the cart. Apparently the donkey was being recalcitrant; one of the workers was beating him with a bamboo cane, lashing at the donkey’s hindquarters with dull ferocity. Each time the cane landed the donkey made a little jump in the air; but that was all the motion he would concede. Secretary Kang watched for a while, until interrupted by a knock at the door.

Secretary Kang walked over and opened the door to reveal Little Chen, the girl who kept the leaders supplied with thermos flasks full of hot water for tea. She came in, smiling nervously at Secretary Kang. She was nervous because, in the first place, she was at the very bottom of the Conservatory’s administrative hierarchy, he at the very top; and in the second place, because Secretary Kang occasionally helped himself to certain favors from her, favors she was not eager to grant but, given his position, could not refuse. She replaced one of his flasks, fumbling with the handle. She was nervous all the time, feeling herself under Secretary Kang’s eye, and nearly knocked over his tea-cup.

“Little Chen, do you know the International Opera Department?”

“Yes, of course. Who doesn’t know them? I hear them singing all the time. So loud!”

“The Branch Secretary for that department has the surname Guo. Go and fetch him for me. Right now. His office is at the beginning of the corridor leading to their classrooms.”

The girl scurried out, thankful that no more was required of her. Secretary Kang re-locked the door and went back to his window. The worker was still flogging his donkey, who had not moved forward an inch. In the middle distance one of the foreign teachers was crossing the campus on a path, one so far untreed, transverse to Secretary Kang’s line of sight. He had two students with him, laughing at something the foreigner was saying. Secretary Kang experienced a mental twitch of distaste. He did not like foreigners. For one thing, they were an administrative nuisance—endless arrangements to be made for their food, their travel, their accommodations. But fundamentally he just didn’t like them. He thought they were always laughing up their sleeves at him, at Chinese people, at China. Five thousand years of civilization, and still you are so poor? The country that’s supposed to have invented everything, yet you are the beggars of the world? That was what they were thinking, so he believed. Well, fuck their mothers. If China was poor, whose fault was that, if not the foreigners who had pillaged her for most of this century past?

But it was policy now, since the opening up in ’77, for every institute of higher education to hire foreign teachers. The Music Conservatory had five of the devils, striding around as if they owned the place, eating with their fancy knives and forks, fucking each other—it was common knowledge, the instructions were to let them get on with it, so long as they didn’t corrupt the morals of the Chinese students—writing who could say what lies back to their own countries in their sinister spidery script. A, B, C, … Fuck their mothers! But it was policy, you couldn’t argue with policy.

And now this visitor, out of the blue. Well, it was a windfall, that was the only way to look at it. It was a wrong thing, of course—who knew that better than himself, an old Party man from before Liberation? But many things were done now that didn’t bear close examination. Class struggle had gone by the board, and it was every man for himself now. Well, he had made revolution; now he could reap the rewards. You couldn’t say it was unfair. That was the only way to look at it. In any case, the visitor had shown him the chop of a senior person, a very senior person—one who lived in the national leaders’ compound at Zhongnanhai, quite possibly. You didn’t cross people like that, not unless you were looking for trouble.

Another knock at the door. This was Branch Secretary Guo from the International Opera Department. By the time Secretary Kang had got back to his desk, Branch Secretary Guo was settling himself in one of the big stuffed armchairs—the one the visitor had sat in while Secretary Kang entertained him.

“Old Guo, we have an important matter,” said Secretary Kang, looking across the desk at his junior. “Public Security matter.”

“Ah,” said Branch Secretary Guo, nodding his head slowly. “Old” was merely a term of address: Branch Secretary Guo was no more than thirty-five. He was short, short enough to be slightly comical, and possessed of a pale circular face which always—always, so far as Secretary Kang knew—had a rather idiotic eager-to-please look plastered across it, under a peaked army-green cap. “An important matter,” he repeated. “Public Security. One of the foreign teachers?”

“No.” The ghost of the shadow of a thought stirred in Secretary Kang’s mind. “Mm, not necessarily. It concerns one of the students. In the International Opera Department. Your department.”

“Right, right.” Branch Secretary Guo nodded eagerly. “My department.”

Heaven, the man was an idiot, thought Secretary Kang. Perhaps actually retarded. But so much the better. Depending on how he decided to handle the thing, the fewer people understood what was going on, the better. And he’d known Guo for three and a half years, since the International Opera Department was established. The man was perfectly reliable.

“I’m ready,” said Branch Secretary Guo, sitting up and forward in the armchair like a dog waiting for a bone.

Secretary Kang got up and went to the window again. He stood at the window with his back to Branch Secretary Guo, to impress on him the gravity of the matter. Incredibly, the worker in the quadrangle below was still thrashing his donkey. The creature’s hide must be made of steel, thought Secretary Kang.

“It’s a student in the international opera department. A fourth-year student, 1977 intake. Family name Han, like in Han Lin’er.” [Using the name of a 14th-century rebel leader to illustrate the surname.] “Given name Yuezhu, ‘yue’ for ‘moon,’ ‘zhu’ for ‘pearl.’”

“Who is Han Lin’er?” asked Branch Secretary Guo, grinning at his own ignorance. Of course, you couldn’t expect a clod like that to be acquainted with history. When Secretary Kang had joined the Party in ’46 they’d made you read books. If you couldn’t read, the Party taught you. The educated ones taught the ignorant ones, and everyone was lifted up. That was when the Party was a Party—a Party worth fighting for, worth dying for. Now it was, what? Opportunists, and morons with good connections. Now it was every man for himself. Well, he could play that game well enough, too. You had to swim with the current. His thoughts returned momentarily to the envelope in his desk drawer. Swim with the current, live according to the morals of the age you found yourself in. That was the only way.

“A zhuo on the left and a wei on the right,” said Secretary Kang, sketching the girl’s surname character on his palm, held up for the other to see. “Find out everything you can about her. Get her classmates writing reports. You know. I want to see reports on her. Everything she does, everything she says. Her background, her family—everything.”

“I’ll go!” said Branch Secretary Guo, like the hero of a propaganda movie volunteering for a suicide mission. The role required that he leap to his feet; but he was having some difficulty struggling out of the armchair.

“Keep it under your hat,” said Secretary Kang. “It’s Public Security, remember.”

When Branch Secretary Guo had gone, Secretary Kang went back to his window. The worker was sitting on the tail of his cart between two trees, smoking a cigarette—taking a break, apparently, from beating his donkey, who still, so far as Secretary Kang could see, had not moved a single centimeter. The little thought stirred again, the one about the foreign teachers. What? Perhaps. Two birds with one stone. Yes, that might be the way to do it.

*

Some days after this Yuezhu was crossing the campus heading for the dormitory, for her afternoon siesta. At the front of her mind was the Cinelli visit, which was new news. Vincenzo Cinelli, the World’s Greatest Tenor, was to visit China in June. He was going to give a concert at the Great Hall of the People, and pay a visit to the Conservatory. Naturally he would be most interested in the International Opera Department, her own department. They were going to put on some kind of show for him, though it hadn’t yet been decided exactly what form the show would take. Perhaps a full-dress production, though it was short notice.

The classmates all knew Cinelli of course. Who did not know him? Well, probably ninety-nine per cent of the population of China did not; but that was because foreign-style opera was still hardly known here. Cinelli’s visit would help to make it known. Yuezhu’s best friend, Johnny Liu, had a portrait of Cinelli on the wall by his bunk—a miniature oil painting he’d done himself from a magazine illustration. Of course, Yuezhu had never been to Johnny Liu’s dormitory; but he had brought the portrait to class to show her. It was very well done, clearly Cinelli. Johnny Liu was quite gifted in that way, as well as having a fine baritone voice.

Thinking of the Cinelli visit she did not notice Samson Lü until it was too late to avoid him without discourtesy. Yuezhu did not care for Samson Lü. Not that he was bad-looking, or objectionable in any very direct way, but there was something about his manner that grated. Also, he had the reputation of being one of those who wrote small reports on his classmates for the leaders. Everyone was careful what they said around Samson. Still, it being too late to avoid him, she smiled as he came up, though in a way she hoped would not encourage conversation.

“Han Yuezhu. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Well, I’m not hard to find.”

He had stopped. It was clear from this, and from what he had said, that there was no avoiding an exchange with him. Yuezhu resigned herself, and smiled again, more easily.

“Han Yuezhu. Can I have a word?”

She thought she recognized the tone. He was acting the go-between! This one—who would have chosen this one to make an introduction? Knowing how everyone distrusted him! Setting aside the unsuitability of the messenger, though, the message itself was not very surprising. Yuezhu knew by now that she was pretty, and that men wanted to be introduced to her. There had been several go-betweens in the last two years at the opera school, since the new, liberal winds had penetrated down to student life in ’79. She had turned down all these approaches firmly and briskly, feeling no need of this kind of attachment and wanting no repeat of the awful embarrassment she had gone through with Mustache. In this respect, she was aware of being thought a little odd by now. Most of her female classmates, including all of those with any claim to good looks, were spoken for. She was the only holdout.

Yuezhu puzzled about it to herself often. She didn’t think there was actually anything wrong with her; it was only that she felt no need for that kind of permanent connection yet. For permanent it would be: those already paired off would all marry in the year or two after graduation—that was understood. To break an agreement of this sort was widely regarded as flagitious. There had, in fact, been two such incidents the previous semester. Plump, cheery little Musetta Wang had been introduced to a boy from the instrumental department, a cellist, in her second year. After a few months she’d decided it was a mistake, and broken up with him. The boy had mimeographed a long complaint against her and distributed it among all the students and teachers. Poor Musetta had hardly dared show her face for months.

The other case was worse. A fine, handsome boy with a lovely tenor voice in Yuezhu’s own department, International Opera, had been introduced to a girl in the Dance Academy. The girl was devoted to him; but after a year or so he had dropped her. They had apparently been doing tongfang in secret. On this basis, the girl, whose family was well-placed, got the boy charged with raping her, and he was sent to Reform Through Labor for three years. Lucky not to be shot, everyone said, for rape was a capital offense. Still, everyone could see it was unfair, since the girl had been infatuated with him, and obviously gave her consent. No, Yuezhu was content with her life as it was. She did not want all these complications. She liked boys, and found it easy to be friends with them, but didn’t want to take things any further at this point.

“All right,” she said to Samson Lü. “I’m listening.”

“It’s about your personal thing.”

“I thought it would be.”

Samson Lü laughed. His pasty face flushed. He looked down, and seemed to have lost his words.

“I really don’t want to accept any introductions,” said Yuezhu, feeling a bit sorry for him. “I’m quite happy with my life as it is.”

“But you are twenty-three,” said Samson. “Just two weeks ago, right? Girls all want to be married before they’re twenty-five. After that, it’s difficult to find anyone who’ll take you.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can find someone to take me.” Yuezhu laughed at her own vanity. “Even when I’m twenty-six and all wrinkled up.”

“And you must consider …” Samson Lü was plowing on doggedly through his script, now that he had found his place, “… that we shall all be graduating in a few weeks’ time. We don’t know what our assignments will be. You may end up in a unit with few eligible men.”

This was, in point of fact, quite true. With the rush of marriages after graduation, what men would be left unmarried? But still Yuezhu could not make herself care about it. She had had enough of Samson Lü and his clumsy approaches now.

“All right. Who did you want to introduce anyway?”

“Ah … that is … Really … since you are so negative about it …”

He had lost his spirit again. “You can just tell me the name,” said Yuezhu. “I don’t mind. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No. No … it’s not … suitable.” Samson Lü turned and half-ran down the path the way he had come, back to the boys’ dormitory.

What a strange business! thought Yuezhu. Usually a go-between at least got to the guy’s name, even if he could see you weren’t interested. Certainly (she smiled to herself) if she ever needed a go-between, she would not use Samson Lü. No need to anyway; Johnny Liu would be a fine go-between. Smooth and smart, with his Shanghai worldliness, he could talk anyone into anything.

She told Johnny Liu about the botched introduction, when they were in the weight room together. They were lying on their backs on rubber mats, each with the top part of the torso covered by an apparatus of black-painted metal and straps padded with green vinyl. The purpose of the apparatus was to press weight down on one’s chest. By breathing against the weight you could cause the apparatus to rise and fall, thereby strengthening the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles. This contraption was called Iron Bride by the opera students, after an instrument of torture used in ancient times. It had been invented by Professor Shi himself, and the department possessed two of them: one for men, one for women. This was necessary because the thing actually sat on one’s chest, so it had to make some accommodation to the breasts of the female students.

Johnny Liu was working out with the male apparatus, of course. He was singing scales as he exhaled, long clear scales in his robust baritone. Yuezhu did not sing while exercising her diaphragm on the machine. She felt it was an unnatural position for singing—she knew of no opera where one was required to sing supine; even in deathbed scenes, one was always sitting up—and also that the pressure from the device might strain her vocal chords or diaphragm. She just counted silently through her three sets of thirty reps, then released the apparatus and wriggled out from beneath. She stood through a cycle of slow deep breaths to relax her diaphragm, then went over to stand above Johnny. She waited till he was inhaling before she spoke.

“Samson Lü came and tried to give me an introduction. Do you have any idea who it might have been?”

Johnny Liu looked up at her from the floor, wrinkling his brow. “You mean he didn’t say?”

“No. I told him I wasn’t interested at all, and he ran away without saying who’d sent him.”

Johnny Liu laughed. “What a shit! I hate that son-of-a-bitch ankle-rubber. He writes reports for the leaders, you know.”

“Of course I know. Everybody knows. What I don’t know is, who sent him.”

Johnny Liu released the catch of the machine and worked his way out from under it.

“Whoever it was,” he said as he got to his feet, “you should consider it. You’re not getting any younger, Little Sister. How old are you now? Twenty-two?”

“Three. Oh! He knew that! How did he know my birthday? Did I mention it to the classmates?”

“Not that I noticed. But you really should make some plan, you know. Graduation is only three months away. Less than three months. After that we are out in the world. You might as well get something settled. You don’t know what conditions will be like at your unit.”

Lying in her bunk that night, Yuezhu thought about what Johnny Liu had said. He was disinterested, of course. They were really like brother and sister, had been since they met in class the first semester. Johnny was a worldly man, as all Shanghai people seemed to be. There had been a connection with one of the college workers in their second year that everyone had talked about, and another the following year with a girl from Instrumental, a sluttish girl with a bad reputation. But he had made it clear to Yuezhu that he meant to try by every means to get abroad, to go and live in America; and he did not want any hostages to fortune. Johnny’s class background was not very good, and his family had suffered a lot in the fifties and sixties. He bore a big grudge about that—against the Party, against the country—and had told her frankly that he could not believe he had any future in China.

She wondered, not for the first time, if there was anything wrong with her, that she did not want to settle a connection, to get engaged. Certainly she liked men, and enjoyed the friendships she had with them. It seemed to have been a pattern in her life: Johnny Liu, before that Baoyu (now a sensation at the Royal Danish Ballet); before that Mustache at high school; before that, who? That friend when she was a child, whose father had turned out to be a counter-revolutionary. There now: they were all slightly counter-revolutionary, weren’t they? More pattern. Baoyu had merely been indifferent to politics, but Mustache was a cynic—the first she had known—and Johnny Liu frankly hated the Party, though of course he only said so in private to her. And the boy—oddly, his name escaped her for the moment—his people were counter-revolutionaries of course.

So: she liked the company of men, so long as they were just friends, and politically heterodox. What did that mean? She puzzled over it for a while, but could not get any meaning out of it, and at last fell asleep. In a dream she was in the bamboo grove by the road leading out of Seven Kill Stele. Liang Weilin—in her dream she knew his name at once—was not naked in this dream, nor an iridescent butterfly. He was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. She turned this way and that, looking for some trace of him; but there was none. Yet he was there, she knew. He was there, out of sight somewhere in the bamboo. He was there, and he was watching her, and she woke with a start to the sound of the loudspeakers on the campus playing “March of the Volunteers” for those who liked to do calisthenics first thing in the morning.

*

A day or two after this dream the mystery of Samson Lü’s approach was solved. Yuezhu was doing voice exercises with the foreign voice coach, Mr Powell. Mr Powell was something of an oddity among the foreign teachers. He did not mix with the others much, nor did he attend their get-togethers, nor the sightseeing trips organized for them by the authorities. He seemed to like being with the Chinese students. He kept the door of his office open—the foreign teachers shared offices in pairs, but Mr Powell’s colleague rarely used the office—and students just wandered in and out. When not entertaining students Mr Powell went off on long bicycle rides through the city, or sat in his room listening to opera tapes on a cassette player he had bought.

Mr Powell was short for a foreigner, and rather thin. He had a face that looked older than it ought to—he was thirty-seven—and he smoked cigarettes, which everyone thought odd in a voice coach. Nobody knew much about his history, though one of the Chinese teachers, who had seen the papers he submitted when applying for the job (and who was, consequently, the source of information on Mr Powell’s age), said he had been a singer with Welsh Opera for many years. Johnny Liu, who could read a person better than most, said he thought there was some personal calamity in Mr Powell’s recent past—a divorce, perhaps. Everyone knew that foreigners were always getting divorced. Whatever his personal history might be, Yuezhu herself liked Mr Powell, and thought him a good teacher.

It was a rule at the Conservatory that students should not be alone with foreign teachers of the opposite sex. For voice exercises, therefore, the female students went to Mr Powell in twos. Mr Powell himself said the rule was silly. Also a waste of time, since he could only listen with attention to one voice, so the two girls had to take turns, and at any point one of them was sitting idle, leafing through the magazines Mr Powell had placed in the music room for just this purpose.

At the end of this particular session Mr Powell called Yuezhu back as she and her companion were leaving. Mr Powell was still sitting at the piano, sitting sideways, one thin forearm resting on the piano lid. He called her name as she was going through the door. Yooey-jew—he could not pronounce it properly, of course. Some of the foreign teachers had made an effort to learn Chinese, and one, who had been two years at the Conservatory, was even quite fluent; but Mr Powell seemed content to remain at tourist-Chinese level. He only ever spoke English to them, except when working from librettos, or using technical terms from Italian or German.

“Yooey-jew. Could I have a word with you, please?”

Yuezhu trotted obediently back into the room, leaving the door open, and stood by the piano. Mr Powell smiled up at her from the stool.

“Yooey-jew. It’s really not an easy name for us round-eyes, you know. Why don’t you give yourself an English name, like the other students?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel the need. I am Chinese; my name should be Chinese.”

Mr Powell smiled, his whole face crinkling up in a way Yuezhu rather liked. “A patriot, is it? Very commendable. But if we were all to stand on linguistic nationalism, I should have to call myself Ap Hwyl, do you see? Come, sit down.” He indicated the small wooden chair where the spare student sat while waiting to practice. The practice room was tiny, and this was the only chair—not counting the piano stool, of course. WhenYuezhu had seated herself, Mr Powell got up, walked over to the door, and closed it. Yuezhu felt no alarm at this. She knew the college rule, of course; and she knew that Mr Powell knew it, and thought it silly. She thought it a bit silly herself, at least in Mr Powell’s case. Everyone knew he was a junzi, a gentleman—an English Gentleman, Professor Shi had said once, though Mr Powell did not thank you for calling him English. He was Welsh, he insisted, which was something different from English, though Yuezhu had never been sufficiently interested to hold the actual difference in her mind for more than a minute or two. However that might be, Mr Powell had been eight months at the Conservatory, and never been anything but polite and courteous to everyone, students, teachers and leaders alike.

“Well,” said Mr Powell, settling back on the piano stool. “I shall not go on trying to get my tongue around your Chinese name. Since you will not choose a name for yourself, I shall choose one for you. From now on I shall call you Margaret. What do you think of it?”

“Margaret?” Yuezhu laughed. “Like your Mrs Thatcher.”

Now Mr Powell laughed. “Whom God preserve. But yes, the same name. Do you like it?”

“I don’t know.” Yuezhu did not actually think she did like it. That hard “g” in the middle—it was not very feminine, she thought. English and German had too many of these hard sounds. She preferred Italian, with its luscious round vowels and whispering sibilants. You had to go to some trouble to make an Italian consonant hard, write an “h” after it. She could not speak either German or Italian, of course; but she had learned to sing them. On the other hand, patriotism notwithstanding, she did not feel altogether comfortable with her given name. Her parents were uneducated people, after all; and the name they had bestowed on her sounded provincial—even slightly ridiculous—to the refined ears of the capital. “Moon Pearl”—like a yatou, a servant girl in one of the old novels! Perhaps Mr Powell was right; she ought to take an English name. Perhaps “Margaret” would do as well as another. “Marguerite” in French—the soprano role in Gounod’s Faust. Yes, it would do.

“It’s a sort of translation,” Mr Powell was saying. “One of your classmates translated your name for me. ‘Moon Pearl.’ It’s very beautiful. Can’t be done in English, of course, not the whole thing. But ‘Margaret’ means ‘pearl,’ you see?”

Yuezhu thought it flattering that Mr Powell should put so much thought into awarding her a name, but having given it her attention for a full minute, she could not summon up any further interest in the matter. Mr Powell, to the contrary, seemed to find the topic inexhaustible.

“Now your name will be Margaret Han. It’s a good name: a double dactyl, truncated. With your voice, Margaret, you will travel all over the world. It’s good for you to have an English name, one people can remember. The really great singers are always spoken of using the Christian name, you know. Until they are dead—then we use the surname.”

Yuezhu thought there had been quite enough about names. To change the subject, she asked: “How about Mr Cinelli’s visit? Has it been decided yet what we shall do?”

Mr Powell laughed again. “‘It is being discussed at the highest levels,’ I think is the appropriate expression. All bogged down in politics, I’m afraid. Like so many things in your country.”

Yuezhu bristled at this. She did not like to hear foreigners criticize China. Of course there were things that were wrong—everyone knew that. But these things were for Chinese people to manage, not for foreigners to pass slighting remarks about. But they all did it, she knew that by now. They were just insensitive on this point, there was no point being upset about it.

“It seems clear, at any rate, that we shall not be doing a full production. That was the leaders’ wish, but the organizers of the visit said he could not give us more than a hour. Apparently the schedules for these things are worked out in the finest detail. So I suppose we shall do a concert. I would have given up both concert and production if he could have done a master class for us, but I’m afraid my voice does not carry very far in these great matters. And Vinnie does not believe in master classes. Says they are a waste of time, that voice students need long, steady coaching from a teacher who gets to know them. Not a bad argument, perhaps.”

“I wonder if I shall have the chance to sing for him. What an honor that would be!”

“I have no doubt you will sing for our distinguished guest. You are our best soprano voice, by some distance.”

“Oh!” Yuezhu’s hands flew to cover her mouth, in modesty. “It’s kind of you to say so, Sir. But I’m sure it’s not true.”

Actually Yuezhu knew perfectly well that it was true. It had become clear to her, to everyone, as soon as they had started singing in earnest early in the second year, that her voice was exceptional. In range, power, control, and quality she was far ahead of the other girls. Now, two and a half years later, she had internalized the fact of her superiority. It was a solid, quiet satisfaction to her, like the knowledge of having a decent sum of money in the bank.

Mr Powell was smiling across at her in a rather odd way. He caught her eye, and looked down.

“I hope Samson didn’t take you too much by surprise,” he said, looking up again. Margaret thought he looked nervous. She did not immediately connect what he said with Samson Lü’s approach three days previously.

“Samson? What did he do?”

“Well, not much, I gather. I asked him to act as go-between for me, but I’m afraid he fluffed it.”

Margaret stared at him while it sank in. Then her hand went over her mouth again and she felt herself blushing.

“You … Sir … You asked Samson to introduce you? Oh! I don’t …”

“I’m sorry, truly sorry. It was foolish of me. Though actually it was Samson who suggested that particular approach.” Mr Powell laughed, a nervous laugh. “His idea, but now he tells me he didn’t have the nerve to follow through with it.”

Margaret’s head was spinning. “I’m not sure … I don’t know why …”

“Why? That I can tell you very easily. I am in love with you, Margaret. Have been since I first saw you. Our first voice training class, do you remember? September 11th last year.”

“Oh! Mr Powell …” Now it was Margaret’s turn to look down. She could not face him. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t. And the way things are set up here, I had no opportunity to tell you. I thought it was quite hopeless, anyway. Then Samson told me that there are many marriages now between foreigners and Chinese. Several every year, here in Beijing.”

Marriages! The man was really serious! Margaret could only stare at the floor. The voice training room was in one of the older buildings, and had a floor of worn wooden boards, still showing some traces of pre-Liberation varnish.

“I just have to know, Margaret. Is that something you would consider? Marrying a foreigner?”

Margaret struggled briefly to find some words that would not give him pain. She liked Mr Powell; and besides, though it was something she could not have admitted, even to herself, she was flattered. Who is there, who has there ever been, that was not flattered by a proposal of marriage, from any source? But struggle as she might, at last only one word would do.

“No,” she said. “No, no. I’m sorry …”

She half expected Mr Powell to burst into tears like Mustache. Instead, he made an odd exhaling sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Ah, well,” he said. “I didn’t really think you would. But Samson said you were fond of me, and I thought: if you don’t play, you don’t win.”

Now Margaret felt she could look at him again. “Oh, Sir, I am fond of you! But not … I mean, I don’t want …”

Mr Powell was smiling now. He waved away her excuses. “It really doesn’t matter. Put it down to cabin fever. It’s an isolated life we live here, you know. Once I get back to my own country, I’m afraid I shall forget all about you, dear Margaret. These last few weeks, especially …” He laughed. “China fatigue.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s an expression foreigners in China use. However sympathetic one may be at first, this country has a way of getting under one’s skin. The cruelty and dishonesty …”

As much out of consideration for Mr Powell (in some odd way) as for her own feelings, Margaret did not want to hear these negative things. It was true what he was saying, she knew. They had all seen it with Mr Mackenzie, the New Zealander who had been the Conservatory’s first foreign teacher back in ’78. He had come to them curious and keen. Almost at once he had taken up Chinese clothes, including even a worker-style cap and sleeve protectors. During his first semester he had made great strides in learning Chinese, to the degree that he could even quote poetry. Then something had gone wrong. He had turned cynical and boorish. In a sight-reading class with the second year, Margaret’s year, he had delivered a long angry harangue, calling them a race of slaves, passive conformists, the playthings of despots, lesser breeds without the law, and other such nonsense. He had even called them barbarians. This had been too much for Alfredo Zhang, who had started yelling back at Mr Mackenzie: Call us barbarians? It’s you who are barbarians! We were civilized when your ancestors were living in caves! Which one of your stinking grandfathers burned our Summer Palace?

The leaders had soothed everything over; but a few days later, on a trip to Friendship Store in the city, Mr Mackenzie had punched one of the store assistants in the face, breaking several teeth. After that he had been forced to leave. The classmates supposed there would be no more foreigners; but the leaders had instead taken to hiring them in twos and threes, to keep each other company, and in this way trouble had been avoided. Mr Powell, though, did not seem to care for the other foreigners, so it was not surprising he felt this “China fatigue.”

“You are too lonely, Sir.” Margaret said. “You should associate more with the other foreign teachers. Everyone says you avoid them.”

Mr Powell’s face twisted into a moue of distaste. “Ech! An Italian poof, a German nympho, and a brace of American Jew lefties. I prefer my own company, thank you very much. Though I like yours even better.” He grinned at her now, an open, cheerful grin. Margaret felt her embarrassment ebbing. Mr Powell really was very nice.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

“Think nothing of it. Do you know the story of Diogenes and the statue?” Margaret shook her head. Diogenes (Mr Powell explained) was a philosopher in ancient Greece. One day a friend of his saw him in the public square, speaking to a stone statue. Coming closer, he discovered that Diogenes was actually begging from the statue. “Why are you begging from the statue?” he asked. Replied Diogenes: “I am practicing disappointment.”

Margaret laughed at this—she really thought it quite funny. “I hope you don’t consider me a statue,” she said.

“I hope you don’t consider me a beggar.” Mr Powell laughed too, and stood up, and went to open the door for her.

“And I hope at least, in these few weeks before you graduate, you will come to see me often.”

“Yes, I will,” said Margaret, impressed now by his calm, gentlemanly acceptance of her refusal. She liked him more than ever now. He leaned forward, still smiling, and shook her hand as she stepped through the door.

Voice training had been the last class of the day, and Margaret immediately went looking for Samson Lü. He was in the library. She stood at the glass door of the reading room until he looked up and caught her eye, then beckoned him outside.

“Samson, you are very bad,” she said as soon as he stepped out into the lobby. “Encouraging Mr Powell to seek an introduction to me. Why did you do that?”

Samson giggled, very nervous at having been exposed. “I felt sorry for him. I thought he was lonely. I know he likes you. And I thought you liked him.”

“I do like him. But marriage—really! It’s outrageous.”

“I went too far, I know. I’m sorry, Yuezhu. I was only trying to help. Please don’t blame Mr Powell. He’s a decent guy. And he’s really crazy about you. He told me.”

“Well, I hope you won’t tell anyone else. You made a really embarrassing situation for me.”

“All right. Just don’t blame him.”

“I don’t blame him. I blame you.”

Samson Lü grinned at her, apparently quite satisfied with this. What a strange bird, Margaret thought to herself, walking back to the dorm.

Chapter 22

The World’s Greatest Tenor Enters the Middle Kingdom

Teacher Powell Bids Farewell to a Favorite Student

When Cinelli stepped into the auditorium the whole audience—students, faculty, family members (including both Margaret’s parents) and visitors—rose to their feet and applauded. He was brought in through the big double doors at the back, so those seated in the body of the auditorium all had to turn a hundred and eighty degrees to face him. From her own seat up on the stage, Margaret had a clear view of his progress down the center aisle.

The first thing she noticed about him was his size. The man was a giant, not only in girth but in height, towering over the little cluster of Professors and leaders who accompanied him to his seat two-thirds of the way to the front. There was only one other foreigner in the entourage, a lugubrious middle-aged man in a dark gray suit and tie, and Cinelli towered over him, too. After Cinelli’s size you noticed his smile: a dazzle of Adriatic sunlight filling the hall with warmth, color, pleasure, life.

For all his size he moved easily, as a trained stage performer should, bowing repeatedly in acknowledgment of the applause, sometimes raising his hands to applaud back, and always the smile, the smile, flashing forth from a nest of black beard. It took some time for them to get him seated; everyone at the Conservatory was genuinely glad to have him amongst them, and they would not stop applauding. Already beginning to be infused by that sunlight, people were smiling and laughing to each other, and applauding, applauding. Three or four times he stood up again to bow and applaud back. The tension that had built up during their long wait—everyone had to be seated an hour before Cinelli’s arrival—was gone, and everyone was in a good mood. It was clear that Cinelli himself was at ease. Indeed, he had dressed for ease: pale slacks, short-sleeved blue shirt open at the neck, loafers. Margaret had rather expected him to be in formal wear, as he usually was in photographs.

The entire third and fourth years of the International Opera Department were up on stage, forty-two altogether, with the Conservatory’s orchestra. The best singers, all but one from the fourth year, had solos and a duet. The others were a choir, singing in support of the soloists where required, and with contributions of their own at strategic points: the bridal chorus from Lohengrin half-way through the concert, and “O sole mio,” an Italian folk song that was Cinelli’s trademark, as a finale, with everyone on stage joining in.

Because Margaret’s voice was considered the best of the sopranos, her solo was placed at the end, before the choral finale. It was “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca, a piece she liked to sing, which she felt suited her voice. Though not one of the most difficult arias, it had some challenging features that made Margaret proud to have mastered it. There was tricky messa di voce, and the vocal score at one point followed a different rhythm from the accompaniment. Cinelli watched her all the way, his hands folded over each other in front of his face. She was aware of him watching even when looking at her score, or watching Professor Shi, the conductor. When she finished, to her astonishment and delight Cinelli stood up and called out in his huge voice: “BRAVA! BRAVA, BRAVISSIMA!” Everyone in the hall followed suit, of course, and Margaret felt herself blushing hot with pride and pleasure. She could see Father beaming, nodding at her, and Mother looking slightly stunned. It was only Cinelli’s second bravo in the concert. The first had been for Enrico Wang, a third-year student, a tenor, who everyone knew was a prodigy, who had sung the Flower Song from Carmen to utter perfection. Margaret bowed twice, then made her way back to her seat, the hall still applauding her. No sooner had she sat down than she had to stand again, for the finale. This went off very well, Cinelli throwing his head back and laughing freely when he realized they were doing his signature song.

Afterwards Cinelli came up on stage to shake hands with the singers. The lugubrious man accompanied him. First Cinelli went along the line of soloists, nodding, smiling, shaking hands. He said something in English to Johnny Liu, who had done a solo “Non più andrai,” and laughed, and Johnny Liu laughed too. When he reached Margaret he took her offered hand in both of his, and made a little bow.

“Una voce poco fa, qui nel cor mi risuonó,” he said. “Can you understand?”

“Yes,” whispered Margaret. He had quoted the opening lines of a well-known Rossini aria: “A voice I just heard is echoing in my heart.”

“You ’ave a beautiful voice,” said Cinelli. He was speaking in English now, but with a strong accent which softened and palatalized the rough sounds: byu-tyi-fwool.

“You must sing bel canto,” he said, still holding her hand in his two. “Your voice is made for bel canto. Fioritura, coloratura—don’t be afraid to sing hanything!” Then, to Margaret’s astonishment, and infinite embarrassment, he lifted her hand six inches, bent down low, and kissed it. Over his shoulder Margaret saw Secretary Kang, Party Secretary for the whole Conservatory, looking at her face, with no expression at all on his own.

“A moment to remember all your life,” said Secretary Kang in Chinese, as Cinelli moved on. Margaret was speechless. Cinelli went on to shake hands with everyone, including every member of the choir, which (as the classmates all said afterwards) was a thing no Chinese celebrity of his standing would have done. Foreigners seemed not to stand on their dignity at all!

*

“Did you know he can’t read music?” said Mr Powell, pouring himself some tea.

“Is it true?” said Johnny Liu. “Such a great musician cannot read music?”

Mr Powell laughed. “I don’t think singers are really counted as musicians. Even composers aren’t necessarily—Wagner could not play the piano, you know, nor any other instrument. From that point of view, every well brought up middle-class girl of his period was a better musician than he. Though of course none of them gave us the ‘Liebestod.’ Vinnie is in the Italian tradition, according to which a singer is not required to do anything but sing.”

“Do you really think he is a great singer?” asked Margaret.

“Oh, yes. A poor actor, and in some ways regrettably unimaginative with his voice—but great, yes. Greatness and perfection are different things. Callas was great, everybody knows it, but she never got through a performance without making a mistake somewhere.”

Callas, Vinnie: Margaret recalled Mr Powell’s remark about names, when he had awarded “Margaret” to her. Would she one day be Margaret to the world of opera? And then, when she had gone on to her next life, as “Han”? She looked out of the window, out across the campus. The office Mr Powell shared with Signor Russo, the voice coach for Italian and French, faced south. At this time of the morning it was full of sunlight. Some residual smoke from Mr Powell’s last cigarette was hanging in the air, and the sunlight played on it in trembling shafts of gold. The windows were open; she could hear people talking on the campus below.

She had come to Mr Powell’s office with Johnny Liu, simply to talk in that relaxed way that was possible with foreigners. Especially with Mr Powell, since the clearing of the air between them a month earlier. Margaret came often to see Mr Powell now. There was something new in his manner—something wry and self-mocking—that she liked very much. It was an agreeable way to pass time. Of which there was now plenty: this was the quiet, inconsequential period between Cinelli’s visit—the high point of the year for everyone—and graduation in early July. There were some paper examinations to come on opera history, opera production, English and political science, but no-one took them very seriously. Assignments would be announced a day or so before graduation, and if you weren’t marked for a decent assignment by now, the examinations would make no difference. Margaret already felt confident of her own assignment. She would join the national opera company that was being formed. So she had been assured, more or less, by Professor Shi. All of the dozen or so outstanding singers in her graduating class would go to form the nucleus of this new company. Some of the others would help to establish new international opera departments, at the Conservatories in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Others, including Johnny Liu, were developing plans to go abroad, which was more and more possible now.

Looking out of the window across the sunlit campus, Margaret could see the back of the Dance Academy. She smiled inwardly now to think of her earlier folly: the hopeless longing to be a great dancer, when in truth she could never—she saw it clearly now—have been anything but a mediocre one. And all the time carrying this greater gift within herself, unknowing. Truly fate was unfathomable. If there had been no earthquake in ’76, if she had not strained to surpass the others for fear of Father’s disgrace, then she might have gone on for years trying to be something she was not meant to be. To fail at last, and probably quite soon, for dancers had a short professional life. Whereas opera singers often carried on into their sixties. Cinelli himself—Vinnie—was, what? forty-five, forty-six, and at the height of his powers; while Barbara Bacon, the great Australian soprano, was over fifty and could still cause a sensation with her famous mad scene from Lucia.

Sitting there in the mid-morning sun, listening idly to Johnny and Mr Powell speaking of operatic greatness, Margaret’s thoughts drifted back over her four years at the department.

The first year had seemed like a vacation after the Dance Academy. The department had been organized in a hurry, and there were many changes of direction and spells of confusion. Politics (she could see now, though she had not understood it fully at the time) had played a large part in the general air of disorganization. The leaders had wanted to ensure that nothing counter-revolutionary be taught; yet since they knew absolutely nothing about foreign opera, they had had to be persuaded libretto by libretto, score by score.

In that first year only two operas had been approved for detailed study: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (satire on the decadence of the feudal aristocracy) and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (tragic indictment of western imperialism). Verdi’s I vespri Siciliani was passed at the end of that year, on the grounds that it showed the righteous anger of the common people against foreign oppression. At a certain point during the negotiations over I vespri one ingenious faculty member had offered to rewrite the libretto to place the story in China of the 1930s, the Sicilians turned into Chinese, the French into Japanese. Secretary Kang had vetoed this, once the opera’s plot was explained to him, on the grounds that the business about paternity (the plot turns on the Sicilian hero discovering that the French villain is his father) would make the Japanese too human. But I vespri had passed anyway, and after that the leaders seemed to have worried less about the political content of the operas. Or perhaps they had just wearied at having the plot of Donizetti’s fifty-ninth potboiler explained to them.

All the hesitations in that first year about which operas were correct for study and which were not had anyway been of only theoretical interest to the voice students. Professor Shi was in charge of their timetable, and he had an eccentric philosophy about voice training, which he had forced through the school committees. The philosophy was, that a student of voice should sing nothing in her first year of study. That first year should (according to Professor Shi) be devoted to the muscular development of the chest, abdomen and diaphragm by means of endless repetitive exercises. Some of the exercises involved vocalizing; but it was vocalizing in the abstract—long sessions of yelping and squealing under Professor Shi’s careful direction. To actually sing an actual song, said Professor Shi, would capture the student’s attention, detaching that attention from the real business of first-year training, which was to build a wall of hard, obedient muscle around the lungs.

“Before you learn to write,” said Professor Shi, “you must learn to handle the brush. Before you learn to sing, you must learn to handle your lungs, your diaphragm.”

So instead of learning actual operas, actual repertoire, the classmates had been put through long sessions of voice training, muscular exercises and sight reading—tedious beyond all endurance at the time, but an excellent foundation for their further studies. By the time the leaders had settled on what operas might be sung, there were two dozen diaphragms tensed to a condition of physical perfection, ready to sing them.

“I’m sorry?” Margaret was suddenly aware of having been addressed by Mr Powell. He and Johnny Liu were both smiling at her, at having interrupted her reverie.

“I asked what Vinnie said to you. Before he kissed your hand.” Mr Powell had his tenderest look for her. He would like to kiss my hand, I’m sure, thought Margaret.

“He said I should sing bel canto.”

Mr Powell nodded approval. “So you should, indeed. You have the range already. With a little more work on your passagio, you will have the evenness. You would already make a fine Rosina or Adina. One day, perhaps, a Lucia—a Norma, even.” He laughed. “We have not had a decent Norma since Callas stopped singing.” He nodded, to show that he was serious. “Yes, sing bel canto. It’s good advice, from a master.”

*

The day before the graduation ceremony was hot, the still dry desert heat of Beijing. Margaret rode a bus down to West Wall to see Mother and Father, who were to attend the ceremony. Father was still glowing from his daughter’s triumph at the Cinelli concert.

“It’s beautiful music, I see that now. Food for the soul, as Comrade Deng Xiaoping says. Our country can only benefit from such things.”

“I wish your half brother could be with us,” said Mother. “But …” she shrugged resignation, “… his duties.”

Half Brother was in the south, that was all Margaret knew. His duties, whatever they were, took him all over the country, and his furloughs were sudden and unpredictable. Margaret knew now that Half Brother was in some high-security branch of the military—the nuclear forces, perhaps, or Intelligence. She thought Father knew more, but was not allowed to say.

After dinner Margaret rode a bus back to the Conservatory. Walking across the campus to her dormitory she heard footsteps hurrying behind her. Turning, she saw Samson Lü coming up, wearing a look of relief.

“Han Yuezhu! I’m glad I could find you. Where have you been all day?”

As if it were any of your business. But Margaret was too polite to say this. “I’ve been at my parents’ place,” she said.

“Mr Powell wants to see you.”

“Mr Powell? Why?”

“He wants to say good-bye. He’s leaving soon after graduation, to go traveling round the country. He especially wants to say good-bye to you.”

“Well, he can say good-bye to all of us tomorrow, after graduation, can’t he?”

“Oh, but you know Mr Powell has special feelings for you.”

Margaret felt herself flushing. “I didn’t ask him to have any feelings for me. It’s not something I’ve encouraged. You know that.”

“Of course I do.”

In the failing light Samson looked paler than ever, a white ghost grinning at her beseechingly.

“Come on. Just give him a few minutes of your time. The poor guy’s so lonely. He’s been sitting in his office all day marking the second year English papers.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I should go there alone. So late in the evening.”

“No problem. I’ll go with you.”

Margaret considered. There was nothing else to do. It was two hours to her accustomed bed-time, and the choice was to sit chatting with Mr Powell, or gossiping with the girls in her dorm room. “All right,” she said. Mr Powell had been sincere with her, after all. She owed him for that.

Mr Powell was at the desk in his office with the light on. He had two piles of examination papers on his desk: a very short pile on his left, a much thicker one on his right. He stood up at once when they came in.

“Margaret. What a lovely surprise.”

“You’re very busy, Sir.”

“No, no.” Mr Powell indicated the short pile. “Almost finished. Come, sit down. Hello, Samson.”

She sat on the sofa with Samson. Mr Powell sat in the armchair opposite and tried to interest them in his iced tea, which he made by running cold water into his bathtub and sitting pans of tea in it till they cooled. There was no refrigerator available to the foreign teachers.

There was talk of graduation and assignments. Samson Lü had got a remarkably good assignment, as an interpreter and organizer at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. There would, he said, be lots of travel all over the country, probably abroad too, and hosting of foreign delegations.

“I shall have a life of banquets!” he shouted, quite carried away with his good fortune, his rather unpleasant high-pitched laugh pealing round the narrow office. Margaret thought it odd that Samson should have pulled such a good assignment. He was an indifferent singer, and his family were just low-level clerks in a government ministry. Possibly he had a well-placed uncle, she thought.

She could see that Mr Powell, too, was made uncomfortable by Samson’s gloating. He caught her glance, and lowered one eyelid in the movement called “wink” in English—a gesture unknown in China. She smiled at him in spite of herself. Perhaps noticing this, Samson Lü suddenly jumped to his feet and said: “Oh! I’ve just remembered! I promised to help my room-mates with their packing!” He almost ran to the door, and was gone before either of them could respond.

Margaret stood up. “I’d better not stay. I mean …”

“Oh, rubbish.” Mr Powell shook his head vigorously. “I won’t hear of it. Sit down and let me enjoy your company alone a few minutes. Sod the rules—you’ll be graduating tomorrow, and I’m sure I shall see no more of you after that. Come, come, Margaret, sit down and let’s make a leisurely good-bye.”

Reluctantly she sat. Mr Powell was so kind, she hated to disappoint him. Besides, there was no-one around in the building at this time—it was dark already—and the door was locked. Samson Lü might snitch, of course, that would be entirely in character; but what did that matter, at this point in the semester?

“Shall you be coming back to the Conservatory next year?” she asked, to fill the somewhat awkward pause that had developed.

Mr Powell shook his head. “I don’t think so. No, I’m sure I shan’t. There are some things back home … Well, suffice it to say I left some loose ends I really oughn’t have left, which I must tidy up before I get on with my life.”

Margaret thought it would not be proper to ask for details, and Mr Powell did not seem inclined to supply them unbidden, so another awkward pause opened up. Mr Powell broke it with a laugh.

“Come now, Margaret, let’s not be so ill at ease with each other. After all, I have exposed myself frankly to you. There is no law to say that partings must be sad. You know, I was thinking, while I was marking those damn papers: I have not seen much of the Chinese sense of humor. I’m not even sure that you have one. Would you care to disabuse me?”

“I’m sorry?” Margaret had not quite followed the English.

“Make me laugh, Moon Pearl. Give me a happy memory to go away with, back to glum, smoky old London.”

“Laugh at what?”

“Well, tell me a joke.”

Margaret tried to think of a joke. Most of those she knew had been manufactured to make a political point, like the one everyone knew about Wicked Landlord Zhou Bapi and his rooster. She knew that this would not please Mr Powell, who was allergic to Chinese politics. At last she could only recall a tale from her childhood, the Duck Soup Joke, which Half Brother had told her one day during the period they were confined in barracks, when the Red Guards were being suppressed. She had thought it very funny at the time. Now it seemed childish, but at least it had no political content.

The Duck Soup Joke

There was once a man named Zhang, famous for his generosity and hospitality. A scoundrel decided to take advantage of him. He learned from gossip that Zhang’s best friend was named Lao Chen. So he went to Zhang’s house and knocked on the door. When Zhang opened the door, the scoundrel said: “You don’t know me, but I am a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of Lao Chen.”

Hearing this, Zhang ushered him in to the best room in the house, and sat him in the best chair. “You do me such honor!” said Zhang. “How can I make you more comfortable?”

“Well, to tell the truth,” said the scoundrel, “I’m rather peckish. If you have something to eat, that would be fine.”

“Of course!” said Zhang. “Will duck soup be all right?”

The scoundrel replied that it would be fine. He loved duck soup.

“Wonderful!” said Zhang. “Please make yourself at home while I kill a duck.” He left, coming back after only a few minutes with a steaming bowl. He set the bowl before his guest, and urged him to eat his fill. The scoundrel began to eat the soup. He could not help but notice that it tasted like nothing but hot water.

“Excuse me,” he said boldly, after a few mouthfuls, “but the soup is rather thin, isn’t it?”

“Who did you say you are?” asked Zhang.

“Why,” replied the scoundrel, “I am a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of your best friend Lao Chen.”

“Just so,” nodded Zhang, “just so. You are a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my friend. This …” he indicated the bowl, “… is the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup of my duck.”

To her surprise and pleasure, Mr Powell roared with laughter. “Very Chinese!” he said, when he was through laughing. “Slyness and symmetry! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Pleased with her little triumph, Margaret relaxed. “You should tell me an English joke,” she said. “Otherwise the game isn’t finished.”

“Oh, I am a poor raconteur.” Mr Powell laughed. “And not English at all, as I am bound to keep reminding you. We Welsh have no jokes. We are a melancholy race, ever since we lost the best part of our country to heathen invaders.”

He really seemed to mean this, his face lapsing into a quite woeful expression for a moment. He got out of his chair and walked to the window.

“I’m sure you can’t be melancholy all the time,” said Margaret. “Actually, I have often seen you laughing and making jokes.”

Mr Powell said something she didn’t understand at all—twenty or thirty words, not one of which she could recognize.

“A Welsh poem,” Mr Powell explained, turning back to the room. “Something like:

With Hope I woke, and labored long,

With willing heart and merry song.

By evening time, when hope had fled

’Twas with Despair I went to bed.”

“Why, I’ve had just the same thought myself,” said Margaret. “Hope always deceives us, and leaves us with despair at last.”

This seemed to please Mr Powell. “There, you see,” he said. “We are kindred spirits, thinking the same thoughts.” He crossed the room and sat beside her on the sofa. The sofa was not very wide; he was right next to her. Margaret felt uncomfortable, and wondered how she could politely take her leave.

Mr Powell took her near hand and held it in both of his. “Margaret,” he said, in quite a different tone of voice. “I should apologize. I have imposed myself on you.”

“No, no. It’s quite all right.” Now Margaret was contemplating a run for the door.

“We’ll say good-bye now.” He was looking right into her eyes. “You know you have my best wishes for your success, which I feel sure will be great. You have a magnificent voice, Margaret.”

“Thank you.”

“But I want to impose on you just once more. A small thing.”

*

Margaret walked back to the dormitory. Had she done the right thing, allowing Mr Powell to kiss her? Perhaps not; but there had been no stopping him, anyway. He really was rather nice. Not tall enough to be really handsome, but wiry and … masculine. Some Chinese boys were so spoiled and effeminate, and so timid. Or sly and untrustworthy, like Samson Lü. Not Johnny Liu, of course. Johnny wasn’t afraid of anything, and you could trust him completely. Handsome, too—there was no doubt of that. If she were someone else, she might be in love with Johnny Liu. Or even with Mr Powell. But she was Margaret Han, and she only wanted friendship. She wondered, as always, whether there was something wrong with her. Or perhaps there was someone she was fated to meet by the principle called yuanfen in pop songs and the old religion, and she just had not met him yet. According to the old religion, a fated couple were bound together from birth—through all their many lives, in fact—by a thread of red silk, invisible of course to mortal eyes. Perhaps she was one of those. Perhaps that was why she did not respond to these people who adored her. Mr Powell, so passionate! So intent on her lips! Yet—she had to be frank with herself—stirring her not at all.

When he was close to her, Mr Powell had emitted a faint delicious fragrance. It was aftershave, something foreign men put on their faces, after shaving of course. She had asked him about it, and he had told her. How strange—men wearing perfume! But all the foreign men used it, he told her. You could buy it in China, too. He had bought his at the Friendship Store in Beijing during the Spring Festival vacation. His lips had seemed big, with a kind of velvety texture that was rather nice, and arrived accompanied by a faint acid taste of tobacco, by no means unpleasant. Zhang Hui had gone out with Leonora Wang for months before he’d kissed her, according to Leonora. What did her own lips feel like? Margaret wondered. Mr Powell was deeply in love with her, she was sure of that. For him, it was a sad thing, a small tragedy perhaps. But that was not her fault. She had not invited him to fall in love with her, and her own conduct, so far as she could see, had been blameless. Except perhaps for allowing him to kiss her, which she had just been unable, at the time, to think of any way of resisting.

Well, no doubt Mr Powell would soon get over her, once back among his own people. Everyone said that foreigners had a very loose system of morality, that they married and divorced just for fun and were incapable of serious attachments. Some of her classmates thought Mr Powell already had a wife in England. There were a lot of stories like that in the newspapers, now that people were being allowed to go abroad. A woman would go to a foreign country to marry a man, only to discover that he was already married. Then she would be abandoned in the foreign place, and have to beg for her living, or something worse. But really, Mr Powell didn’t seem the type who would do that.

When she reached the dormitory old Mrs Feng, the door-keeper, was standing just inside the doorway. She was an ill-tempered creature, with never a kind word for anyone. Now she just watched silently as Margaret crossed the lobby and started up the stairs. When Margaret reached the first landing she thought she heard the old woman speaking to someone in her rough hoarse voice, though there had been no-one else in sight at the doorway.

In her dormitory room the other seven girls were already in bed. Margaret had not realized it was so late. Strangely, none of them greeted her. They all seemed to be asleep. This was unusual; there was generally some chattering until the lights went out, or at least someone would be sitting up reading. Perhaps they all wanted to sleep well before the graduation ceremony next day. Margaret climbed up to her bunk. Instead of undressing immediately, she lay there for a while musing, thinking about Mr Powell back in England. What was it actually like in foreign countries, she wondered? You were told so much about the darkness and oppression of bourgeois society, yet the foreigners one saw seemed quite cheerful and healthy, and kinder in nature, actually, than most of one’s Chinese acquaintances. Perhaps, as Gorky said, a bourgeois society was really two societies, who hardly knew of each other’s existence. Perhaps all the foreigners one saw in China came from just one of those societies, the gentler one.

Just as she had decided to undress, in case she fell asleep in her day clothes, there was a tapping on the door. Margaret did nothing, waiting for one of the lower bunks to get up and attend to it. However, nobody got up.

“Hey!” she called. “Junliang! Leonora! Come on!”

Nobody answered, nobody moved. What was wrong with everybody? Margaret climbed down and went to the door. “Who is it?”

“Branch Secretary Guo wants to see Han Yuezhu.”

Branch Secretary Guo? That half-wit? Margaret supposed it might be official confirmation of her assignment. It was just like Guo to get you out of bed for news. She opened the door. The caller was a muscular woman in a dirty white jacket. Margaret recognized her as one of the paramedics from the college clinic. The woman’s husband was a Branch Secretary in one of the other departments.

“Okay,” said Margaret brightly, “I’m Han Yuezhu. Let’s go!”

Margaret was glad. She had heard unofficially, from Professor Shi, that the assignment was all settled, that she was to join the new national opera company. But this must be the official notification. Nothing was official until the Party Secretaries had ruled on it. She trotted off behind the muscular woman. At the foot of the stairs was Mrs Feng the doorkeeper, peering up at them as they came down. What was so interesting? Margaret felt the old hag’s eyes on her as they stepped out of the dormitory building. In was dark outside, but lights could be seen in the main building, across the campus at the end of the path.

A person she did not know was sitting at Branch Secretary Guo’s desk: a youngish man with his head cropped down close like a soldier, wearing a smart open-necked short-sleeved khaki shirt, three or four pens clipped into the breast pocket. He had a folder open on the desk in front of him, white sheets of paper both recto and verso. Branch Secretary Guo himself was sitting at the left side of the desk, Secretary Kang at the right. There was a single other chair facing the desk, unoccupied. Standing against the wall in one corner, behind the desk, was a small older man in a baggy blue tunic, wearing a cap.

“Do you want me to stay?” asked the muscular woman.

“No.” Secretary Kang waved her out. “Comrade Han, sit down.”

Margaret sat down in the empty chair facing them. The crew-cut man at the desk turned his head to the older man standing behind him, who made a slight nod. The man turned back and began unscrewing the cap of a fountain pen, apparently preparing to write something.

“What did you do this evening?” asked Secretary Kang, in quite a pleasant tone of voice. Still Margaret saw nothing wrong. She supposed he was just making polite conversation. She was still feeling pleased with herself, anticipating the news of her assignment. She supposed these strangers were from the Ministry of Culture, which was organizing the national opera company. Of course, she could not answer truthfully; but since they were only making small talk this did not matter.

“Well, I spent the afternoon with my family over West Wall District. I came back around eight o’clock and went to the TV room to watch the Nationalities show. Then I had to get some water for my dormitory. After that I went for a walk out to the …”

BANG! Crew-cut had come alive, slamming his fist down onto the desk. His eyes were blazing, his lips pursed in a thin line, the character yi. There was a moment of terrible silence.

“Don’t play with us! We know everything! Everything you did this evening—we know it all! Now, why don’t you start telling the truth!”

Only then did Margaret feel fear.

Chapter 23

Father Regrets Past Indulgence

Secretary Kang Conducts a Special Examination

“You’ve brought down the whole family!”

Father was furious, his face flushed, his voice hoarse.

“I’m being investigated! Me—an old revolutionary, forty years in the army! I have to go in front of a commission and explain myself! Heaven only knows what kind of trouble your brother is in. How could you do this? Where’s the reason in it?”

“But I didn’t do anything,” wailed Margaret. “I’ve told you, I didn’t do anything! Military secrets? I don’t even know what they’re talking about!”

“I’ve spoilt you.” Father was shaking his head, intent on his own logic. “That’s what it is, I’ve spoilt you. No discipline! You always had everything you wanted, never tasted bitterness. Now you want to make some connection with this damn foreigner, fuck his mother, so you destroy your family.”

“How was I to know he was a spy? I couldn’t know that, could I? I thought he was just lonely. I thought he just wanted to be friends.”

“Of course he’s a spy! All foreigners are spies! Why else would a foreigner come and work here, if not to steal our national secrets? Don’t you know how much higher the standard of living is in the West? He could earn more in a month in his own country than he made in a year in China. There’s bound to be some ulterior motive. All that stuff they found in his room. Troop dispositions, command structures, casualty counts from the Vietnam expedition. He’d been collecting it for months.”

“But where did he get it? Where did he get it? Not from me—I don’t know anything about these things.”

“Of course you don’t. But they knew he was spying, they found the evidence, and just at that time you chose to be caught spending time with him, alone. You!—your father a Major-General, your brother in Military Intelligence. What are they going to think?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong! I was just being friendly, that’s all.” Margaret felt herself blushing, though she had spoken nothing but the truth. That Mr Powell had kissed her—she could hardly be blamed for that. It wasn’t something she had incited him to. No, she had done nothing wrong. Yet now she was being treated like a criminal: held incommunicado at the Conservatory for three days, being interrogated all the time, released at last into her parents’ custody, to discover that Father himself was under investigation. Public Security had found all kinds of incriminating documents in Powell’s private room, Father told her. He was a spy for the British government.

“But how could I know that? How could I know that? I was just being friendly.” This had been her single line of defense during interrogation. She thought at last they had believed her, having extracted from her all the truth she contained, including Powell’s having kissed her. Surely once they heard her tell that, they must have known she was being open with them.

The phrase Father used again and again was make a big matter into a small matter. That was what you had to do in these situations: make a big matter into a small matter.

“Just tell the truth,” he had been saying these days past, when he wasn’t cursing at her. “Tell the truth and don’t contradict yourself. They’re bound to find out sooner or later where the secrets came from. Tell the truth, but play everything down. Criticize yourself, flatter the leaders. Make a big matter into a small matter.”

Margaret thought of going to find Baoyu’s father, who was a senior official in the Public Security Bureau. Perhaps he would be able to help her. Baoyu himself was in Copenhagen with the Royal Danish Ballet, but no doubt they could get in touch with him. She was under de facto house arrest, but after some days of pleading she persuaded Mother to go to the place where Baoyu’s family lived. They were not there; they had gone to the seaside resort of Beidaihe for the summer.

Of all her classmates and teachers, only Johnny Liu came to see her. She did not blame the teachers. A teaching position in the Beijing Music Conservatory was a great prize for oneself and one’s family, not to be jeopardized by fraternization with putative enemies of the people. A similar consideration applied to the classmates, of course; but they did not have wives and children to worry about, and had not had their careers already derailed once by the Cultural Revolution, as most of the teachers had. She thought one or two of them, one or two Margaret had thought of as close friends, might have been bold enough to come calling. But only Johnny Liu came.

She was at home with Mother when he came. Father was still being investigated in connection with her case, and had to go here and there to answer questions, sometimes for two or three days at a time. Mother let Johnny Liu in and called Margaret from her bedroom, where she was reading a novel. When she saw Johnny Liu she burst into tears. Seeing him, all the happy years at the Conservatory came back—and the knowledge that it had all been for nothing, all been lost; that without (so far as she could see) doing anything very wrong, she had lost everything. Seeing her distress, Johnny Liu himself seemed close to tears.

“Little Sister. I came to see if you’re all right.”

For a while Margaret could not speak. She sat on the sofa with Johnny Liu, sobbing while he held her hand. At last: “I guess the classmates are all talking about me.”

Johnny Liu laughed. “Classmates? The whole city’s talking about you! The whole world! It’s an international incident!”

“Really?” Margaret was impressed despite herself. “Oh, dear. Then I guess it’s very serious.”

“Yes. Mr Powell was expelled from the country. The British Embassy made a protest to our Foreign Ministry.”

“Heaven! Such a big matter! Oh, I’m sure I shall be put in prison.”

“No, no.” Perhaps thinking he had over-alarmed her, Johnny Liu smiled encouragingly, and patted her hand. “It’s just a nine days' wonder. Now Mr Powell’s been expelled, the fuss will soon die down.”

Johnny Liu glanced toward the kitchen, from where Mother could be heard making food-preparation noises, though the evening meal was still some hours off. “Let’s talk English, okay?”

“Yes. Oh, Johnny, it’s been so bad. Everybody thinks I gave secrets to Mr Powell. But I didn’t, I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t. I know that. All the classmates know it.”

“Do they? Nobody came to visit me.”

“They’re scared. Such a big case!”

“How about you, Johnny? You’re not scared?”

Johnny Liu laughed. “Pei! The communists destroyed my father, they destroyed my family. They can destroy me too—but they can’t make me koutou to them. I’ll never do that. They can beat me black and blue—I’ll spit in their faces. Anyway, I’ll be out of China in a few months.”

“Really? You got a position abroad?”

“Mm, not exactly. But my cousin in New York has booked me in to a college there.” Johnny Liu laughed again. “Just for one semester. Business college—but enough to get me a visa. Enough to get me out of China.” He laughed again.

“But Johnny, what about your singing?”

“Oh, I can find a job once I’m there. Even if I can’t sing, I can do something. I don’t really care. So long as I can get out of China. I’d rather polish shit in America than sing opera in China.”

“I wish I could go with you. Away from this …” Margaret could not think of a suitable English expression. “This stinking mess,” she said in Chinese.

Johnny Liu patted her hand. “Don’t worry. Nobody can believe you gave our country’s secrets to a foreigner. Anyway, all these secrets Mr Powell was supposed to have got. They don’t amount to much. I heard the details on BBC World Service. The names of some military leaders, some stuff about the fighting in Vietnam in ’79—things everybody knows. I really don’t know why it’s such a big matter. There’s something fishy about the whole business.”

“You don’t think Mr Powell is really a spy?”

“Of course not! Who thinks so? Mr Powell? Ha ha ha ha!” From Johnny Liu’s mirth, it was clear he had never even entertained the possibility that the charges against Mr Powell might be true. Margaret felt very naive. Since the authorities, and even Father, had said Mr Powell was a spy, she had supposed it must be true.

“If he wasn’t a spy, why did they find military secrets in his room?”

“Ts! How difficult is it to put some papers in a foreign teacher’s room? Mr Powell only went to his room to sleep, he was in the office the rest of the time, or teaching. Anybody could have done it.”

“But why would anyone do that?”

“That’s a very interesting question. The authorities wanted to make Mr Powell look like a spy. Somebody wanted to do that. I don’t know why. If you hadn’t gone to his room alone that evening, you wouldn’t be involved. Why did you do that? If you wanted to say good-bye to him, why didn’t you ask me to go with you?”

“It wasn’t me wanted to say good-bye, it was Mr Powell.”

“Did he ask you to go?”

“Yes. He sent Samson Lü to ask me.”

Johnny Liu stared at her, narrowing his eyes. “Samson Lü.”

“Yes.”

“That creep?”

“Yes.”

Johnny Liu let go her hand and sat forward, on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, staring in front of him.

“What? Elder Brother, what?”

“Is your father involved in anything political? Any kind of struggle with other leaders?”

“No. His health hasn’t been very good. He’s given up a lot of his responsibilities. Says he’s moving back to the … second echelon.” (This last expression in Chinese—she didn’t know the English.) “Anyway, he was never political. Just a soldier, just concerned with military matters. Why do you ask that?”

“I was thinking about Samson Lü. Acting like that, like a go-between. What did Mr Powell think of him?”

“I think he liked him. Mr Powell didn’t know he was, what? What’s it called in English? When somebody’s an ankle-rubber.”

“‘Stool-pigeon.’ Or you can say ‘informer.’”

“I don’t think Mr Powell knew. You know, foreigners never really understand what’s going on. But why did you ask about my father?”

“It’s only … I thought you got involved just by chance, when the authorities were aiming at Mr Powell. But maybe … I don’t know why, I don’t understand it, they were using Mr Powell to attack you.”

Now Margaret laughed. “Attack me? Why?”

“I don’t know. Because of your father, perhaps? To put him under suspicion?”

“I don’t think my father’s so important.”

“He’s more important than you. They’d hardly go to all that trouble to attack you, would they?” Johnny Liu laughed. “No, that’s not possible. Not possible at all! Why would anybody want to do that?”

*

She was interrogated again—the same questions, the same answers. Alone in the apartment in the heavy August heat of Beijing, she wept and fretted. Father, far from accepting the situation, became more and more distant. He hardly spoke to her without anger. Mother seemed to think there really had been something fishy going on with Mr Powell, and dropped clumsy hints that if there was anything Margaret might be holding back, she had better get it off her chest, for the authorities would be bound to find out sooner or later. At the same time she was worried about Father’s health. There had been an episode early the previous year—a small heart attack, it seemed—after which the doctor had told Father to avoid stress and undue exertion. Now Mother fussed over him whenever he became agitated, glowering accusingly at Margaret the while.

At last Margaret ceased to care what happened. She only wanted things resolved, no matter how. The long interrogations, the eventless silences between, were too much to bear. And soon enough the resolution came. She was to write out a full self-criticism; Father was to stand guarantor of her future good behavior; she was to accept an assignment as a middle-school language teacher in the far west of the country; and there was to be a special examination, to test her veracity on certain points.

Father seemed to think it was a good result. So far as her assignment was concerned, he seemed actually pleased. It would do her no harm, he said. Stay out there a year or two (he said), till everyone’s forgotten about this miserable business. Then I’ll pull some strings to get you back to the capital. A couple of years serving the people will do you a world of good. Make you realize what a nice easy life you’ve been having here.

Margaret longed to hear Father say some word of consolation to her, show her some of his old affection, or even just give some sign that he believed her side of the story; but he had set his face against her, retreated into some private obsession of parental doubt and guilt, and went off to his Divisional Headquarters for a week to catch up on work he’d missed while being investigated.

The special examination was to be done at a hospital in the Xuanwu district, not their local Beijing Number Four. This apparently was by Secretary Kang’s direction. He and the Party Secretary of this hospital were old comrades—Margaret overheard Father explaining this to Mother. Margaret was taken there on the appointed day by Mother, who was still unwilling to let her out alone.

The hospital was a shabby place, much inferior to the facilities she had got used to in West Wall District. Inside it was ill-lit, the air rancid and stifling. The original colors of the interior walls could still be made out: bottle green up to shoulder height, then white to the ceiling. The white had been stained to a mottled gray and brown by decades of dirty air, cigarette smoke and inattention. In the gloomy corridors and anterooms were crowds of rough-looking people, workers from the nearby factories perhaps, some moving listlessly from here to there carrying scraps of paper or glass tubes, most just standing, sitting or lying stretched out among the litter on the floor.

Mother made some inquiries. They were directed to a room half-way down a dark corridor. The workers shuffled aside to let them pass, staring in their dull-witted way. The air stank of formaldehyde and humanity. Mother knocked on the door of the room.

“Come in.”

It was a tiny office. Sitting at an ancient wooden desk against one wall was a doctor. She was a woman of about fifty, ugly and sour-looking—what the common people called a Class Struggle Face. She wore a dirty white lab coat and skull cap.

“This is Han Yuezhu. From the Conservatory of Music. I’m her mother.” Mother’s voice was still sharp with resentment and anger. She had not spoken more than ten words directly to Margaret since Father had gone off to Divisional Headquarters. Margaret did not care any more. She was far gone in fatalism. She had even accepted her assignment to the far west, as at least a relief from Father’s anger, Mother’s accusing looks, and the relentlessly repetitive interrogations by Public Security. In lucid moments she knew that it was, of course, a disaster for her career, for her life—very little better than being sent to a Reform Through Labor camp. But most of the time she did not care. What had it been, anyway, all those plans for a singing career, but the facile whisperings of the demon Hope, deluding her again as so many times before, telling her that the future might be other than what it was implacably destined to be.

“What? Han What? Oh, yes. For the special examination.”

Margaret felt suddenly faint. Special examination. At this point, she actually had no idea what she was doing at the hospital. A suspicion, but no real understanding. It was something to do with her case, of course. With the belief everyone seemed to hold that in addition to the country’s secrets, she had also given Mr Powell more intimate favors. She knew that even Mother believed this, though she had made no direct mention of it, and Margaret had denied it to her a score of times, weeping as she spoke.

The woman had gone back to her writing. She scratched away for a full three minutes, while Margaret trembled and Mother stood silent and sullen.

“All right.” The doctor stood up. “You. Follow me.” She grabbed Margaret’s elbow and jerked her toward the door. To Mother: “You stay here, Comrade.”

They walked back down the corridor to the entrance lobby, then through the crowd of staring, murmuring workers to the opposite corridor. A side corridor led off into the murky back part of the building. Here there were no windows, only twenty-five-watt bulbs in the high ceilings. The woman opened a door.

This was an examination room. It was quite surprisingly large, almost the size of one of the classrooms at the Conservatory. The only item of furniture was a vinyl examination table with tubular steel legs.

“Here,” said the doctor. “Wait.”

She left, closing the door behind her. Margaret was alone in the room. There was no window, only a ventilation grille, but the light here was much better than in the corridor. Margaret wandered back and forth for a while. The far left corner of the room, where the walls met the ceiling, had been attacked by damp and was swelling and flaking away in a great chancrous blister. The vinyl surface of the examination table was cracked, with black dirt in the cracks.

Margaret waited. The bed, the formaldehyde smell, made her think of the Conservatory clinic. They had sent her there to spend the night after her interrogation. The muscular woman had gone with her—had not, in fact, taken her eyes from her. Especially when she undressed for bed. The woman had watched her so carefully! “If there’s something you want to tell me, just tell me,” the woman had said. “I’m a married woman. I know all those things. I know how it is with men. Sometimes they’re just like animals, they can’t control themselves.” At the time, Margaret hadn’t had a clue what she was talking about.

Perhaps half an hour passed. There were voices in the corridor: men’s voices, laughing. The door opened. The doctor came in first, followed by Secretary Kang, Branch Secretary Guo from the International Opera Department, and an uncouth character with a mustache whom Margaret recognized as one of the drivers from the Conservatory car pool. The last two were grinning at some joke, but Secretary Kang, when his glance fell on her, was cold-faced, as he was when he addressed the students on matters of discipline.

“This is the student?” asked the doctor.

“Ri-i-ight.” Secretary Kang breathed out the syllable. Behind him, the driver was lighting a cigarette.

“Do you want to attend the examination?”

“Yes. Let’s see what the foreigner got for his dollars.”

Branch Secretary Guo giggled. They were all well in the room now; but nobody had closed the door. Three or four other men had edged their way in, and were standing around the doorway. Margaret thought one of them was another Branch Secretary from the Conservatory, one who hung around with Branch Secretary Guo. The others she thought were just hospital workers.

“It’s not the right way to do it,” complained the doctor, who seemed to resent the whole business. “I myself should do the examination, then submit a written report. That’s the right way.”

“Fuck you, fuck your mother, and fuck the right way,” remarked Secretary Kang in a flat, conversational tone of voice. “If you’ve got any issues, talk to your Secretary Niu upstairs. He knows me.” All the time he was looking at Margaret, still with that cold, dead look.

“Get your clothes off.”

So even was his gaze, so directionless his speech, that she did not grasp for a few seconds that this last remark was addressed to her.

“What’s the matter? You only undress for foreigners? Is that it? Your fellow-countrymen aren’t good enough for you?” The men behind him snickered. Margaret could not control her trembling. She thought she might pass out, and wished she could, but was too numb even for that. Reality—the room, the leering men, the doctor—seemed to recede. In a half-dream, she pulled at her clothes, laying them neatly at the far end of the table.

“Her skin’s so white!” said one of the men in the doorway.

“Ts!” said Secretary Kang. “If she were my daughter she’d have some bruises to show. I would have leathered the bitch. Teach her some morals.” He turned to spit on the floor. “All right, you. Get up on the table.”

Margaret lifted herself up to sit on the table. She did not quite make it at the first attempt from trembling so badly, and the doctor reached forward to steady her.

“Lie down, stupid. It’s not your fucking tonsils we’re going to examine.” Secretary Kang’s voice was full of contempt. The others all laughed.

Where the vinyl had cracked, the edges had curled up. They were sharp, and cut into her flesh. Margaret was horribly uncomfortable. She stared at the ceiling, forcing her mind blank.

“You don’t necessarily get a definite result from this examination,” said the doctor.

“What? What do you mean?” Secretary Kang seemed genuinely surprised.

“It’s a fact. Sometimes you can make a definite determination this way, sometimes you can make a definite determination that way. But often you can’t make any definite determination at all, either this way or that way.”

Secretary Kang stared at her a moment, then made a snorting sound. “That’s dogshit. Of course you can make a determination. Everybody knows these things.”

“No. Sometimes you just can’t tell.”

There was a moment of silence. Branch Secretary Guo broke it.

“In the old society they used a pigeon’s egg.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“A pigeon’s egg. That’s how they used to tell. They’d take a pigeon’s egg and try to push it into the hole. If it wouldn’t go in, the woman was a virgin.”

This little gem of social history seemed to stun everyone to silence. At last one of the men at the door spoke.

“What if the egg broke?”

“Well, then there’d be a fine mess, wouldn’t there?” said Branch Secretary Guo.

Everybody laughed, everybody except Secretary Kang. He glowered at his colleague.

“Have you got a pigeon’s egg with you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Well then SHUT THE FUCK UP!” He turned and stepped to the table. He grabbed Margaret’s bare knees and pushed them apart. “We don’t need any fucking experts here! These are things everybody knows!”

He stabbed forward with a meaty thumb. Margaret could not help herself: she screamed. Then, at last, she passed out.

Chapter 24

An Offering Declined, an Offering Accepted

A Famous Boxer Displays True Compassion

All at once, in one of the ever-briefer lucid spells, Weilin heard the crash of waves. It was full daylight now. Ahead of him was land: tall black rocks standing straight up out of the water. The sea was breaking against the rocks. Despair gave way to indescribable joy. He was safe! He would live! Then, as he approached the rocks, he saw that they were everywhere jagged and vertical, and the force of the waves against them was tremendous. The waves were carrying him forward now, with very little effort on his part, and it seemed he would be dashed to death on the rocks.

Flailing furiously with his arms, he tried to work his way sideways, in the hope that if he passed the rocks there might be some more hospitable place to land. But Weilin’s strength had all gone. Having once broken the rhythm of his night-long swim, he could not re-coordinate his movements, nor his breathing. He took a mouthful of water and went under, the sea roaring in his ears. He came up choking and retching, but before he could draw breath was pulled down again. Under the water the crash of waves was easier to bear, a growling and hissing sound, remote and unthreatening. Dying is really not so bad, thought Weilin, and lost all consciousness.

If natural laws applied to human beings as remorselessly as they do to the inanimate world, Weilin’s story would have ended there. But Lord Yanwang, the Emperor of Hell, who alone decides these matters, was not yet ready for Liang Weilin. He accordingly caused to be sent an undertow and a great wave. The undertow pulled Weilin sideways away from the rocks, and the wave lifted him up and deposited him on a tiny beach hidden at one side of the rock mass. The beach was covered with large gray pebbles which dug and scratched at Weilin’s flesh, and this stimulus was sufficient to restore a glimmer of consciousness. Weilin coughed the water from his throat and lungs. Then, fearful now of the sea clawing and tugging at his bare legs and feet, he crawled up the beach, clutching at handfuls of the pebbles. Further up the pebbles yielded to rough sand. The sand was waterlogged, though he was well out of the waves now; and Weilin had just enough power of reason left to deduce that the tide must therefore be going out. He fell asleep at once, face down on the sand.

When at last he woke the light was all different. The sea was in the same position but the sand was dry, so Weilin supposed the tide to be coming in. He sat up and looked around. The beach was no more than fifteen feet wide, a narrow cove between two masses of rock. On the landward side was a cliff of red earth, covered further up with tufts of coarse yellow grass.

With the sea coming in and the razor-edged rocks all around, Weilin saw no choice but to climb the cliff. He started up. With bare feet it was difficult to get a purchase in the loose red soil, but eventually he reached the grass and could then pull himself up by grabbing at the tufts. Sometimes the tufts came loose in a shower of red grit and small white stones, but Weilin kept hold somehow, hugging the slope with his belly, spread-eagled for every square inch of friction to keep from sliding downwards, and after an eternity of struggling up in this way he felt the slope decreasing, leveling out onto a plateau of grass and boulders.

Weilin stood up and looked around. It was mid-day, to judge by the light. The rough grassy ground stretched away in front of him to some low hills. Behind him were the cliffs and the sea. It was a scene of perfect desolation.

Baffled, Weilin scanned around, shading his eyes. Grass, rocks, the sea—and far away, along the coast to his right, a filament of smoke rising into the sky! Weilin set off walking along the cliff-top. He felt weak: his arms, shoulders, chest and thighs all ached. Several times he stumbled and fell, and once he thought it might be nice to stay where he had fallen and take a nap. But he was very hungry, and curious besides. Where was he? Weilin supposed he must have washed up on the mainland somewhere between Shantou and Hong Kong. This was not, he thought, disastrous. He must at least be nearer to Hong Kong than he was before. Perhaps he could walk there, or walk to the border and swim over at night. At any rate, the first order of business was to get his bearings.

The smoke was from a fishing village, set down below him in a neat little bay. There was nobody to be seen. Weilin ran down the hillside to the village. A dog started barking, then another. Still no people. There were a dozen or so houses, set along a single unpaved street leading on to a jetty. Midway down the street was a temple. The smoke was coming from a house next to the temple. Weilin came at the village from the landward side and walked down the street toward the jetty. No-one, no-one. Three or four dogs were barking now.

He peered into the temple. Lighting up the gloom within was a beautiful, gaudy statue of Guanyin, surrounded by candles and imitation flowers. Above and behind her was a horizontal red board with gold lettering: QUEEN OF HEAVEN, BODHISATTVA OF THE SOUTHERN OCEAN, GUARDIAN OF SEAFARERS. There were other boards set about, all vertical, asking Guanyin for luck, for prosperity, for safety on the sea. In front of her were some offerings: dried fish, flowers, an orange.

The sight of Guanyin was perplexing. If this was the mainland, why had the temple not been smashed up by Red Guards? On the other hand, where else could it be? Hong Kong was a great teeming city like Shanghai, not a fishing village.

Weilin stepped cautiously into the temple. He knew Guanyin, of course, but he had only heard her title as Goddess of Mercy. This stuff about Queen of Heaven and Guardian of Seafarers must be some local cult. Well, if guarding those at sea was really part of her domain, she must have been watching over him during his swim, and favored him with life. Under these circumstances, she surely would not object to his eating the offerings. Having thus satisfied his conscience, Weilin ate the dried fish. Then he pulled some rind off the orange with a fingernail and bit into the flesh. It was exquisitely, almost painfully, delicious. He looked up at the serene painted face above its necklace of green beads. Thank you, Guanyin. Thank you, he murmured.

Weilin was poised to take another bite at the orange when a voice spoke behind him. He jumped, and span round. At the door of the temple was an old woman. She was wearing loose black pajamas, with green plastic sandals on her feet. Her face was burned dark, and was a mass of wrinkles, and the very little hair she possessed was white, brushed straight back from her brow. She did not seem put out by Weilin’s presence and might even have been smiling; though since she had no teeth, it was difficult to tell.

The old woman croaked something Weilin couldn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” he replied. “I was hungry.” He thought he had better not mention anything about his swim, or the fishing boat, or Shantou, until he knew where he was.

The old woman cocked her head on one side and gave him a long string of prose. Weilin couldn’t understand a single word. It didn’t even sound like Cantonese, which Weilin had heard once or twice. Perhaps he had washed up in a National Minority area.

“My name is Liang Weilin,” he said. “I am really sorry about the food. It’s only that I was so hungry. I meant no disrespect to Guanyin.”

To illustrate his meaning, he put his hands together and made a bai to the goddess.

The old woman reached out a dark, bony arm and said a disyllable three or four times over. She turned and stepped away, looking behind her for Weilin to follow. Still clutching the orange, he followed. They went into the house next door. It was a rough affair made of wooden boards, the floor of beaten earth. The inside, however, was quite well-appointed. There was a comfortable-looking couch, an armchair, a cocktail cabinet, a colorized panorama of some city—presumably Hong Kong—on one wall. On top of the cabinet was a portable radio. This was the front room. Beyond this was a kitchen, with a brick stove and a pot steaming on the stove. Along the wall behind the stove were shelves stocked with jars and bottles. In one corner was a table with a meat locker. There was another table in the middle of the room. The crone took a folding stool and unfolded it, indicating for Weilin to sit down. Five minutes later Weilin was looking at a steaming bowl of rice gruel, fortified with fragments of fish, vegetable and ginger. The old woman stood on the other side of the table, watching, as he devoured it. When he was through Weilin took the liberty of finishing Guanyin’s orange. He felt wonderfully full, though still very tired.

The old lady chattered to him in her language as she cleared the table, putting the bowl into a tub with some other utensils, carefully placing the orange rinds on a shelf.

“Can you speak Mandarin at all?” asked Weilin.

The old woman squinted at him, not understanding a word.

“Can you read characters?” Weilin sketched the character for his surname, using a finger against his palm.

The old woman held up her own palms and shook them vigorously for negation. Illiterate.

Now she chittered away through a door in the far wall of the kitchen. It led to a small outhouse with a floor of square flat stones and a toilet cavity at one side. There was a huge earthenware jar full of water, a plastic bowl and some scoops, several rough pieces of rag on pegs. The old woman made washing motions and pointed to the jar, then left. Weilin relieved himself, washed the red soil from his body and toweled off. He remembered fouling himself on the boat, and examined his shorts warily, but their long immersion in the sea had laundered them most effectively. The shorts and T-shirt—the entirety of his current wardrobe—were dry now, but covered with the red dirt of the cliff. He brushed them off as well as he could, then put them on and went back to the kitchen.

The old woman led him through to the front room. Once there, she bade him lie on the couch. Then she made a pressing-down motion with her hands to mean that he should stay there, and mimicked sleep by closing her eyes and cocking her head on one side.

Weilin was only too willing. He got a comfortable position on the couch, looking out through the open front door of the house. The old woman left altogether. Weilin lay there, waiting for sleep. He could smell the sea, down at the end of the street, and hear the waves breaking. The only other sounds were seabirds calling, and a dog still barking several houses away. He felt sure that this was not the mainland now. He still didn’t see how it could be Hong Kong; but perhaps Hong Kong was a much bigger place than he had imagined—like a small country, with rural as well as built-up parts. That must be it. His mind at peace now, he fell asleep.

*

Weilin was woken by a man’s voice. The man was middle-aged and dark, with a crew-cut. He wore loose navy-blue shorts and a rough beige-colored T-shirt. His skin was burned dark brown like the old woman’s. He was addressing some sentences to Weilin in the impossible dialect.

“I’m sorry,” said Weilin. “I can’t understand. Can you write?” He made the writing motion on his palm.

The man nodded and went to the cabinet. He came back with a pencil and a very well-thumbed notebook. Most of the notebook was full of numbers, all western-style numerals. On a clean page the man wrote a few lines. He had trouble making the characters, and not all of them were right, but Weilin could see the sense clearly enough.

You have come from the mainland. You swam in the sea. We are fishing people. Guanyin protects us. To gain merit with Guanyin, my mother has welcomed you. But we are poor people. We cannot support you. You should go to Hong Kong.

Weilin’s heart leapt. The characters were clear: from the mainland. Somehow he had left the People’s Republic. He took the pencil.

How did you know I have come from the mainland?

The man nodded and wrote.

There are many, very many. They swim in the sea to come here. Some come alive, some dead. Those that live all go to Hong Kong.

There was no clock in the room, but Weilin judged it to be late afternoon by the light. Clearly, these people felt they had done their duty to Guanyin, and he should be on his way. “Where is Hong Kong?” he wrote. The man nodded. He led Weilin out into the street. A boat was moored at the jetty, a junk like the one Weilin had taken from Shantou. Some people were taking things from the boat. Thinking of that other boat, of what had happened, Weilin felt cold in his belly.

They walked up the street in the opposite direction, to where it ended. The man pointed over the nearby hills, making an “over” motion with his hand.

“How far?” asked Weilin. The man could not understand him, and they had left the notebook in the house. Weilin sketched the characters on his palm. He had to do it twice, the man struggling to make out the characters. At last he got it. On his own callused, mahogany palm he sketched: fifty li.

It seemed a long way to walk, but there was still plenty of light. Weilin put his hands together and made bai to the man, to show gratitude.

The man just nodded, then turned and started back to his house. Apart from the two of them, and the people on the jetty, the village still seemed deserted. Weilin set off toward the hills.

Beyond the hills were more hills, but beyond these was a road, a real paved road. There was no traffic on the road, and no human beings to be seen. The light was beginning to fail. Weilin thought he would walk on the road, as a road was bound to lead to a town sooner or later. But the road seemed to cut right across the direction the man had given him, so there was no particular reason to go either right or left. At random, Weilin turned right and began to walk. His feet were sore. When he looked at the soles of his feet, they were blistered and cut. He wished he had asked the fisherman for something to cover his feet.

He had walked less than a mile when, coming over a rise, he saw the cars. There were two cars, parked by the side of the road facing towards him. The one at the front was a big limousine not unlike the ones Weilin had occasionally seen in Flat All Around, used by high-level leaders when visiting the town; but this one was a silvery-gray in color, not shining black like those cars the leaders used. Behind the limousine was a type of vehicle Weilin had never seen before: a pale-blue van with windows all the way along the sides.

There were seven or eight people standing around on the road beside the vehicles. They were all young, and dressed in a very stylish way. The men all had long hair, so long it covered the tops of their ears. They wore flowered shirts open at the neck, or T-shirts in interesting colors. Their pants flared out below the shin. Their feet were in two-tone sneakers, or leather shoes with thick heels. From their hair and clothes they looked like westerners, though they were all clearly Chinese.

The two women had long sleek hair flowing down below their shoulders and the same flared style of pants as the men. One of the women was smoking a cigarette, holding it between the first two fingers of her right hand, her left hand cupping her right elbow—a posture that conveyed to Weilin incredible sophistication. This woman glanced at him as he approached. Apparently finding him to be without interest, she turned back to her companions.

Looking at them, and the vehicles, the last traces of doubt disappeared from Weilin’s heart. He was in, or somewhere near, Hong Kong. This was not the People’s Republic.

Now he saw that there was a problem with the pale blue van. It was tilted towards the roadway. The tilt was caused by its being propped up on one side at the rear, and this had been done so that one of the men could take the wheel off. He was taking it off as Weilin came up to them, kneeling on the grass beside the van. Another man, standing next to him, was giving advice or explanation. The others were standing around talking. Mostly just one was talking, and the others listening, or responding.

The man who was talking was about thirty, of average height for a Chinese, with a wiry but well-proportioned frame. His hair was long, like the others’, and framed a lean, intelligent face. He wore a burgundy-colored T-shirt, light fawn pants and gray-and-white sneakers. The man talked expressively, moving his hands. His feet, too: from time to time he would make small springing or skipping movements with his feet, apparently unconsciously, accompanied once with some very fast, flickering passes of the hands at someone who seemed to have contradicted him, in the manner of a traditional-style boxer. He was laughing as he did this, and everyone else was laughing with him.

The man stopped talking and turned to look as Weilin came up to them. He set his hands on his hips and leaned forward slightly, conveying suddenly to Weilin an overwhelming impression of contained strength—as if the concentrated life force of a hundred, a thousand ordinary men were coiled inside this compact, sinewy figure. From a mouth somewhat too small for his face, white teeth flashed, and he said something in a language Weilin felt sure was Cantonese.

“I’m sorry,” said Weilin, “I can only speak Mandarin.”

“No problem. I can talk Mandarin.”

Weilin could barely make out the words. The man’s accent was atrocious.

“I’m trying to get to Hong Kong,” he said. “Am I going in the right direction?”

“No. It’s that way.” The man pointed back the way Weilin had come, the way the vehicles were facing. “But it’s twenty miles, you know. Too far to walk.”

For “miles” he used yingli, meaning English miles. Weilin was not sure how long an English mile was—whether it was the same as a kilometer, or a Chinese mile, or what. Before he could pursue the matter, the wiry man spoke again.

“Why haven’t you got any shoes?” pointing at Weilin’s bare feet.

“I lost them,” said Weilin simply, unwilling to speak the truth to strangers.

“You’re a swimmer, aren’t you?” said another one of the party, a younger fellow with the same sneakers and flared pants as the wiry man, but much better Mandarin.

Still unwilling to reveal anything, Weilin pretended to misunderstand. “Yes,” he said, “I know how to swim.”

“No. I mean you’ve just swum from the mainland, haven’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

Everybody laughed. “Your clothes,” said a third man, a slightly older type, scholarly, wearing glasses. “And your bare feet. And you not being able to speak Cantonese.”

“Do a lot of people swim from the mainland, then?” asked Weilin.

The one with glasses nodded gravely. “Hundreds. Especially this last few months. Mostly kids like yourself. A lot of them drown. Some get eaten by sharks. Some are shot by the coast guard. You were lucky. I guess you came across Dapeng Bay.”

“I don’t know.” Weilin didn’t feel he wanted to talk about the fishing boat, the things that had happened. “I came ashore a mile or so … back there.” he indicated the way he had come.

The wiry man was listening to all this, flicking his eyes from one of them to the other in watchful concentration. As he watched he slowly, with infinite grace, took his hands from his hips and folded his arms across his chest. There was something fascinating in his every small movement. Weilin thought he would like very much to see this man run, jump, dance, box.

“How old are you?” asked one of the girls.

“Thirteen,” said Weilin, adding a few months.

“You’re a brave kid,” said the wiry man. Then he said something Weilin couldn’t get through the awful accent.

“I’m sorry?”

“He wants to know, were you persecuted?” interpreted the man with glasses.

“Yes. My father was killed. My mother went mad and died.”

They all nodded gravely. “It’s all right,” said the man with glasses. “We’re all Nationalists here. We all like Chiang Kaishek.” He turned to the others, and now they laughed. “Were your family Nationalists?”

Weilin was struck speechless. He had been brought up to think of Chiang Kaishek as the Prince of Demons, a pawn of foreign imperialism and collaborator with the Japanese mass murderers. At every point of his life heretofore he had lived in an environment where to say these words: We all like Chiang Kaishek, would be instantly and irrevocably to condemn oneself and one’s family to a lingering death. The very combination of the words was beyond imagining. The man with glasses might as well have said to him: We all like tearing our flesh with knives, or We all like to cook and eat small babies. The phrase “freedom of speech” is overworked in the West, is often the plaything of cynics and charlatans. Nonetheless, the concept it expresses is imbedded deep in our consciousness, and it, and all its connotations, are as much a part of our lives as our own blood. It is difficult to imagine for us, but to twelve-year-old Weilin, a child of despotism and fear, the notion of free speech was not thrilling, or exciting, or attractive, or inspiring. It was simply, blankly, inconceivable. We all like Chiang Kaishek—he trembled to hear the words! Was it some kind of trap?

“No, no,” he said at last. “Not at all.”

“Have you got relatives in Hong Kong?” asked the girl smoking the cigarette. In spite of her rather exotic appearance—as well as the cigarette and the long flowing hair, she was wearing a blouse far enough open to allow a glimpse of the cleft between her two breasts—Weilin thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The cleft between her breasts stirred something in him, made him think of Yuezhu at the pool, grabbing his arm.

“Yes. An outside uncle.”

“What’s his address?”

“Wodalao Road, number 433.”

“Wa!” said a boy. “Waterloo Heights! The guy must be rich!”

They all laughed good-naturedly.

“You’re lucky,” said the second girl. “Got a rich uncle.”

“But so far to walk,” said Weilin.

“You’re riding with us,” said the wiry man. His unmoving eyes, his stance, his voice, made this a fact of the world, known to everyone, as if it was just something Weilin had momentarily forgotten. The wiry man called back something in Cantonese to the men fixing the wheel. They responded; the wiry man cracked some kind of joke; everyone laughed; the man went to the limousine and opened one of the rear doors to let in the girls.

“Come on,” said the man with glasses. “You’ll ride in the bashi with us.”

The bashi was clearly the blue van. It had been righted now, and people were getting in. There were two rows of seats in the back. The man with glasses sat in the front row, Weilin behind him with a younger man carrying a camera. The van eased onto the road behind the limousine, and picked up speed.

Leaning on the back of his seat, the man with glasses introduced himself. His family name was Chen, his given name Houyi. He worked for a movie company. They all did.

“I guess you don’t know who you were talking to there,” said Mr Chen. “The one with really bad Mandarin.”

“No. Is he well-known?”

Mr Chen, and the man with the camera, and the other three in the van, all laughed.

“You bet,” said Mr Chen. “Everybody in Hong Kong knows him. I guess they don’t have Green Hornet in the mainland?”

“Green Hornet? No, what is that?” Weilin thought it sounded like a kind of medicine, but didn’t want to risk being laughed at again by guessing out loud.

“An American TV show. Li Xiaolong—that’s the guy’s name—lives in America, in Hollywood. That’s why his Mandarin is so bad. He grew up in Hong Kong, then he went to America. Never learned Mandarin. We all speak it because the movies are done in Mandarin, for the Taiwan market. Well, Xiaolong was the star of this show, Green Hornet, on American TV. Everybody in Hong Kong likes to watch it. It’s made him a big star here. Now our boss—he’s in the limo with Xiaolong—is trying to persuade him to make a movie here in Hong Kong. A Chinese movie. Xiaolong’s got his mind fixed on making American movies in Hollywood. He’s not crazy about making a Chinese movie. But it’s tough for him in Hollywood. They look down on Chinese people in America, you know. They won’t give him a good part. So I think at last our boss will persuade him. That’s why we’re here. Our boss is building a new studio, way out here in the New Territories. He wanted Xiaolong to see it.”

“So this Li Xiaolong is a movie star?”

“Not yet,” said the man with the camera. “Only a TV star. But if he makes a movie, he’ll be a super-star. You should see him on the screen. Wa! You’ve never seen anyone move so fast. He’s a master of martial arts, you see. When they do a fight scene—oh, you can’t take your eyes off him! But he can act in the regular way, too. Especially comedy. He knows how to make people laugh. Oh, he’ll be a big star!”

“Those girls—are they, is one of them, I mean, his wife?”

Everyone laughed. “No,” said Mr Chen. “He has an American wife. She’s in Hollywood. They just had a baby last year, so she’s stayed there with the baby. Those girls are movie actresses. Playmates for our boss.” They all laughed again.

The driver of the bashi said something emphatic in Cantonese, to more laughter. A conversation started up in that language. Weilin couldn’t follow it at all, though he got the sense that it was considerably ribald, with a lot of laughing. He thought of the cleft between the girl’s breasts, and the odd feeling surged again, strange and pleasurable. It was dark now outside the windows of the van, and the driver put on his headlights.

“Do you have any plan for your future in Hong Kong? What’s your ambition?” asked Mr Chen, turning back to him.

Considering the matter, Weilin drew a blank. “My ambition is just to stay alive,” he said.

For some reason this seemed to embarrass Mr Chen. He turned away and was silent for a while. Then he got back into the Cantonese conversation with the others.

*

They came to a town, the streets all lit up. Mr Chen told him this town was named Xigong. There was some countryside, then another town named Jinglanshu. The next place was named Qide, and they all told him this was the airport for Hong Kong. Sure enough, Weilin could see, in the darkness beyond the windows, a great flat open place with parallel lines of light stretching away—and suddenly a plane! so close it made him flinch to see it coming down, followed after an unreasonable interval by its noise. The plane—the first one Weilin had ever seen up close—seemed quite impossible, so large, slow and silent swooping down like that ahead of its own sound.

After Qide there was no more countryside. The buildings were continuous. The buildings got higher and higher, the streets busier and busier. They made a stop, one of the girls getting out of the limo to buy something in a store. Although it was quite dark now, the stores were all lit up. Everything was lit up—Weilin had never seen so much electric light. This place was named Jiulongtang, said Mr Chen.

“We’re going out of our way,” he added. “It seems Xiaolong’s going to take you all the way down Waterloo Road.”

In fact they took him to the shopping district in Nathan Road. Mr Chen opened the side door of the bus to let him out. The wiry man, the one named Li Xiaolong, had got out of the limo and was standing on the sidewalk, one hand against the roof of the limo, but not really leaning. Weilin could see, now, that he was a martial-arts master. His posture, even in such an inconsequential situation, was taut and balanced. Weilin thought that if someone were to punch him it would have no effect at all, except perhaps to make him twang like a steel rod.

Li Xiaolong held out a hand to him, and Weilin shook hands. The hand he shook was cool and firm, giving no impression of great strength. “Wish you good luck in Hong Kong,” said Li Xiaolong.

“Thank you.”

“I think before you see your rich uncle, you’d better get some decent clothes. And some shoes, for Heaven’s sake.” He flashed a grin, and Weilin thought he would give anything at all if, in his next life, he could have this man as an elder brother. He was about to say: I haven’t got any money, but the other was holding out some bills to him, two bills marked with 20. “This store here …” he indicated the brightly-lit plate-glass windows, “… will have what you need. Waterloo Road is up there, first main road on the right. Waterloo Heights is a mile or so along. Take your bearings from here, don’t get lost.”

Weilin took the money. “How can I pay you back?” he asked. “You live in America, one of the men told me.”

Li Xiaolong shook his head. “If a stranger does you a good turn, the way to repay it is like this: when you yourself have the chance to do a good turn to a stranger, do it. In that way, good deeds spread all over the world, and don’t just stay a private thing between two people. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good luck, mainland boy. Never stop fighting.” This last was in English so that Weilin could not understand it. Before he could ask the meaning, Li Xiaolong was back in the limo. The door closed; but through the window of the door he waved once to Xiaolong. The white of Xiaolong’s smile was brilliant through the tinted glass, before he turned away to someone inside the car. The limo and the van pulled away and left, Mr Chen waving to him from the van.

Weilin went into the store. As he pushed open the door he was at once enveloped by a billow of cool, dry air. It startled him: he had never encountered air-conditioning before. The store was the cleanest he had ever seen, with more different kinds of goods than he could have imagined being together in one place. Here were kitchen utensils, there musical instruments, across the aisle shoes, further along men’s suits. All was brightly lit and spotlessly clean. There were plenty of customers, strolling unconcerned among the plenty, stopping now and then to peer into the glass display cases or finger the clothes hanging on racks in the open, where anyone could just go up and touch them. The assistants were all dressed in smart navy-blue nylon tunics and white-soled shoes, just like those in the department stores on Nanjing Road in Shanghai. (Li Xiaolong, thinking to minimize the culture shock, had left him outside one of the stores run by the Beijing government, of which Hong Kong had several.)

Weilin caught people looking at him, at his bare feet. Two pretty teenage girls, arm in arm, pointed at him and giggled behind their hands. Weilin hastened to the shoe department, located an assistant who spoke good Mandarin, and purchased a pair of sneakers so white they looked luminous. Next he bought jeans, though there was no way to put them on there in the store. He carried the jeans out with him into the street.

The street was still busy, though it was now quite late. The stores were all open, their lights shining out on to the sidewalk. One nearby, a record store, was playing music into the street—a sweet love song in Mandarin. There were people everywhere, strolling and window-shopping. Signs hung out above the sidewalk in every color of the rainbow, advertising the stores and the businesses located on the floors above them. A food stall on a side street was selling tasty snacks cooked in red sauce—chicken feet, slices of squid, balls of fish paste. On the next corner was a news vendor with a sensational display of magazines and newspapers, the magazines all full of bright-colored pictures. A group of well-dressed youngsters passed by, laughing and chattering in Cantonese. One of the girls was spectacularly pretty, wearing tight blue jeans, a smart blouse, and a wrist bracelet in what looked like gold.

So open, so free! How could he ever belong to such a place? We all like Chiang Kaishek. Was everything allowed here? Could anything be done or said? If so, what prevented it all from falling into chaos? These mysteries swirled and throbbed in his brain as the traffic roared, the colors danced, and the people—the clean, smart, fearless people—drifted to and fro in their unimaginable freedom.

Chapter 25

Fourth Uncle Xu Holds a Full Month Party

Hong Kong—A Paradise for Shoppers!

Waterloo Heights was a cluster of apartment buildings at the top of a cliff which rose up, sheer blank rock, from one side of Waterloo Road. Weilin missed the access road, but found some steps cut up through the cliff. Number 433 was a large and very splendid-looking block, with many cars parked on the access road in front. Glass doors showed a bright white lobby. There were potted plants in the lobby and a small desk, with a man behind the desk reading a magazine.

Weilin pushed open one of the doors, releasing the same breath of cold, dry air as in the department store. The man at the desk looked up as Weilin came into the lobby. He was quite old, wearing an open-necked white shirt and smoking a cigarette.

“I’ve come to see Mr XuYiming,” said Weilin. “Can you tell me what room he’s in?”

Riding with the Mandarin-speakers from the movie studio, he had forgotten the language problem. It now asserted itself again. The doorman cocked his head to one side and offered a feeble, embarrassed smile. “Waan binwei?”

They found a pen and some paper, and Weilin wrote down Fourth Outside Uncle’s name. The doorman nodded. “Chaat Si.” On the paper he wrote: 7C. Then he indicated the elevator. Unfortunately Weilin had never before seen an elevator. He could tell that it was a sort of doorway, with a door in it; but the door had no handle, and when he pushed at it it was quite firmly locked.

The doorman laughed at him good-naturedly and showed him how to summon the elevator using the button on the doorpost. Presently the door hissed open of its own accord, and the doorman indicated that Weilin should step in. Inside was the same cool, dry air. On an inspiration Weilin pressed the button marked 7. The doors hissed closed, but nothing happened. Weilin started to feel scared, then the doors hissed open again. To his surprise, the view was quite different. This was not the lobby, but a pristine white corridor, the floor a lovely mosaic of red, white and yellow tiles. He stepped out into the corridor. A little way along was a door behind a heavy metal grille. 7B, said the door. At the far end of the corridor was 7C.

When the door opened to him Weilin heard the sound of many voices, laughing and talking, and music playing—traditional Chinese music—and a distant clattering and rattling which, before he had been in Hong Kong much longer, he would know to be the sound of mahjong tiles. There was nothing to be seen, though; only a small bare hallway with a potted plant on a stand, and the old woman who had opened the door. The old woman wore black pants, black white-soled shoes and a spotless white top. She peered at him interrogatively through the heavy grille. Weilin showed her the paper with Fourth Outside Uncle’s name written on it. The old woman glanced at the paper but shook her head. Another illiterate.

“Please help me,” said Weilin. “I must see Mr Xu Yiming.” To his astonishment the old woman replied at once, in Mandarin with a stiff south-western accent.

“Who are you? Mr. Xu is entertaining right now. It’s a manyue party for his grandson.” [Manyue is the celebration of a healthy baby, carried out one month after the birth.]

“I am the son of his first wife’s eldest sister’s third daughter. I have just escaped from the mainland. My mother and father are dead. I have no money, no place to live. Please ask him to help me.”

The woman stared at him expressionlessly for a few beats, then abruptly shut the door. Weilin waited. He had originally knocked on the door, reaching through the grille. Now he noticed a protuberance on one of the door-posts, which had what looked like a press-button set in it. In Hong Kong everything was done by buttons on doorposts, it seemed. After five minutes fruitless waiting, he pressed the button. A buzzing sound came from inside, very faintly. The old woman reappeared.

“Did you tell Mr Xu I’m here?”

“No. He’s entertaining his guests. He doesn’t want to be disturbed. Go away.”

Weilin’s heart sank. She didn’t even tell him? What had happened to Blood is Thicker than Water? He felt very exhausted, and close to tears.

“Please tell him. Oh, please! I’ll stay here until I see him. Tell him that. I’ll stay here all night, until I see him.”

The door closed. When it opened again, it was the old woman; but she stepped back at once for a large man of fifty or so, with a rough mottled face and graying hair slicked back with oil. He was wearing an old-style robe of some very fine material, with complicated frogged buttons, and was carrying a cigarette in a long ivory holder. He fixed a haughty stare on Weilin, but did not speak.

“Sir,” ventured Weilin. “I am looking for Mr Xu.”

“Yes, I know you are. And do you know what’s happening here?”

“Sir, I …”

“This is manyue for my daughter’s son. Do you think I want bad luck in my house on such a day? Do you think I want poverty and failure under my roof on such a day? Go away! Get out of here right now!”

“But my mother …”

“I don’t know anything about your mother. What, am I supposed to hand out favors to every urchin who knocks on my door claiming a blood relation? How many people am I supposed to support?”

“Sir, I have no …”

“The authorities in this city know me very well. I am in charge of all the concessions for U.S. Navy purchasing. The Governor, the Executive Council, they all know me. If you don’t get out of here I shall call the police. They’ll take care of you all right! You can be sure of that!”

So saying, Mr Xu slammed his door closed. Weilin stood there stunned for a moment. Then he made his way back to the elevator, down into the lobby. The doorman looked up from his magazine. He said something in Cantonese, and nodded pleasantly to Weilin.

Out in the street Weilin was overcome by despair. Blood is thicker than water, indeed! What could he do now? Here, on the height above Waterloo Road, he could see a large part of the city. There was an empty area, a park perhaps, in the foreground, and beyond that the lights of ten thousand buildings, glittering and sparkling as far as the eye could see. Far away was a mountain, with more buildings scattered up its face, to the very top. The din of traffic on Waterloo Road below him was continuous. Weilin examined the money in his pocket. Four dollar bills and some coins. The rest of the money Li Xiaolong had given him he had spent on his jeans and sneakers.

The great city stretched before him in all its vibrant glory; and he knew no-one, and could not understand the language of the place, and had less than five dollars to his name.

*

At a loss Weilin walked back the way he had come. He felt hungry, having eaten nothing since the rice gruel at the fishing village that morning. Well, a person must eat. He thought if he could eat something he would be able to think better, to find a solution to his situation.

Back at the corner where he had arrived, the shops were still lit up, the crowds of people floating to and fro. He turned left and walked south down Nathan Road. There was a food shop he thought looked cheap, with a sign saying RICE GRUEL AND NOODLES, and some pressed duck in the window. Weilin went in and sat at a table. The menu was on a board up on the wall: twenty different dishes with rice gruel and noodles. Some had names like Seven Treasures or Granny’s Delight, suggestive of southwestern delicacies familiar to him, some others were quite specific, and the prices were mostly less than three dollars. He ordered rice gruel with slices of fish, and a dish of vegetables.

“Can you speak Mandarin?” he asked the waiter.

“I can understand a little,” the man said, in a most atrocious accent.

“I need work. How can I find work?”

The waiter said something Weilin couldn’t get at all. Seeing he was not understood, he went to the front counter area and came back with a soiled, much-folded newspaper. He offered it to Weilin.

“See into the newspaper,” he said, ungrammatically.

Eating his rice gruel, Weilin scanned the jobs page. Easy! So many places wanted hands! Every advertisement carried a number, which Weilin assumed was a telephone number. He had never used a telephone himself, but he knew from movies that out here in the capitalist world people used telephones a lot. So! He would call these places the next day and get work. No problem! He had had no need of Fourth Outside Uncle after all! There remained only the question of where to sleep that night.

Further down Nathan Road on the right was a park. To Weilin’s astonishment—it was past eleven p.m. by the clock in the food shop—the gate was still open. People could be seen inside the park, though there was little lighting. Unlike a mainland park, there was no entrance booth and apparently no admission fee. Weilin walked in, up some steps. There were bushes and trees and many quiet dark places. Benches were set along the paths at intervals, but every one seemed to have a couple on it, sometimes two couples, whispering to each other or embracing. At last he found an empty bench in a far corner of the park, behind some sheds perhaps used for maintenance equipment. Weilin lay on his back on the bench. The bench was hard, but no harder than an uncovered kang and it was good to lie down. He indulged himself in some quiet anticipation of the morning, when he would find work and begin to live like a real westerner, prosperous and free. To Hell with Fourth Outside Uncle! He would survive in spite of him! The park was dark and quiet; but the city beyond still busy with the noise of traffic, and so well-lit that no stars were visible above him, only the glow of the city, reflecting back a dull orange.

When he woke the sky was light. The sound of the traffic seemed less. Weilin sat up, his hips and shoulders stiff and sore from the hard bench. He seemed to be alone in the park. After relieving his bladder in a bush he walked back the way he thought he had come. Everything was different in the daylight, though, and he came out into a different street. This was a back street, but it led to another much busier. On one side of this busy street was a large open area full of small food stands. For sixty cents Weilin purchased some batter-sticks and a glass of tea. This left him only coins, less than a dollar’s worth, but he thought this should be sufficient to make a few phone calls.

“Where is the post office?” he asked the man running the food stall. The man squinted incomprehension. Weilin borrowed a pen and wrote it. This got him a long explanation in Cantonese, which he couldn’t understand, and some hand gestures in the direction of the park, back to the south.

Weilin took the return trip through the park, which was still nearly deserted, as an opportunity to empty his bowels in the concealment of some bushes, cleaning himself with a superfluous page from the newspaper. Then he crossed the park to Nathan Road and headed south.

Nathan Road ended at the harbor. Now Weilin discovered that the mountain he had seen from Waterloo Heights was actually Hong Kong Island, on the other side of the harbor. He walked along the new road in the direction most of the traffic seemed to be going, and sure enough came to a post office. However, there were no telephones available inside. One of the clerks could speak Mandarin. He explained that the telephone service and post office were different things here, that local phone calls were free, and that any store would let him use a phone.

Back on Nathan Road Weilin went into the first store. It was a place selling cameras and electronic equipment. He asked the young man behind the counter if he could speak Mandarin.

“Sure. And English and Japanese.”

The young man was terrifically smart. His smooth round face was decorated with gold-rimmed glasses and tiny black whiskers at the corners of his mouth. His hair was oiled and trim. In the pocket of his wonderfully smooth white shirt glittered a gold pen.

“May I use your telephone?”

“I guess so. But don’t be long.”

Weilin had never made a phone call before, though he had seen it done in movies. He pulled out the newspaper and dialed the first number. He had a vague idea that the telephone ought to ring, but nothing happened. Behind him he heard the smart young man laughing.

“You’re a mainland boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I know, it’s not being able to speak Cantonese.”

“Well, yes, there’s that. Also, not knowing you have to lift up the handset before you dial the phone.”

Boiling with embarrassment, Weilin lifted the handset and dialed the number again. A voice said something in Cantonese.

“Can you speak Mandarin?” asked Weilin. Click. Buzz. He listened for a while, but there was only the buzz. Not sure what to do he dialed the number again, with precisely the same result.

“Excuse me,” he asked the very smart young man. “Would you please help me make a phone call? I can’t understand Cantonese.”

“Who are you trying to call?”

“I’m trying to find work.” Weilin showed the newspaper.

The very smart young man laughed. “You’re only a kid. Your voice hasn’t broken yet. They won’t employ you. Don’t you know about the new regulation?”

“Regulation? How should I know? I’ve only just arrived.”

The smart young man smiled. The smile was supercilious, the smile of one in possession of knowledge critical to the fate of another.

“The companies aren’t allowed to employ anyone under fifteen. Some busybodies in England made a big fuss about children working in the factories. They started a boycott. So now the companies won’t employ anyone under fifteen. You’re not fifteen. Anyone can see that.”

“Then how can I get work?”

“Oh, stick around a few weeks. The busybodies will find something else to get constipated about. It’ll all blow over, and the factories’ll be taking in anybody again. But right now they’re scared of the boycott, they won’t employ you.”

“But I have no money.”

The smart young man shrugged. He reached under the glass counter where he was standing, and began to rearrange the items on display there.

“Don’t you have any relatives in Hong Kong?”

“No.”

“Well …,” fiddling with the display items, not looking up at all now, “… you’re in a pickle then, aren’t you? Hey, come on, get out of here. This is a smart store, not a place for kids.”

*

Weilin walked the streets all day in despair. That evening he went to the cheap food stalls where he had breakfasted, and bought a bowl of ungarnished rice gruel. His intention was to sleep in the park again; but he must have been lucky the first night, now the park was patrolled by policemen who roused him by shouting in his ears in Cantonese—“Hei san! Hei san!”—and laughed as he ran off in terror. He remembered the other park, up by Waterloo Heights, and trudged up there, only to discover that it was not a park at all but a barracks for the British army, fenced and guarded. He slept at last on some heaps of stinking hemp matting near the Jordan Road ferry, out of sight from the street.

A single breakfast batter-stick and glass of tea cleaned out his pocket. Numb with desperation, Weilin walked the streets of Kowloon. He knew he would have to steal, but had not the courage to do it alone. He wished Asan was with him. Asan would certainly know what to do in such a situation.

In the afternoon, exhausted, he went back to the park and dozed on the bench for an hour, but the police came again and moved him on. By the time it got dark hunger was beginning to dominate all other considerations. Weilin recalled the meal he had taken the first evening at the noodle parlor. He had paid after eating, he recalled.

He chose a similar food shop in the back streets between Nathan Road and the ferry. Not yet brazen in crime, he ordered a cheap dish—fish-egg balls with noodles and green vegetables—and ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful. Finished, he picked a moment when no-one was looking at him, and sauntered to the door. He was actually at the doorway before the waiter shouted to him. “Wai! WAI!” Weilin ran.

He had thought that in such a prosperous place they would not pursue him over a bowl of fish-egg and noodles, but this proved an error. Running down the street he heard the waiter running behind him, calling out something urgent and shrill in Cantonese. These were back streets and there were few people around. Some turned their heads to watch the chase, but nobody tried to stop him. Weilin’s impression was that he was gaining. Looking down a side street he saw the lights and bustle of Nathan Road. That was it—get into the crowds and just walk steadily. He took the next side street, ran to the end, turned into Nathan Road, and ran straight into two policemen!

They were walking side-by-side, two Chinese officers: khaki shorts and shirts, black caps and long black socks. Appearing suddenly in front of them from the side street, Weilin caught them off guard. They stopped dead, staring at him. Close behind, a shout from the waiter. Trapped, Weilin vaulted the metal railing that separated sidewalk from roadway. This was pure instinct; he was not even looking. There was a horrible squealing of brakes, followed by a thumping and crunching sound. A taxi, trying to avoid him, had skidded, and two vehicles behind had hit it. In terror, Weilin jumped back to the barrier and one of the policemen, animate now, grabbed his arm and held it.

Chapter 26

When Constabulary Duty’s To Be Done

The Excellent and Manly Game of Rugby Football

Inside the police station was a high counter made of lacquered wood. Behind the counter was a policeman. He was Chinese and did not look very old at all. His face was very southern, almost Vietnamese—bony and angular, with a little full-lipped mouth and slightly prominent eyes. His adam's apple was prominent, too, and so were his elbows, as revealed by the short sleeves of his khaki uniform shirt. His manner was very cold. Weilin was afraid of him at once. When they came in he had been writing something in a huge bound ledger-style book. The escorts told him a story in Cantonese. Listening to the story, he just went on writing.

“Giu ma’ye?” The officer, still writing, did not even look at him. Weilin, who could not understand the question, did not in fact know he was being addressed until one of the escorting officers kicked him.

“I’m sorry,” said Weilin in Mandarin. “I can’t understand Cantonese.”

Now the officer glanced at him, just for an instant. Without changing expression in any other way at all, he restated his query in thick Mandarin.

“I asked your name.”

“My name is Liang Weilin.”

“Mainland boy.” (With no terminating particle or elevation of pitch to make it a question.)

“Yes.”

“Swimmer.”

“Yes.”

The officer favored him with a brief exophthalmic stare. The full, feminine mouth twitched in what might or might not have been a smile.

“Well, we’ll soon have you back on the commune.”

They were going to send him back! This thought had not occurred to Weilin at all until that moment. He thought of Flat All Around, the listless poverty of the production brigade, the terrible fierce winters.

“Please don’t send me back. I’m not a criminal. It’s only that I was hungry.”

The officer at the high counter had resumed writing in his ledger. “If you don’t want trouble, don’t break the law. You have family in Hong Kong?”

“No.” Weilin wanted to add: I have no family at all, anywhere. But at this moment a door opened in the passage that led back behind the counter to the right room and a foreigner emerged from the passage. He was tall, neither young nor old, and wore policeman’s uniform, except that he had long trousers. The other officers were all in the shorts and long socks. Across his top lip was a thin black mustache. The Chinese officers came to attention as the foreigner walked in—even the desk officer.

The foreigner handed a long manila folder up to the desk officer and said something to him in Cantonese. Then he turned to go out into the street. But when he saw Weilin he stopped abruptly. After looking at Weilin in stillness for a moment he asked a question in Cantonese. The desk officer told him the story.

“Swimmer, hm?” The foreigner’s Mandarin was very good, like one of the radio news readers from Beijing.

“Yes.”

“Deep Water Bay?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How long did it take you?”

“I don’t know. Seemed like all night.”

“No family in the Colony, hm?”

“No, comrade. No family at all, anywhere.”

Comrade had slipped out, the natural reaction to a uniform. The Chinese officers all laughed. The foreigner smiled broadly, his face crinkling up in a rather pleasant way. Oddly enough, Weilin felt less afraid of the foreigner than of the Chinese officers. He thought the foreigner might be a kind man.

The foreigner seemed to consider for a minute, then addressed three or four sentences to the desk officer and walked out into the street. The desk officer made a jerking motion with his head, and Weilin’s escort, grabbing him by the elbows, hustled him down the passage the foreigner had emerged from.

At the end of the passage were concrete steps leading down. The steps led straight to a short corridor with a wooden door on each side and a metal-barred door at the end. There was a mingled smell of food, excrement and disinfectant, and a whining, rattling mechanical noise. Both the smell and the noise increased in strength as they approached the end. One of the officers unlocked the metal-barred door and went in with Weilin. It was a simple square room, fifteen feet on a side. There was an aisle down the middle of the room. On each side were metal bars enclosing four cells, two on each side of the aisle. Only one cell was occupied. The escort opened the door of the cell diagonally opposite the one occupied, and pushed Weilin inside. Then he locked the door and left. The other officer had been waiting at the entrance to the room. He too left, locking the entrance door behind him.

The cell contained a wood-frame bed with straps of some rough cloth to sleep on and a quilt that looked none too clean. Also a bucket made of galvanized metal with a half-inch of lurid green disinfectant in the bottom. Weilin lay down on the bed, pushing the quilt down to the bottom. The room was warm, though not as warm as it should have been, windowless and underground. The difference was accounted for by a ventilation system, behind a large square grille on the back wall opposite the entrance. This was the rattling noise heard from the passage outside. Though not particularly loud it had a penetrating, irregular quality that made it hard to ignore. Weilin thought he would not be able to sleep.

Now he heard the other occupant of the room calling to him in Cantonese. “Wai, wai.” He got up and went to the bars separating his cell from the adjacent one. The other person was not in that cell, but in the one across the aisle from it. However, Weilin could see him quite clearly. He was short and very dark-skinned, dressed in dirty pants and a shirt, both of which seemed too big for him. Some of the darkness of his skin might also have been due to dirt, Weilin thought.

“Can you speak Mandarin?”

“I can.” The fellow’s Mandarin was thicker than the desk officer’s by a whole order of magnitude: ngoi mcan. “What are you in for?”

“Stealing. How about you?”

“Nothing! That son of a bitch! My neighbor, fuck his mother, called the police. Said my apartment was full of stolen jewelry.”

“Really? Was it true?”

“Of course not! He just wanted to make a nuisance of himself, because my boy beat up his boy. That fucking cunt! So of course the police came. When they saw there wasn’t any jewelry they asked me for money. I only had twenty and they said it wasn’t enough. So here I am, until my old woman comes up with a hundred. Fuck their mothers! Uh-oh, watch your ass.”

This last injunction referred to the sound of steps in the passage outside. An officer appeared and unlocked the entrance door. In came a very old man in a loose old-fashioned southern-style outfit: frogged jacket with a detachable white collar, baggy pants and black slippers, skull cap. The old fellow was carrying some metal food containers. This time the officer followed him in. Kneeling, he unlocked a wooden hatch let into the bars of Weilin’s cell. The old man passed in the food containers. Then he and the officer left.

The other prisoner shouted at them, apparently in indignation. It did seem odd (Weilin thought) that they would feed only him and not the other. But he was not about to refuse food at this point. One of the containers held steamed rice, another some boiled green vegetables; and there was a lidded cup of weak green tea. Weilin ate the lot without pausing, paying no attention to the long tirade in Cantonese coming from the other cell. When he had finished he lay on the bed and at once, miraculously, fell asleep, and in a sweet, sweet dream played with Han Yuezhu in the little dell by the Chengdu Road.

“Hei san! Hei san!” The policeman’s harsh shout, right by his bed, jolted Weilin awake into cold fluorescent light. Blinking, he allowed himself to be led back upstairs, and pushed into a room leading off the upstairs passage behind the counter. This room had a window with venetian blinds and an air conditioner, not currently active. It also had a book-case loaded with imposing dark-blue tomes, and some filing cabinets, and a desk. Behind the desk sat the foreign police officer Weilin had seen earlier.

“Did they feed you?” asked the officer in Mandarin.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The officer had his elbows on the desk. He was twiddling a pencil in his hands, but did not seem inclined to write anything.

“No family in Hong Kong, hm?”

“No. No family anywhere.”

“Everybody has some family.”

“No. My parents are both dead. I’m an only child. My father’s relatives … I don’t know. We never had much to do with them. Anyway, they are in the mainland. My mother had a lot of relatives, but all in the mainland, in the far northeast.” Weilin thought it prudent not to mention Fourth Outside Uncle.

The foreigner digested this for a while. Then: “How old are you?”

Weilin was going to lie, saying fifteen, but he was a poor liar and telegraphed his intention, dropping his head.

“Really. Tell me the truth. Don’t be afraid.”

“Twelve. But almost thirteen.”

The foreign policeman nodded, then went into reflection, twirling his pencil.

“I was only hungry. I’m not a criminal.” Weilin thought he should make a case as best he could.

“I can see that,” said the foreigner quietly. At once Weilin knew this was a friend. Almost involuntarily, and feeling himself close to tears, he said: “Please help me.”

“Well, somebody’s got to help you, that’s for sure.”

Suddenly decided, the foreigner took a pad from one of the desk drawers and began writing. He wrote three or four lines, then leaned to one side and fished in a trouser pocket, pulling out some money.

“Here, take this.” He handed Weilin a bundle of ones. “Get a taxi. Ask him to take you to this address. Should be about three dollars. When you get there, walk around for a while. Stay on the street where I can see you. But try not to look like a burglar. Don’t hurry. I’ll be an hour behind you, at least.”

The foreigner came out from his desk and opened the door. He took a step into the passage and shouted something in Cantonese. Someone shouted a response. He stepped back into the room.

“Go on, now.”

Utterly baffled, Weilin stepped out. The desk clerk glanced at him as he came round the corner, then turned back to his ledger. A large clock on the wall registered precisely twelve midnight.

In the street, Weilin examined his wealth. Nine dollars! The man said it would only be three for the taxi. The streets were still very lively. Weilin walked at random for a while, coming eventually to a stretch of open-air food stalls. He treated himself to a dollar bowl of beef tripe in soup and some chicken feet. Thus refreshed he set off through the back streets again, coming out at last on the big main road. Here he hailed a cab, feeling very grand.

*

The address the foreign policeman had given him was in a pleasant, quiet area, away from the main part of the city. The houses were low, two or three stories, with cars parked outside, or sometimes in forecourts off the street. There was little traffic and no pedestrians at all. The main sound was the hum of air conditioners, drowned at long intervals by the thunder of a plane going in to the airport at Qide, which must have been somewhere close by.

Try not to look like a burglar. Weilin indeed felt conspicuous on the empty sidewalks. He tried to walk briskly, as if to some purpose, for the benefit of the occasional passing car, but did not dare venture too far from the place he’d been left. To the corner; then another block; half of another, to where the road began to turn; then back, and a block in the other direction. He did not feel tired at all now. His belly was agreeably full, and the nighttime air merely warm, not oppressive.

A car passed him, and turned into a driveway a few yards ahead. It was still for a while as Weilin approached. Then the car’s lights all went out together and a figure appeared alongside. It was the foreign policeman. He made a beckoning motion with his arm, then turned toward the house. Weilin went over. The policeman had opened the door. Making a brief movement of his head to indicate that Weilin should follow, he went in.

Inside was just a stairway. At the top of the stairs, another locked door. This time the policeman stood aside to let Weilin go in first.

The apartment seemed to Weilin’s eyes very large. It had carpet going all the way to the walls on every side. There were several pieces of furniture, none of which seemed to match any of the others. The most striking object was a circular target affair a foot and a half across hanging on one wall. The target was divided into twenty sectors, numbered apparently at random. The windows of the room had venetian blinds, like the policeman’s office. The room seemed hot and stuffy. It smelt faintly of food.

“Let’s get some air,” said the policeman. He walked over to the window and switched on an air conditioner. Then he went through a door into an adjacent room, and Weilin heard another air conditioner go on.

“Excuse me,” said Weilin, standing in the middle of the large room. “How is it you speak such good Mandarin?”

“It’s my job,” said the policeman. He stood opposite Weilin, arms akimbo, smiling slightly. Weilin felt the warmth again—but something else, too, something he could not place. “When you join the Hong Kong police” (the foreigner continued) “they give you a crash course in Cantonese. Spoken and written, both. Any time you hear a foreign devil speaking Cantonese, it’s either a policeman or a priest. The priests are better, generally speaking. Especially the Jesuits.” He turned away, to a door on the other side.

“But how about Mandarin?” Weilin persisted. “Isn’t Cantonese enough? I mean, everyone in Hong Kong seems to speak it. They don’t seem to bother much with Mandarin.”

“Well … wait a minute.” He went in to the other room. Weilin could see, as the light went on, it was a bathroom. Shining white tile, a mirror. As the light went on it started something else, a fan or ventilator. The policeman came out again. “Not quite true. The movies are all in Mandarin. So are the pop songs. And the written characters are the same, more or less. So, having nothing much better to do, I thought I’d learn some real Chinese.”

He was looking at Weilin again; same way, but more now of the other component, the one Weilin couldn’t place.

“First thing you should do is take a shower,” said the policeman. He nodded to the bathroom.

Weilin went in and closed the door. He took off his clothes and put them on a chair which seemed to be there for that purpose. The mirror went floor to ceiling, on the wall opposite the tub. Weilin stood in front of the mirror. He had never seen himself full length in a mirror before. He thought he was too thin, and his skin too dark. The policeman was undoubtedly right though: he needed a shower. Seeing his small, dark body against all the spotless white tile and porcelain he suddenly felt very grimy.

The shower had a large number of controls, all in shiny new metal. However, they only made water come from a faucet in the side of the tub. Nothing came out of the shower head. Weilin fiddled for a while, trying to get it right. Hot water; cold water; but only from the faucet.

He heard the door open. Acting on pure instinct he grabbed one of the towels on the floor by the tub and pulled it round him. The policeman did not come in, however, only called out: “Can you manage the shower all right?”

“I … it’s … No. The handles …”

Now the policeman came in. He showed Weilin a button that seemed not to have been there before, that routed water from the shower to the faucet. Then he got the shower going and went out. Weilin took off the towel and stepped into the shower. It was wonderfully refreshing. He let the water run over him for a while. Then he washed his hands and face, his arms and trunk, his feet, legs and bottom. He was rinsing off when he heard the policeman in the room.

“Everything all right?” called out the policeman from the other side of the shower curtain.

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine.”

“Good,” said the policeman. He pulled back the shower curtain and stepped into the tub. He was entirely naked.

Weilin was paralyzed with embarrassment. He did not know what to say. He had stepped back from the shower nozzle when the other came in. Now he stood and watched as the policeman positioned himself under the nozzle. The policeman himself was quite nonchalant, rubbing the water into his hair. He seemed much larger without his clothes. He had a good figure, smooth muscle on a big frame, though with a little starter tube of fat at the waist; and of course he was as hairy as an ape—thick black hair on his chest and limbs, with patches of it on his back. Ashamed of himself for looking, Weilin could not help but notice that his jiba was different from a Chinese person’s: it ended in a sort of cap or helmet.

“Wash my back for me.” The policeman was offering him the soap. Weilin could not look at his face for embarrassment. He took the soap. The policeman turned away, and Weilin soaped his back. The back was broad and meaty, with irregular patches of black hair. The skin itself was very white. Seeing his own skin against the policeman’s, Weilin again felt ashamed of his own darkness. We call ourselves the yellow race, he thought, but really we’re not yellow, we’re brown. Some darker than others, of course. Han Yuezhu was lighter than many fellow-countrymen, though certainly not as pale as the policeman.

“Now it’s your turn. Come on.”

There was no way to change places without brushing against each other. Making the maneuver, eyes lowered from embarrassment, Weilin noticed that the policeman’s jiba seemed much larger. Instead of hanging down flaccid it was sticking out, then drooping off on a curve like the piece of ivory in the ear lobe of the old Minority woman at the swimming pool.

Weilin put his hands up against the wall and let the policeman wash his back. It seemed to go on for a very long time, the hands moving slowly over his back and shoulders, under his arms, down his sides and hips. He wondered vaguely why the policeman was washing his hips, which he could perfectly well do himself, and had in fact already done; but by now he had entered into a mood of resignation. He knew now that something was going to happen. He had no idea what; but it would probably not be worse than sleeping in the park and going hungry, and he felt sure that what he had seen in the policeman’s face when it crinkled up that time was genuine kindness.

The policeman angled the shower head to rinse him down. Then abruptly, his voice somewhat hoarse: “All right. We’re all clean. Let’s get out.”

Weilin needed no encouragement. He stepped out and picked up the towel from the floor where he had dropped it. Thankfully, he wrapped it round himself. The apartment seemed very little cooler, in spite of the two air conditioners. The policeman had got out too, and taken a towel from a rack on the wall.

“Come on,” he said, turning to the door. “We’ll play a game.”

Weilin was relieved. He thought a game would lighten the embarrassment. “What game?” he asked, following the policeman into the main room. The policeman had gone into the other room, the one with the second air conditioner.

“The glorious game of rugger,” he called out. Weilin could hear drawers being opened and closed. He stood there in his towel in the main room. Rugger? It was a foreign word, one he had never heard before.

“I don’t know this word.”

“Glorious game. Glorious.” The policeman appeared from the other room. He was dressed in a white open-collar sport shirt with long sleeves, dark blue shorts, and long white socks with red hoops round the top. He was carrying some clothes.

“Put these on. Then we’ll play a game.”

He went back into the bedroom. Weilin toweled himself off and put on the clothes. It was the same outfit the policeman had, only smaller in size and with a shirt hooped in blue and yellow instead of plain white. As he was pulling on the socks the policeman emerged carrying a large leather ball. It was a very odd ball: not round, but elongated. The policeman was smiling now, his face crinkled in that way that made it look kind.

“All right. Let’s play.”

“How do we play?”

“You try to get the ball from me, then I try to get it from you.”

And so they played. Weilin was hesitant at first, advancing slowly on the policeman, not at all sure what was expected of him. The policeman feinted away, and dodged behind a chair.

“Come on! Come on! China versus Scotland! Where’s your sense of national pride? Ha ha ha!”

Getting into the spirit of the thing, Weilin chased him round the apartment, cornering him at last in the second room, which contained a large double bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. The policeman was trapped between the wardrobe and the bed. Faced with the necessity to attack him, Weilin hesitated. The policeman seemed very large and invulnerable. He was laughing, though, very freely and naturally, and, between laughter, shouting out something in his own language: “Rugger, rugger, sounds like bugger! Ha ha ha! Rugger, sounds like bugger, ha ha ha ha ha!” Which of course Weilin could not understand at all. Gathering his courage he grabbed for the ball and held onto it. They fell sideways onto the bed, rolling over and over, the policeman laughing all the time. Weilin started laughing too. He could not help it. He got his arms between ball and policeman, squirmed out from under the man’s weight, and took off into the main room.

This went on for fifteen minutes or so, Weilin now enjoying himself unselfconsciously. The policeman was heavy and clumsy, and delivered a few bruises, but it was clear he meant no harm. At last both players were out of breath. Also sweating: the air conditioners had not had time to do a thorough job yet, and the apartment was still warm. They ended on the floor in the main room, Weilin clutching the ball to himself, the policeman too winded to grab for it, both of them laughing freely.

“Good game, eh?” said the policeman when he had some breath.

“Yes. A lot of fun.”

“It’s late, though. We’d best go to bed.”

The policeman got up and went into the bedroom. Weilin lay on the floor, still clutching the rugger ball. He knew now that the apartment had only one bed. There was a couch in the main room, and he wondered if he was to sleep on the couch.

“Come on,” called the policeman. Weilin got up and went into the bedroom. The policeman was standing there, naked. The bedclothes had been pulled down, some towels laid out on the bed. Suddenly Weilin felt scared, though he did not know why. The policeman saw it. He smiled, the crinkly, kindly smile.

“It’s all right. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Reaching out, he took the ball Weilin was still holding. He walked round the bed and set the ball on top of the wardrobe. Then he came back, right up to Weilin, and smiled again.

“Lie down on the bed.”

Weilin could think of nothing to do but obey. He sat on the edge of the bed, then turned to lie on the big towel spread on this side of the bed. The policeman walked round to the other side and climbed up to lie on the other towel.

“It’s all right. Just another game.”

What followed did not surprise Weilin as much as—thinking it over, as he did many times in the years that followed—perhaps it should have done: except that, at the moment when matters were obviously approaching some sort of conclusion, the policeman threw back his head and roared out a great rough oath in his own language.

“SCOTS   WHA   HAAAAAAAEEEEEEEE!”

Chapter 27

Holly and Ivy Prompt Certain Significant Changes

Christmas Feasting Recalls a King of Ancient Times

The policeman’s name was Gordon. Weilin’s first instinct about him had been correct: he was a kind man.

Instinct notwithstanding, Weilin fully expected that first morning to be put back on the street. In fact he awoke to an empty apartment. On a small table in the kitchen was a set of keys, two hundred Hong Kong dollars in cash, and instructions for finding a breakfast, written in good Chinese characters, neat and square, if somewhat ill-proportioned and childish-looking. After checking carefully to make sure the keys did indeed open the apartment and house doors, Weilin went out into the city in his new clothes, the ones he had bought to visit Fourth Uncle in, but now with a pocket full of money and a spirit full of confidence, luxuriating in his new-found security, however temporary it might prove. In fact it proved not temporary at all, as earthly things go: he lived with Gordon three years.

Gordon’s work was organized in shifts, and he took turns at all shifts. When Weilin first arrived he was doing late night shift. Two weeks later he changed to daytime shift; then after several weeks more, to early morning shift. At first he did not spend much time at home, when not working or sleeping. There was a club, some kind of policemen’s club, which occupied most of his spare time. Weilin never went to the club, and never got a very clear idea of what went on there. Drinking, certainly; when working daytime or early morning shift Gordon came home smelling strongly of beer, though never actually drunk. Some small sports, too. There was one called darts, which Gordon occasionally practiced at home, using the peculiar target in the main room, standing several feet away and hurling little fletched missiles at it. Another was cribbage, a card game Gordon eventually taught to Weilin for their own pleasure, and which Weilin at once recognized as a grander, full-scale version of kebizhi.

Such little time as he spent at home those first weeks Gordon occupied with cooking, listening to western-style opera, reading or—very occasionally—watching TV. He was a skillful and ingenious cook, when he bothered, and could make both western and Chinese dishes with equal facility. The opera was on a large collection of long-playing discs in a cabinet beneath the hi-fi. There were certain parts Gordon liked to listen to very intently, during which he would allow no interruption, nor any noise or activity of any kind. During the other, less critical, parts he would wave his arms in time with the music, or sing along in a not unpleasing bass baritone, or explain the story to Weilin. For TV he seemed to have little inclination. The only time he watched with enthusiasm was for something called Calcutta Cup, a game—a real game—of rugger that was played every spring in London.

Gordon seemed to have an endless supply of money. The Hong Kong dollar was, at this point in the Colony’s history, trading at twenty U.S. cents. One of these dollars would get you a simple meal at a street stall, ten a shirt, twenty a hand-made shirt, a hundred a custom business suit. The ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island cost a quarter. For five dollars you could ride a taxi all the way out into the New Territories. Gordon seemed never to have less than five hundred on him, always stuffed carelessly into his trouser pocket. Four or five days after leaving the two hundred out, he left another four hundred in the same manner. Weilin, who had not yet spent a quarter of the previous amount, felt it would not be right to go on taking such large sums from him, and said so frankly that evening. Gordon said he would put money in a certain jug in one of the kitchen cabinets. Weilin could use it as he pleased, and if the pot got empty Gordon would refill it. So they went on like that; but there was never less than two hundred in the jug.

It occurred to Weilin, of course, that he was being paid for services rendered, and that this was, to put the kindest possible interpretation on it, ignoble. This irked him for a while—for some weeks. Of course, such a thing could be excused by the press of necessity, but he resolved to put his life on a proper, moral footing as soon as he saw a way to do so. Gradually this resolution dimmed. Gordon’s kindness and consideration, the indirect method of emolument, and the ease and comfort of his new life made Weilin feel that, after all, he could have done much worse.

Gordon’s games were by no means restricted to two players. On their third night together, which was a Saturday, Gordon came home very late, bringing with him another boy. The boy was Cantonese, two or three years older than Weilin and rather coarse-looking. They all got undressed and showered together, then played the rugger game, for which purpose Gordon seemed to have an inexhaustible inventory of shorts, shirts and socks in different sizes. During the game it became clear to Weilin that the boy was taking every opportunity to embrace him, be on top of him and slip his large, rough hands into Weilin’s shorts. After rugger Gordon’s idea was that they would all play the other game together. But Weilin had been disgusted and intimidated somehow by the boy—by his rough groping, by his staring, which had something slightly malevolent to it, like a small but very hungry carnivore, by his bad breath and his guttural Cantonese. Weilin began to cry. This made the boy laugh. The boy’s laughing, in turn, made Gordon angry. He shouted at the boy in Cantonese. There was an argument. The boy got dressed and left, after another argument about the handful of bank notes Gordon thrust at him, and Gordon sent Weilin to bed, switched off the light and let him fall asleep alone.

Nothing happened for two days after this. Then there was a precise repeat of the first night. Then nothing for three days. Weilin lapsed into insecurity. He felt sure that Gordon had had enough of him and that he would soon be sleeping in the park again. And then, what? It would be winter, and too cold to sleep in the park.

The next day, the Saturday following the incident with the boy, Gordon came home very late again. This time he had two girls with him. The girls were small and brown, black-haired but not Chinese. They were very merry, laughing and giggling. Gordon introduced them as Holly and Ivy, which names Weilin heard as Ali and Afei. In Mandarin li means pretty, fei means fat, and a- is a general diminutive prefix for personal names; and since Holly was slightly the prettier of the two and Ivy slightly the plumper, the names seemed to Weilin entirely apt. They were filipinas, said Gordon, but Weilin had no idea what this meant and thought it might be impolite to ask.

Holly and Ivy were fun. First they inspected the apartment, paying particular attention to the kitchen. They tried the burners on the range, the extractor fan, the blender. They opened the washing machine and turned the drum. They examined the contents of the refrigerator and freezer, giggling and pointing at bottles of ketchup, wedges of cheese, trays of lettuce. They fiddled with the stereo, hi-fi and air conditioners, gibbering all the time to each other in some language not Cantonese. At last, satisfied with the amenities, they shut themselves in the bathroom, emerging twenty minutes later stark naked.

They put on a show in the bedroom, writhing around together on the bed, kissing and fondling each other, interlinking their legs so that their private parts were touching then rubbing each other by making jigging motions with their bottoms. Weilin watched all this with interest, surprised to see that even women with women could do tongfang, in spite of lacking what had heretofore seemed an essential accessory.

Group activities followed, everybody naked, Gordon and Weilin sitting on the edge of the bed with the girls kneeling in front of them. Weilin was paired with Holly, the prettier one. He understood by now what it was that he could not do, not yet being old enough. He dearly wanted to do it, to be part of the fun; but for all Holly’s efforts still could not. He lay back on the bed at last; but instead of sinking into gloom, now he disconnected somehow from the proceedings. His mind, after some aimless wandering, settled on an image of little Han Yuezhu, in the bright flowered bathing costume they had handed out the day the foreigners came to South Lake Park. The old anger came up, and he was beating her with a bamboo wand. She screamed and screamed. The swimming outfit was shredded and she was bleeding. The blood flew from her as he beat her, tearing her pale smooth flesh, great blobs of blood flying through the air.

Suddenly Weilin felt a terrific electrical charge running through him, starting at the point where Holly was still toiling away and running very fast out along the qi channels to every part of his body, to the ends of his fingers and the tips of his toes—the most wonderful, thrilling feeling. Something was swelling, bursting, and then there was a rapturous relief. Holly was shouting something, shouting and laughing. Ivy chimed in, and Gordon uttered something in his own language that sent the girls into hysterics.

They were all very happy after that. Gordon went to the kitchen and came back with a very grand-looking bottle of wine, the top all wrapped in glittering silver foil. Under the foil was a fat cork with wire round it. When Gordon pulled off the wire the cork flew out with a bang, making Weilin jump. Some white froth spilled out of the bottle, falling on the carpet. Gordon made a remark about this and the girls collapsed in mirth again. They drank the wine from odd-shaped glasses, shallow on a long glass stem. The wine was carbonated to the furthest degree. To Weilin it seemed to consist of nothing but its violent effervescence.

Weilin felt no more insecurity after that. Everything with Gordon was very easy now. Sometimes they played the rugger game, sometimes they did not. Sometimes they just played it, without anything following. At weekends Gordon would bring girls home, most often just one girl, and they would all do tongfang together. He never again brought a boy home. Weilin always hoped that Holly and Ivy would make another appearance, but they never did. He had liked them, and thought them real fun. Gordon said they were dancers from the Philippines (showing the country to Weilin on an atlas), touring around southeast Asia—a few days here, a few days there. Impossible to locate them again, unless by chance. These weekend participants were, in fact, a feature of the first few months only. At first it was every weekend; then twice a month, then once, and at last it was just Gordon and Weilin and the rugger ball.

*

As time went on, in fact, Weilin saw a slow change in Gordon. As well as the falling off in weekend visitors, there was just more of Gordon around. He stayed home more, he cooked more, he spent more time listening to his opera. Though never demonstrative in the normal way of things, he sometimes said very tender words, words that made Weilin feel at once thrilled and ashamed.

Weilin’s days were all delicious freedom. He wandered the city, rode the ferry to outlying islands, climbed Victoria Peak and Diamond Hill. The throb and bustle of the place had no terrors for him now. When he was hungry he ate rice gruel or noodles from one of the street vendors. When he tired of the streets and islands he went to a movie. The movies were easy because they were all in Mandarin, with Chinese characters along the bottom for the local people to read. [Though they cannot understand each other’s speech, the Chinese all use the same written language for most purposes.]

It was in the third week that Gordon raised the subject of education. Weilin was reading a book he’d bought at Swindon’s bookstore on Nathan Road, a Chinese translation of an American book. It was a popular account of some mathematical topics—paradoxes, antinomies, geometrical wonders and fallacies. Weilin had been reading the book while Gordon prepared the evening meal—some strips of beef cooked Chinese-style in a black bean sauce, with boiled green vegetables and rice. While they were eating Gordon asked to see the book. He seemed impressed.

“This is quite advanced. Can you understand it?”

“Yes. It’s all explained very well. They make everything interesting.”

“They’d have to work hard to make it interesting to me.”

Weilin felt pleased. “I’ve always liked math.”

Gordon was thoughtful for a while. Then: “You should be in school.”

“Is it possible? But I wouldn’t understand what the teachers are saying.”

Gordon laughed. “Then you’d fit in very well. The decent schools teach mostly in English. I doubt many of the Chinese students can follow the lessons well. They depend on their books mostly, I think.”

“But I couldn’t even talk to my classmates. My Cantonese is terrible.”

“Oh, that will come quickly. A little ear training and you’ll hear the Mandarin coming through. It’s English we should do something about.”

“What can we do?”

“Send you to Blitzer. They’ll take care of you.” He laughed. “They’ll have you declaiming Shakespeare in your sleep.”

“Bo-li-ce? Who is it?”

“Intensive language training. Hong Kong civil service use them, and all the big hongs. They’re very intensive, though. You’ll be scared to death. But stick with it and they’ll get the job done all right. I’ll sign you up.”

Gordon could be efficient when he chose to be. This conversation took place on a Thursday. The following Monday morning at ten o’clock Weilin presented himself at Blitzer, who had the top half of a building in Hollywood Road, in the streets leading up the hill behind Central. The office seemed supernaturally clean and grand. It was all carpeted in rich deep green. The furniture was dark wood with brass handles and fittings. All the windows had venetian blinds. Air conditioners whispered, soothing music played very faintly from somewhere, and the people coming and going all wore smart, fashionable business clothes. Weilin felt like a bumpkin. He filled in a form and handed over three hundred dollars cash for a day’s instruction, and was shown into a small windowless room ventilated from a grille in the ceiling. In the room was a desk. There was a single chair on one side of the desk. On the other was a stern-looking foreign woman. She nodded to the chair. Weilin sat.

The woman held up a card from a stack in front of her. On the card was a picture, a pleasant color drawing, of two people meeting. “Good morning,” said their speech balloons. “Good morning,” said the lady, slowly and emphatically.

This was no surprise. The common English greeting was pretty well known to Chinese people, who made a joke of it: by twisting the sounds very slightly it could be rendered as gou dai mao niang—“dog catches lady cat,” with slightly salacious connotations to a Chinese ear.

“Good morning.”

“Good MOR-ning.”

“Good morning.”

“GOOD MOR-NING.”

This went on for what seemed like ages, the woman’s voice getting louder all the time, stressing different sounds at each repetition. They moved on to What’s your name? where Weilin discovered that his English name was William. He supposed they had got his Chinese name from the form he had filled out and just taken the nearest English sounds.

This repetition of elementary exchanges went on for fifty minutes. There was a break, after which the woman was replaced by a man with another set of cards. Are you English? No, I’m Chinese. Are you Chinese? Yes, I’m Chinese. It continued the whole morning. In the afternoon things got worse: the first woman side by side with a new man, a fierce-looking elderly party with a tobacco-stained white mustache. More cards, the scenes depicted getting more complex. A house. A car. The railway station. The airport. A plane. After six hours of this Weilin’s brain felt like bean curd.

Next day was worse. He had forgotten half the responses from the previous day. The instructors were relentless: shouting, cajoling, bullying, prodding. Have you got a ticket? Yes, I’ve got a ticket. What’s the fare? The fare is twelve dollars.

Back at the apartment Gordon began addressing him in English. This confused things somewhat, as Gordon spoke a dialect of English quite different from the one Weilin was being clubbed through at Blitzer. The vowels, the consonants, even some of the vocabulary and grammar were all different. Still, after a week Weilin was surprised to find that he could cope with some simple sentences. After a month he was making halting conversation: and at ten weeks, when Blitzer’s entire inventory of flash cards had passed before his eyes, and fifteen thousand dollars of Gordon’s money into Blitzer’s bank account, he was watching the English channel on TV.

Gordon was delighted with him. “Ye’re a very smart lad,” he said over dinner, a day or two after Weilin finished at Blitzer. “I knew it, first time I saw ye. Ye’ll go far in this world, young William.”

“I hope so. Hope I can make a fortune and pay you back.”

“Och, nonsense, laddie. It’s recompense, after I took advantage of ye like that. The thing is to make something of yourself. D’ye have any ambition for your future life? Any profession in mind?”

Weilin shrugged. “The only thing I really like is mathematics.”

“Hm. Well, nobody ever got rich from mathematics. Though I suppose ye might do well as an accountant. But ye must go to school, William, ye must go to school. Education is everything.”

So it was arranged that after the Christmas holiday Weilin would go to school.

*

Christmas itself was an entire novelty to Weilin. He had never even heard of Christmas. The local Chinese did not bother about it much, their hearts being set on Lunar New Year (they never said “Spring Festival”), some weeks later; but there was a public holiday and some of the stores in lower Kowloon and Hong Kong side decorated their windows. Weilin came to recognize the Christmas god, a cheerful old foreigner in a red coat and white beard, associated somehow with fir trees, colored lights and snow. The fir trees and snow made Weilin think of the far northeast, of Flat All Around and his first terrible winter there. The kindly face of the Christmas god seemed to deny all such evil connotations, however.

Weilin might have learned more about the precise nature of the ceremonies appropriate to this god (called Old Man Christmas by the locals), but Gordon had relatives coming to visit from Scotland, and Weilin had to live elsewhere for two weeks.

Elsewhere was Chungking Mansions, a vast warren of a building down at the end of Nathan Road, a short walk from Star Ferry. A broad flight of metalled steps led up from the street, through the main entrance into a long arcade. The arcade was full of seedy stores selling clothes, toys, cheap electronics, umbrellas, briefcases, costume jewelry. There were other arcades branching off, so that you could easily get lost, at any rate for fifteen minutes or so, right there on the first floor. In the rear areas were some stores catering to the inhabitants of the Mansions: locksmiths, food stores, shoe repairs, a laundry, numerous daaipaidongs—stalls selling cheap cooked food, with a big wok heated by charcoal or calor gas and three or four folding tables set around.

Hidden away at the ends of short branch arcades were elevators to take you to the upper floors, of which there were seventeen. Some of these upper floors were purely residential. Others contained guest houses, letting out rooms by the month or week—or in a few cases (according to Gordon) by the hour. The business card he had given Weilin had the name of a guest house on it, English on one side, Chinese on the other:

WASHINGTON GUEST HOUSE
Chungking Mansions, C Block, 13th Floor
Mr H.K. Wu, Prop.
Single and Double Rooms, All Air-Conditioned
With/Without Bathroom
TV Lounge, Full Kitchen Facilities

Papa Wu came to the door when Weilin rang. It was a glass door with the same name painted on it in the same two languages, and a translucent net curtain fixed to the inside. Papa Wu peered through the curtain at him, then opened the door. It led into a lounge, with a tank of tropical fish, a large TV set, and sofa chairs all round the walls. Two corridors led off from the lounge. A large plain teenage girl was sitting on one of the sofas eating boiled rice from a bowl while watching TV. She only moved her eyes to glance at Weilin when he came in, then back to the TV.

Papa Wu was jovial. “Friend of Mr Macleod, ha? Mr Macleod’s a good guy, done some favors for me. Always good to have a friend in the force. Consider yourself one of our family. Don’t be polite! You can eat here, in the main guest house with us. But your room’s in the other place.”

Papa Wu was a Shanghainese of fifty or so, with fluent Shanghai-accented Mandarin. He owned the guest house, which was in two parts. In this part Papa Wu himself lived with his wife and five children. The children were surprisingly young, or else Papa Wu looked older than his age: the youngest only nine, the eldest eighteen. They all ate together in the lounge every evening, watching TV. One of the corridors was the family quarters, the other was guest rooms.

The “other place” was across on the other side of the elevator lobby. Same glass door with same painted Chinese characters: Huashengdun Zhaodaisuo, but this time no English. The TV in the lounge was smaller, and only one corridor led back from the lounge. There was no-one in the lounge; but as Papa Wu was leading Weilin to his room, a door opened further along and a foreigner came out. He stood aside to let them pass. He was thirtyish, handsome and smartly dressed with a leather jacket, and had dark brown skin. He nodded at Papa Wu and stood aside to let them pass.

“Most of the guests here are achas,” said Papa Wu, trying keys in a door. “From India or Pakistan. Decent people, you’ll be all right. Any difficulty, just come to see me.”

The room was large and clean, and had its own tiled bathroom attached. There was a big double bed with sheets and a quilt, and an air-conditioner which of course was redundant at this time of year. The single large window looked across to the back of another building, or perhaps one of the other blocks that comprised Chungking Mansions—to an identical window from which, then and at all the hours of all the days and nights Weilin spent in Washington Guest House, issued the chattering of mahjong tiles.

Weilin got to know the achas well during his two weeks at Chungking Mansions. The first he struck up an acquaintance with was Harry. Harry was short, bald and overweight, though no more than thirty. Weilin met him the second day, going into the lounge. Harry was sitting on a sofa in the lounge with a large cardboard box at his feet. He was pulling colored plastic toys out of the box one by one—pulling one out, scrutinizing it, sometimes making clicking noises with his tongue, putting it back. Weilin sat down to watch TV, but his eyes kept straying to the toys Harry was pulling out of his box. Seeing this, Harry made a little laugh.

“It’s rubbish,” he said, “but it sells.”

All the achas seemed to be in some small business like this, buying and selling things. “Import-export” was what Harry always called it. Harry himself did business with the toy factories in the New Territories. Lal sold bags and briefcases from an alcove in one of the arcades at the Mansions’ street level. Chandu, who shared a room with Lal at the end of the corridor, was something to do with jewelry, though unlike Harry he never brought his merchandise to the guest house. Ranesh—the handsome man with the leather jacket—seemed to be concerned with textiles, import-export.

Ranesh was by far the best looking of all the achas. His skin was dark, but he had rectilinear European features, deep still eyes, a tall, well-formed physique, and a brooding intensity of manner that made Weilin think he must have endured some shattering personal tragedy; though in fact, according to Harry, it was nothing but worry about his business, which was not going very well.

Weilin liked the achas. Their manner was very free and open, and they easily admitted him into their confidences. Even Ranesh emerged from his self-absorption sufficiently to explain letters of credit to Weilin, and to pass some scathing remarks about the business climate in the Colony.

“The locals hate us achas,” said Ranesh, who by this time knew that Weilin was a recent immigrant from the mainland. “They call us ‘hairy monkeys’ in Cantonese” (which was regrettably true, though “acha” was much the commoner epithet). “They complain that if the Chinese can sell something for a dollar, the achas will start selling it for ninety-nine cents.”

“Ranesh, dear fellow, do not abuse the poor boy’s own countrymen in front of him. We must all struggle to make a living.” This was Chandu, who always took an eirenic line on every topic. “After all, why are we here? Because the business climate in our own country is quite impossible, is it not so? Just as it is in mainland China, insofar as there can be said to be any business climate at all in that most distressful country. So let us be thankful that this splendid colony is here in which for us to exercise our entrepreneurial talents. And let us be grateful to the British authorities for making these opportunities available to us.”

“British authorities—cha!” said Lal scornfully. Lal was a cynic and a pessimist, though a cheerful one. “They’ll sell us down the river without a thought, if old Mao puts the screws on. Or run for their lives, leaving us to face the People’s Liberation Army and the vengeance of the locals.”

The achas always referred to the Hong Kong Cantonese as “the locals.” They did not mix with them much, though Harry and Lal could both speak passable Cantonese. Weilin thought they looked on Chungking Mansions as something of a refuge from “the locals.” However, they did not seem to regard Weilin as a local. With his poor Cantonese and now-excellent English, and sensing that he was somehow under Papa Wu’s particular guardianship while in the Mansions, they made him an honorary acha, and took him along for meals at the cheap acha restaurants on the second floor. Weilin thought the acha food textureless and limited in range, but he liked his new friends too much to say so.

On Christmas Eve Weilin sat up with the achas in the guest house lounge, watching a special Christmas variety program on the English TV channel. The achas had got in a good supply of San Miguel beer and had a lot of food sent up from the second floor. They talked in a sentimental way about their homes in India and laughed at the jokes of the English comedians, which Weilin couldn’t understand at all. They let him taste the beer, though only a single small glassful.

At midnight Harry brought out a bottle of whisky—Scottish whisky, he said, which everyone knew was the best kind. They all drank a tiny glass of whisky, toasting each other. There was a debate about whether Weilin should be given whisky, with Harry and Ranesh in favor, Lal opposed, and Chandu making the case for universal harmony. At last it was allowed, and Weilin took one of the tiny glasses, the liquid scorching his throat and making his face red. The achas all laughed good-naturedly, and drank another toast. Weilin felt very happy. The fact of the whisky being Scottish made him think of Gordon, who he knew was also Scottish, and of his kindness and tenderness. He reflected on the comfort and ease of his new life, and the horrors of a mere few months ago. He thought of an old poem:

The King is at home, at home in his capital,

Content and happy he drinks his wine.

The poem had been taught him by Mother, sitting at the table in their apartment in Seven Kill Stele while Father played chess with Lecturer Wang Baojiang. He could remember the moment clearly—so clearly!—though it seemed as remote in time now as the King whose loving subjects had made the poem twenty-two dynasties ago—three thousand years as the crow flies. In the morning, however, Weilin found that the whisky had given him a splitting headache.

Chapter 28

The Voice of a Goddess Touches Weilin’s Heart

A Lookout Helps Further Some Business Discussions

The school was in a square functional building on Boundary Street, a mile to the south. The student body was entirely Chinese but the subjects, excepting only Chinese language and literature, were taught in English. In most cases this meant Chinglish, for most of the teachers were local Chinese; but the senior Mathematics master was a dark-skinned, silver-haired Sri Lankan, Economics and European History were in the hands of a very tall, very bony, very sarcastic gentleman from Bristol, and an elderly square-built Australian woman took English Conversation.

William found the curriculum very arduous at first. Blitzer had performed a miracle with his English speaking and listening skills, but offered very little training in the written word. Since most of the school’s textbooks were in English this was a severe handicap, mitigated to some degree by the fact of most of his classmates being in the converse situation. They had been studying from English textbooks all their brief lives, but none had had any very conscientious training in the spoken language. They had all memorized great slabs of text about the Napoleonic Wars, but none would have had much success placing an order at Macdonald’s. William, by contrast, conversed breezily with the foreign teachers but could never quite finish a homework assignment for want of time to look up all the words. Furthermore his education since the age of eight had been disrupted by all the movements, so that he started off seriously behind his coevals in everything.

In consequence of all this, William was not a good student. Indeed, it took him a year to become a merely average student. Only in mathematics did he feel himself on a secure footing. Here his poor reading skills were of little importance, as all the important facts were embodied in symbols. And here his lack of educational background mattered less, since a natural intuition for the subject allowed him to see through the problems and theorems much more quickly than his classmates. Algebra he knew well enough from his mainland schooling. Geometry was more or less new to him, but everything it stated seemed quite obvious, though it was some months before he saw the point of formal proofs. Trigonometry the class had only started one term before he arrived, so there was little catching up to do, and as with geometry the theorems so laboriously demonstrated seemed self-evident to William.

It was in trigonometry that he scored his first public triumph. The subject was taught by the Sri Lankan, whose name was Mr Kuruneru. Mr Kuruneru had a reputation for mild eccentricity, but obviously loved his subject. He was given to small, feeble jokes at which he himself laughed more than anyone else, and to frequent digressions from the main syllabus. Since these digressions were not examinable, the students took them as opportunities to doze or catch up on homework assignments.

In this style, while discoursing on the general properties of the triangle, he rambled off into a brief account of Morley’s theorem, which asserts that by trisecting the angles of any triangle at all, and marking the intersections of the trisectors in a certain fashion, a perfectly equilateral triangle can always be found. William thought this wonderful: that hidden inside any triangle, no matter how irregular, was a little jewel of perfect regularity, and that this gem had been invisible until Mr Morley discovered it. Who had put it there? he asked himself over and over again—without, of course, being able to arrive at any satisfactory answer. The triplication of triples also pleased him, bringing to mind the opening chords of the bird man opera Gordon liked so much. He hoped that Mr Kuruneru would proceed to a proof. But the master perceived that he had strayed too far from the path set for him by the Examining Board, said only that there was no proof accessible to students at this level, and returned to the Cosine Rule.

William thought the Cosine Rule already as plain as the sun in the sky. He shut out the lesson and set to scribbling. When the lesson ended he went up to Mr Kuruneru with a proof of Morley’s Theorem in twenty lines. The teacher chuckled, swept up the page with his other books, and left. That was a Thursday. The following Monday in morning recess Mr Kuruneru summoned William to an empty classroom. He was sitting at one of the student desks with William’s proof in front of him. William sat at the adjoining desk.

“This is your own effort?” asked the master.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Had you ever heard of Morley’s theorem until last Thursday?”

“No, Sir. It isn’t in the textbook.”

“No. Indeed it isn’t. The proof is considered too difficult, or perhaps too tedious, for courses below the university level. In fact it has always been cited as an example of a simple result for which there is no clear or elegant proof. You seem to have put an end to that.”

“Thank you, Sir. But actually my proof could be even shorter. If, instead of dropping perpendiculars from the vertices, you imagine a simple reflection in each of the sides …”

Mr Kuruneru listened to the simplification William had worked out while walking home from school Thursday afternoon.

“… So now the proof is down to fifteen lines. And it’s clearer.”

“Yes, yes.” The Sri Lankan was looking at him with a perplexed expression. “Remarkable, most remarkable.” Turning away, he stared at the paper for a few beats. “Most remarkable.” He cleared his throat. “Well, young William—how old are you, by the way?”

“Thirteen, Sir.”

“Remarkable. Well, when you gave me the proof I assumed that it was the usual schoolboy effort, premised on error and argued without much attention to the generally accepted rules of sublunary logic. I was surprised to find it consistent and unassailable. So surprised that I spoke to an acquaintance of mine, Professor Meld at Hong Kong University. He was kind enough to look through the most recent references in the University library. Nothing, nothing that compares with your proof. No work on the topic at all, in fact, since Duval’s, twenty years ago.” Mr Kuruneru made a little laugh. “I’m afraid that trigonometry, daunting as it may appear to our students here—most of our students, I mean—is beneath the attention of professional mathematicians. For them, the noble cosine function is merely a single point in a space of infinitely many dimensions.”

William was well accustomed to the master’s pedantic style of speaking. He nodded politely. He had, in point of fact, forgotten all about Morley’s triangle after Thursday afternoon’s efforts.

“It is always possible, of course” (Mr Kuruneru continued) “that your proof has appeared in some work on recreational mathematics, some unreferenced work. I shall write to Mr Martin Gardner in New York, who is most likely to know about such things, and who I have heard is a punctilious correspondent. In the meantime, if you have no objection, I should like to submit your proof for publication. In your name, of course.”

William, who knew nothing about the academic world, did not grasp what was being suggested. He only heard publication.

“You mean … you want me to write a book?”

Mr Kuruneru smiled. “Dear me, no. Only an article, a brief article in one of the journals. Actually I myself will write it up for you. I know how they like these things presented. But only your name will appear, I promise you.”

William saw no reason not to agree. This all happened toward the end of summer term, his first year in the school. William thought no more about it during summer vacation, and had forgotten Morley’s triangle all over again by the time the students reassembled in September.

*

Three weeks into the new term Mr Kuruneru called him to the staff room. Standing at the door, he handed William a yellow envelope with red and blue airmail edging.

“You are a mathematician,” said Mr Kuruneru, and beamed, and shook William’s hand. William opened the envelope at once. It was the current issue of Mathematical Monthly, from London. There was a book marker in it, a plain slip of rough-cut manila card, at a page which said:

Morley’s Triangle: A New Proof
by William Leung

They had used the Cantonese spelling of his family name, but William could not have cared less. He took the journal home that afternoon and showed it to Gordon. Gordon was thrilled.

“Och, my sweet laddie! When I saw ye in the station house that time, I knew ye were something out of the ordinary. And see here the now, I didnae know the half of it!”

Gordon was on the evening shift, leaving the apartment after dinner, coming home after midnight when William was in bed. It was now understood between them that he would try his best not to wake William when the following day was a school day. For the most part Gordon kept discipline on this point, with occasional exceptions for what he described as emergencies. On this evening his coming home woke William anyway, as often happened. But instead of slipping into bed more or less immediately, as he usually did, Gordon went to the kitchen and was silent for a long time. Too long for William, who drifted back to sleep. Last up in the morning he saw that Gordon had been reading his proof in the Mathematical Monthly, and had covered half-a dozen sheets of police stationery with drawings and scribbled notes. Gordon confessed that evening.

“Made up my mind to work through your proof, laddie. And I did, too, though it wasnae easy. Anything ye produce along those lines in future, I’ll take on trust. Now dinnae neglect your other subjects. Nobody ever got rich on mathematics.”

William was now a minor celebrity at the school. At one of the periodic assemblies the headmaster pointed him out and the whole school applauded. There were brief articles in two of the Chinese papers, and one in the South China Morning Post. The attention made William uncomfortable. He feared that one of the papers might send someone to ask questions about his circumstances, actually lived in fear and trembling of it for a while. However, the newspapers seemed satisfied with information given by the school, and no journalists approached him. Fame, like wealth, is no friend of mathematicians.

*

The square Australian lady had left that summer, and English Conversation was now taught by a cheerful young cockney girl named Valerie. Valerie seemed to take an immediate liking to William. When his publication became generally known she made a great fuss of him.

“What did your Mum and Dad say?” she wanted to know.

“My parents are both dead,” he told her.

“Oh! Oh, I am sorry! Oh, really … forgive me!”

“It’s all right. You didn’t know.”

“Who d’you live with then, William?”

“I have a guardian. Old family friend,” said William. This is what Gordon had told him to say.

“Really? What, here in Kowloon Tong?” (This being the name of the district.)

“M, not far. A mile or so.”

Three or four days after this, while walking home one afternoon William saw Valerie ahead of him, walking rather slowly. He greeted her as he passed. Valerie made an expression of surprise and stopped, so of course he had to stop, too.

“On your way home, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. I live just round the corner there. Would you like to take a look?”

“Just round the corner” was, in fact, several blocks, and well out of William’s way. He wished he had not been so polite, but there was no way out of it now. Valerie shared the ground floor of a house with another English girl. The other girl worked in an office on Hong Kong side. She never got home till after seven, Valerie told him, twice.

Valerie showed him round: Living room, kitchen, bedrooms, back to living room.

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Come on, sit down. Make yourself at home.”

She sat on the sofa, patting the cushion beside her to indicate that he should sit there. William sat, feeling that they were too close together. Valerie smiled at him.

William did not think Valerie very pretty. She had those characteristics that make some westerners seem, to a Chinese eye, slightly extraterrestrial: very pale gray-blue irises, rather a large nose, colorless straight hair pulled back carelessly behind her ears, making the ears too prominent. Her skin was very pale, a sort of chalky white, but clear and unblemished. Her hands and feet were too big, and she seemed to have more than the usual number of teeth. However, her figure was slim and neat, her smile—if you discounted the surplus teeth—sincere and engaging. She was sitting angled sideways, towards him. Quite suddenly she took his hand in hers, and placed it on her lap.

“You’re so cute, William. I feel … oh, I don’t know. I feel I want to cuddle you. Ooo, listen to me! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, really I shouldn’t.” She bit her lip in mock self-reproach, and put a hand over her mouth.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m really … it’s very kind of you to say such a thing.”

“Oh, go on.” She laughed. “Can I ask you something?”

“All right.”

“Something personal, I mean.”

“Depends. Try it.” (Feeling a tremor of apprehension.)

She lowered her eyes to her hands holding his, and stroked absentmindedly with her upper hand.

“Have you ever been alone with a girl? A grown-up girl, I mean.”

“No,” replied William, quite truthfully.

“D’you know what happens when a boy and a girl are alone together?”

“Well. I … I have an idea.”

“Do you? You know what a boy and a girl do when they’re alone together?”

“M, more or less.”

“Would you like to do it with me?”

Valerie was much more enthusiastic than any of the girls Gordon had brought home, though less imaginative. She writhed and moaned under him, and at the end gave him quite a painful bite on his shoulder. On account of the bite, which he knew Gordon would certainly notice, William confessed all to Gordon when he got home.

Gordon thought it a great joke. “Which end?” he wanted to know, and: “front or back?”

“The normal way, of course,” said William. “That was what she wanted.”

“And yourself. Did ye enjoy it?” They were in armchairs in the main room, Gordon grinning all over his face.

“Yes. It was very nice.”

Gordon looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Well, laddie, I’m glad. Means I havnae made a bugger out of ye. I wouldnae want that on my conscience. With your looks, ye’d be a raddled old pansy queen at thirty. But she’s a cheeky thing, a wanton young lass indeed, to be going after a lad barely fourteen. What a disgrace!” And he threw back his head and laughed long and loud.

*

It was at about this time that William began to like western opera. He had heard plenty of it, living these months with Gordon, and knew many of the themes and melodies, but it had not really gripped him in any way. Then, one evening, Gordon in the main room playing one of his records and William doing homework on the kitchen table, the Goddess spoke to him.

The particular item of homework was Chemistry, a subject William disliked. There was a complicated problem about the behavior of some molecules in a reaction. To solve the problem required William’s remembering an experiment the teacher had done before the class some days before. William could not remember. Instead of conscientiously taking notes, he had been doodling at a problem concerning prime numbers, which Mr Kuruneru had brought to his attention in a journal of mathematics. He sighed, chewing his pencil. It was still light outside, and he thought if he went for a walk the fresh air might jog his memory. Failing that, he thought he might telephone one of the classmates.

At this point Gordon, in the next room, turned up the hi-fi, as he did when the opera reached a part he liked. A woman began to sing. It was a light song with a straightforward and rather attractive tune; but it was the woman’s voice, the quality of her voice, that caught William’s attention. The voice was very clear and pure, yet beneath it was a kind of fierceness and wildness, an unruly quality, that made William’s skin go cold. He got up and went to the doorway that led into the main room, and stood there listening. Gordon was in his armchair, his hands steepled in front of him, his face bent down to touch the fingertips. That woman’s voice—the terrifying, marvelous voice—filled the room. It seemed to William to be coming from another world—a world which, he thought, on the whole he would prefer to know nothing about. And yet the voice captivated him completely.

“What is it?” he asked, when the song had finished.

Gordon smiled. He had got up to turn down the hi-fi again.

“Did ye like it?”

“I don’t know. It sounded so strange. Like … I don’t know. Not quite human.”

Gordon laughed, sitting down again. “Well, ye got that right, laddie. A little more than human, our Maria. Or less, some would say.”

“That’s her name, Maria?”

“Maria Callas. One of Heaven’s occasional gifts to us suffering mortals.”

“What was the song about?”

“Och, the poor girl’s just given her heart to a rascal. It’ll all end in tears. But of course, she doesnae know that yet. She’s a lonely wee thing and her daddy’s a hunchback.”

Gordon told him the whole story, which William thought very cruel and bitter. Still that one song haunted him. He always listened for Gordon to play it again, and in this way paid more attention to the other songs, so that in time he could recognize several of them. He even took out the records sometimes when Gordon was on evening shift, and found the song, and played it to himself over and over, thrilled and yet repelled every time just as the first by that woman’s pure wild voice. He was not very surprised to find that the voice had a story behind it, which Gordon told him, not that first time but on some subsequent occasion.

The Voice That Broke

Once there was a woman who loved opera. She had a beautiful voice, so she became a singer of opera, and was soon world-famous.

At first she sang operas that everyone knew. People said they had never been sung so well. Then she began to sing operas that had not been sung for a hundred years, and when people heard her, they said: What beautiful music! How can it be that we have not heard this for a hundred years? Then every singer wanted to sing those operas, and the operas became famous again, as they had been a hundred years before.

Alas, the woman loved opera too much. Although her voice was beautiful, it is never enough for a singer’s voice to possess beauty. It must also have strength and stamina—an iron constitution, as English people say. The woman’s voice was not strong enough to contain her love for the music. She strained and struggled to sing the music as she knew it should be sung, as she could hear it in her heart, but the strain was too much. Gradually her voice began to break.

Of course, she knew that her voice had broken before anyone else knew it. She developed all kinds of artful tricks to disguise the fact that her voice was breaking. She was a very gifted actress as well as a great singer, so for a time she could use her stage skills to distract from the growing problems of her voice.

At last, however, the truth could not be hidden. People began to notice that her voice was breaking. She fled to the arms of her lover, a wealthy man who cared nothing about music or singing. But because he cared nothing and she cared everything, he soon tired of her, and at last left her for a more glamorous woman, the widow of an American President. The woman retired from the world to an apartment in Paris, where she lingers on like a ghost in a life whose purpose has gone.

*

There were more trysts with Valerie, all through the rest of that school year. Every one happened in the same faux-accidental way: he would pass her on his way home, they would stop to talk, he would go to her apartment. The artificiality of these encounters was emphasized by the fact, which William quickly grasped, that Valerie could walk home from the school by a much shorter route, and had obviously chosen this one, and dawdled on it, for the purpose of meeting him. This went on all through their acquaintance, although (William often reflected) she must have known that he knew that she was manufacturing the encounter each time.

William actually found the arrangement very convenient. If he did not want to go with her he could turn aside when he saw her ahead of him in the street, as she never looked back for him but always waited for him to come up. In this way he regulated the encounters to little more than one a week.

Their maneuvers, once together in Valerie’s apartment, varied little all through the nine months of their affair. There would be some talk about school, about Hong Kong, about England. Then they would perform a single act of tongfang, in the commonplace position, on Valerie’s bed. Valerie seemed not to want to expand the repertoire, and William was afraid of doing so for fear he might betray more knowledge of these intimate matters than was appropriate to a boy of fourteen.

He knew Valerie was very fond of him. She often said so, lying on the bed running her hands over his body after the act.

“Lovely,” she would murmur, “lovely … lovely boy. Oooo, I wish you were five years older, our William! What times we’d have!”

In school she kept good self-control, never showing him undue favor; except that when William published again in Mathematical Monthly, halfway through the summer term, and the news was announced to the school assembly, Valerie applauded longer and louder than any of the other teachers, and beamed at him across the stage with a radiant fervor William thought the classmates packed in the hall below could not help but notice. However, if anyone thought Valerie’s enthusiasm improper, they kept their thoughts to themselves.

Valerie’s contract was for only one year, at the end of which (she told William, walking to her apartment one afternoon in June) she planned to do some sightseeing in Asia, then make her way back to England.

“Damp, poky old England,” she sighed. “I shall miss Hong Kong. I shall miss you too, Willum.” (William had tried to teach her some Cantonese, but she had got very little farther than his own given name, which she pronounced “Willum,” and the universal greeting Sikjo faan mei a?—“Have you eaten yet?”—which she rendered as “sick jaw fan may, uh?” with a blithe disregard for all seven of the Cantonese tones.)

William was secretly glad she was leaving. He liked her, and enjoyed their tongfang, but he thought Gordon could not maintain his attitude of tolerant good humor indefinitely. The longer the affair with Valerie went on, the more Gordon was bound to think there might be some serious attachment developing. There was not; but William understood enough of worldly things now to see that the suspicion of it alone might be enough to estrange him from Gordon, a thing he did not want at all.

In July of ’72, when her contract expired, Valerie begged William to see her off at the airport. The girl she shared her apartment with, who knew nothing of what had been going on between them, would be there too (Valerie said), but she would just introduce him as a favorite pupil.

At the appointed day William went to her apartment to help with her bags, and rode with Valerie and the other girl to Qide Airport, which he now called by its Cantonese name, Kai Tak. The other girl, whose name was Gillian, was a big-boned pink type out of the Old English Dairymaid mold, with a brisk motherly approach that made William think it would have been more suitable for her to be the schoolteacher and Valerie the clerk.

At the entrance to the departure area, Valerie said something to Gillian, then took William aside.

“I shall miss you, Willum. I really shall. Our little Wednesday cuddles.” (Because of the school schedule, most of their meetings had been on Wednesday afternoons.)

“I’m sorry,” said William, not quite knowing what to say. “I hope everything goes well for you in England.”

“Ooo, don’t worry about me.” Valerie laughed. “I shall be all right anywhere. But you, my sweet Willum, you should find yourself a nice girlfriend. Don’t let all those lovely stiffies go to waste.” She giggled. “I’d hate to think of you wankin’ away alone.”

“I’ll be all right,” said William. “I can find someone, don’t worry.”

“I bet you can.” Valerie laughed again, squeezing his hand, then flung her arms round him and kissed him frankly on the lips, a long wet kiss. Over her shoulder William could see Gillian, eyebrows raised and mouth part-open in query, the brain behind the eyes rapidly computing the sum total of numerous tiny and hitherto unexplained anomalies of her life with Valerie.

*

In August Gordon had family to stay again. This was a double-header: an elderly aunt and uncle bent on investigating the Shopper’s Paradise of the East (as Hong Kong was beginning to be promoted), and a niece from Scotland, “doing” Asia in her college vacation. William was packed off to Washington Guest House for two weeks. He had a room in the annex again and made a very idle time of it, rising late and watching TV in the lounge half the day, or sitting there catching up on schoolwork, playing solitaire or working on his small mathematical puzzles while the life of the guest house clattered and hummed around him.

It was the tourist season and all the rooms were occupied, though often at the daily rate. Young Australians and Americans passed through, some of them hippies who scorned to express themselves other than in sighs and grunts, some more earnest inquirers, courteously attentive to all around them, fearless explorers of the Mansions’ back alleys, talking among themselves of the temple rites in Bali, the beaches at Penang, the prospects of hitching a CIA flight to Luang Prabang. One, a Frenchman named Didier, astounded William by speaking to him in perfect Mandarin with only a trace of accent, and sitting in the lounge reading the local Chinese tabloids, guffawing at the exposés of the private lives of Chinese movie stars, occasionally asking William for help with one of the odd nonstandard characters used to transliterate peculiarly Cantonese expressions. Then there were the entertainers engaged by the foreigners’ hotels and nightclubs around the colony: a huge bison of a man, a full-blood Maori, with a voice of astonishing sweetness and feeling … a flamenco guitarist from Spain itself, who sat with William in the lounge telling stories from Lope de Vega while, with the tenderest love, rubbing fragrant oils into the wood of his guitar … a Korean dancer, a lovely straight-backed girl with pearly skin, who smiled at William in a way he was beginning to recognize, but who had a blazing row with Papa Wu and flounced out before shadow could turn to substance. And, of course, there were the achas, the inner cadre of Papa Wu’s clientele.

The cast of achas had changed somewhat in the year and a half since his first stay. Harry was still there, in the same room, still toting his boxes of ‘rubbish’ to and fro. Lal and Chandu had gone to fresh fields and pastures new. Ranesh was still in his room, but had suffered some disastrous turn of fortune.

“Four years ago his Dad sent him to Hong Kong with a hundred thousand dollars,” explained Harry, “and told him not to come back till he’d turned it into a million. But the poor chap is not a very good businessman. He tried, I know he did, but somehow he lost it all, so now of course he has no face to go back to his family. He has applied for a job with the Hong Kong civil service, but I really don’t know what his chances are. He has the B.A., of course, but” (a shrug) “he is acha, not a British citizen. Unless he has some influence I do not know of, I fear it is a lost cause.”

Ranesh had fallen into a listless depression. He languished in his room most of the day, emerging only to take meals at the acha restaurants on the Mansions’ lower floors, and to watch comedy programs in the evening on the English TV channel. He was not altogether without consolation, however. The room that Lal and Chandu had shared was now occupied by a new resident named Gov—pronounced to rhyme with English “stove”—and a woman named Bina, whom William supposed to be Gov’s wife. Gov was related in some way to Ranesh, said Harry. He and the woman Bina seemed to consider themselves as under therapeutic obligation to Ranesh. They would go to Ranesh’s room and spend long hours in there talking with him. Sometimes Gov would go in alone, and sometimes Bina alone. Gov and Bina were running a business of some sort (“import-export,” was Harry’s only explanation) but seemed to have no fixed hours.

William did not find Gov at all sympathetic. He looked older than the other achas. He had silver hair, though his face was quite smooth. In stature he was short—shorter than Bina, in fact—and not very well-shaped, with too much waist and not enough shoulder. William did not seem to register on his consciousness at all. He never offered any kind of greeting, never paused to pass the time of day with William in the lounge, though he often stopped to speak to Harry when he was there. William thought him cold and unfriendly, perhaps anti-Chinese.

Bina, by contrast, William thought very fascinating. She was the first acha woman he had seen up close. Her skin was a lovely honey-brown color, and her hair black and shining. She always wore saris, gorgeous flowing creations of pastel-patterned muslin enlivened sometimes with gold or sliver spangles, beneath which, when she moved, could be glimpsed her honey-brown feet in gold sandals, her toenails painted flaming red. When dressed up to go out she wore jewels in her hair, and a score of glittering bangles on each arm. The thing that was really fascinating, though, was her midriff. The way she draped her sari, it always left the midriff bare. Her midriff was the same color as her face and arms, smooth and soft-looking. The sight of the midriff always inflamed William, throwing him into a state of combined arousal and embarrassment, so that he wanted to look at it without being seen to look. Unlike Gov, Bina always noticed him. She talked down to him, but always in a friendly way, and William liked her.

One afternoon halfway through the first week William was sitting alone in the lounge trying to do a schoolwork assignment in Chinese History, a report on the rebellion of An Lushan. Bina came in, flowed past him with a smile and a greeting, and went into Ranesh’s room. William heard them talking for a while; then he got lost in his paper, and could not have sworn on oath whether they were still talking or not.

Now Gov came in from outside. He passed William without a sign, as usual, and went to his room at the far end of the corridor. Soon he came out and went to Ranesh’s room. He knocked on the door. Oddly, there was no answer. William knew both Ranesh and Bina were in there; he had seen Bina go in and had heard them talking, and had not moved from his seat since seeing these things.

Gov called out through the door: “Ranesh! Ranesh!” Then something in the acha language. He tried the door, but it was locked. He came out of the corridor into the lounge, and addressed William in English.

“Young fellow. Have you seen the gentleman who lives in Room 2? Do you know of whom I am speaking?”

On sheer instinct, joined perhaps with a mischievous desire to inconvenience Gov, whom he did not like, William replied: “Yes, I know him. He went out a little while ago. To Hong Kong side, I think he said.”

Gov stood there frowning for a moment, then he left without saying anything. A minute or two after he had gone Ranesh opened his door and poked his head out, looking down the corridor to the lounge. “Gov?” he called out. “Gov, are you there?”

“He’s gone,” said William.

Ranesh went back into the room. Immediately Bina came out. She breezed down the corridor into the lounge, and sat on the sofa next to William.

“Did Gov ask you anything?” she wanted to know. She had an entrancing fragrance about her, sandalwood and oily spices, that seemed exactly right somehow for the color of her skin and hair.

“Only about Mr Ranesh. I said he had gone to Hong Kong side.”

Bina laughed. She had a very fetching laugh, at once throaty and trilling. “You are a very clever boy,” she said.

“I hope I didn’t do anything wrong,” said William.

“Not at all, not at all. You see, Ranesh and I have some business matters we must discuss in private, just the two of us. We do not want to involve Gov in the discussions at this stage. We don’t even want him to know we are having discussions, until certain things have been worked out. He has so much to worry about, we don’t want to burden him further. You see?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Bina made her pretty laugh again. “You are a clever boy! Our little lookout! If Ranesh and I are having discussions again, you must send people away, just as you did this afternoon. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes,” said William, intoxicated by the sandalwood fragrance, trying very hard indeed not to look at her midriff. “I don’t mind.”

“Our lookout!” Sang out Bina, heading back up to her own room in a flash of gold sandals and honey-brown latissimus dorsi. “Our clever little lookout!”

Chapter 29

A Foreign Official Shows Skill in Rhetoric

The Wu Clan Takes in an Orphan

The Colony followed the English system of education, in which there were two levels of general examination: Ordinary, taken usually at age fifteen, and Advanced, taken at seventeen or eighteen. William sat for Ordinary that summer, the summer of 1973, in nine subjects. All through the month of June he was taking examinations. It was grueling, and he knew he had done badly in his weak subjects—History, Biology, English Literature. Still, he found the two math papers absurdly easy, and coped well with physics, Chinese and English Language. When it was all over, the remainder of the school’s summer term had a perfunctory air about it. The most diligent of the students started work for their Advanced courses, to be examined in two years’ time. Most, like William, goofed off.

It was on one of these bright, lackadaisical summer days that the Immortals above next turned the wheel of William’s fate. He had been goofing off altogether—playing hooky, that is—with two other classmates, riding a bus up to the amusement park in Laijigok. When he got back to the apartment he was surprised to see the street door open. Ascending the stairs, he saw that the inner door, the door of the apartment itself, was also open. Still, so easy and settled had his life been for so comparatively long, he experienced no apprehension. Only when, as he neared the top of the stairs, a policeman appeared in the apartment doorway, did he feel a mild chill of disorientation, of events out of joint. Surprised, the policeman stared at him. William stared back. It was a Chinese policeman, somebody of rank apparently—wearing an officer’s long pants instead of the constabulary shorts. There was a sound on the stairs behind. Turning, William saw a foreigner, a man of thirty or so wearing a civilian suit, black hair cropped short, starting to go bald on top.

“Hello,” said the foreigner in English. “Come visiting, have you?”

“No,” said William without thinking. “I live here.”

“Is that so?” The foreigner raised his eyebrows. “I think we’d better have a little chat.”

William never did, ever again, see the inside of Gordon’s apartment. The little chat took place at an office in Honghom, an office to which the foreigner drove him in a spotless late-model sports car that had been parked in the street outside the apartment building. William sat in the front with the foreigner; the Chinese police officer sat in the back, wordless. The building they took him to was ordinary-looking and featureless. The rooms inside it were likewise featureless: whitewashed walls, spare tube-steel tables and chairs. The room where they had the little chat did not even have a window, though it shared the coolness from the air-conditioners elsewhere. The Chinese policeman disappeared somewhere in the building, and William was alone with the foreigner.

The little chat consisted mostly of the foreigner asking William questions. The questions were insistent but not over-intrusive, and William felt he managed them quite well, using the tale he and Gordon had worked out, one warm evening in bed the previous summer. He had been staying with Gordon some months (was the story). Gordon’s father had been a policeman in Shanghai, back in the thirties. He had known William’s family. William’s family had recently smuggled him out of the mainland. He had got in touch with Gordon, and Gordon had put him up these few months while he sought some more permanent arrangement. No, he had no Hong Kong i.d. card. (In fact, he kept it in his school locker.) Yes, he had swum from the mainland. Deep Water Bay, one night in late spring. Where did he sleep? On the couch. No, he didn’t attend school. The money in his pockets? Gordon had lent it to him, while he looked for work. Hadn’t Gordon told them these things?

The foreigner smiled. “I’m afraid Mr Macleod had no time to tell us anything. He had an urgent appointment elsewhere.”

Elsewhere? Where was he, then? The word elsewhere pierced William right through, a shaft of icy fear. Was Gordon Dead? No, no, no, no. Let it not be, let it not be that he was dead.

“Oh, South America, possibly. Indonesia. Malaysia, perhaps. Perhaps Taiwan. Who can say? There are so many opportunities, for a chap who’s been augmenting his salary to the extent Mr Macleod has.”

William breathed again. Was Gordon in trouble, then?

“Oh, probably Mr Macleod isn’t suffering any particular trouble in his new country of domicile, wherever it is.” The foreigner seemed determined to mine out his little vein of sarcasm to the last troy ounce. “Probably Mr Macleod is quite comfortably accommodated in his new circumstances.”

Would he soon be coming back, then?

The foreigner laughed. “Not soon. Oh, dear me no. Not any time soon. Not if the daft sod knows what’s good for him.”

William did not altogether follow this. He grasped, however, that the foreigner was some kind, some special kind, of policeman; that this place was some kind, some special kind, of police station; and that Gordon had left the colony and would not come back. At once his mind cleared, and everything seemed very simple. The wood has been made into a boat.

The foreigner excused himself. He left the room, then came back almost at once carrying a black plastic folder. Printed in yellow letters on the cover of the folder was ICAC. William remembered having seen something on the TV news: Independent Commission against Corruption. He put on an eager, accommodating sort of expression and said: “Do you mind if I use the toilet?”

The toilet was along a corridor, past a front desk with a uniformed officer at it, and round into a corridor at the other side. The officer at the desk followed William with his eyes as he walked round. They were on the ground floor, and the toilet had a window. However, William, now only four months short of sixteen, had started to bulk up, and the window was too small for him. Of course, the officer would have known that, or else would have had him accompanied to the toilet. Irresolute, William went back. The officer at the front desk was taking a phone call. The officer’s eyes followed William coming out of the corridor—then suddenly bulged, staring down at the telephone. “Dead?” said the officer into the telephone, speaking in Cantonese. “How can it be?” So stricken was the officer’s expression, listening now to the phone, William stopped in his tracks. “Oh, Heaven,” said the officer—a young fellow, no more than twenty-five. “Is it really true?” He put down the telephone and stared blankly at William.

“He’s dead,” he said, not so much to William as through him. “Where’s the sense in it?”

“Who’s dead?”

“Li Xiaolong. Found dead in his apartment!”

Even in his desolation, William was stunned by the news. He had, of course, followed Li Xiaolong’s career very closely since their encounter on the road from Dapeng Bay three years before. Li Xiaolong had made his Chinese movies after all, and become the sensation of the Hong Kong box office. A much-loved local character, too, often wandering unannounced on to the sets of the local Chinese TV shows to joke and ham around with the performers. William had seen all three of his movies, standing on line for hours in the patient crowds when each one came out, always remembering that first kindness. Sprung steel—how could one so full of life, be dead?

The desk officer ran from his post, back into the recesses of the building, shouting in Cantonese: “Li Xiaolong is dead! Li Xiaolong is dead!”

The front door was opposite the front desk. William did not think it was locked. It wasn’t. He stepped out into suburban sunlight, closing it quietly behind him. He walked to the corner; then ran as hard as he could for as long as he could, zigzagging left, right, left, right at intersections.

William had nothing but the light summer clothes he was wearing: red T-shirt, jeans and underpants, white socks and an old pair of soft-leather casuals he had bought the year before, now beginning to pinch. Handkerchief, house keys, a few dollars and change. Mother’s red plastic hair clip, which he always carried as a mascot. In fact, he reflected as he now walked briskly away in no particular direction, he was back where he had been three years before. This thought made him feel afraid, and hollow inside.

He stopped, trying hard to think of some plan of action. Back to the apartment? Of course not—he would just get arrested again. He thought with a pang of all his things, especially his books. He had a hundred or more, in two wooden bookcases Gordon had got for him. William thought of them in their neat ranks; and of his father’s books; and of the cribbage score sheets he and Gordon had used, now tallying games up in the high hundreds. He pushed the thoughts away. To the school? It was early evening already; nobody would be there. Then what?

He considered for a moment, then turned south, into Kowloon. People were coming out into the streets, broadcasting the news: Li Xiaolong is dead!

*

The door of Washington Guest House was closed. Papa Wu’s youngest daughter, and his son and stepson, were all in there, eating noodles from bowls and watching TV. The youngest daughter got up and opened the door for him, keeping her eyes on the TV. Did William know that Li Xiaolong was dead?

“Yes,” said William, “I know. Is your father at home?”

Father was out. Back later. No, didn’t know when. Yes, William could wait in the lounge if he liked. Li Xiaolong dead! Who could understand it? She sat down again. William sat with them watching the TV, stills of Xiaolong’s face, clips from his movies, the furrowed brows of the announcers. One of the announcers, a young woman, began to cry—still reading her teleprompter, but the tears running down her cheeks.

There was a figure at the glass door of the guest house, an acha woman in a sari. The daughter got up again to open the door; it was Bina.

At first Bina did not recognize William sitting there. She was asking for Papa Wu, then she saw William. She frowned at first; then the frown turned to delighted surprise.

“Is it really my little lookout? What a big boy you’ve grown!”

Bina looked exactly the same: all flowing muslin and spangles, bare caramel midriff. Her smell was the same, too, as she shook hands, William standing up by this time. That strange, remote musk. Bina smiled at him, showing her small even teeth, like a monkey’s. Papa Wu’s various offspring barely glanced at her, intent on the TV.

“Such a big boy! And fine looking! How old are you now, my lookout?”

“Fifteen. Sixteen in October.”

“Well! And shall you be staying with us again?”

“I … I don’t know. I have to speak to Papa Wu.”

Something in his manner betrayed him. Bina was at once concerned. “Are you in trouble, my lookout?”

It dawned on William at this point, through a rising fog of embarrassment, that Bina couldn’t remember his name. “It’s William,” he said. “William Leung.”

“Well, William. Why don’t you tell me what’s the matter?”

Bina sat down with him at the end of the sofa away from the others, and he told her. Not about life with Gordon, of course; only that his guardian had disappeared suddenly, that some officials had taken him in, and that he’d run away from them.

“Quite right, too,” said Bina, much to his surprise. “They meant you no good, you can be sure. But now what will you do? Do you have relatives in the Colony?”

“No. Nobody.”

“Oh, dear. You’re from the Mainland, aren’t you? And I’m sure you don’t want to go back.”

At this point Papa Wu came in. “Did you hear?” he asked the room. “Li Xiaolong is dead!”

“We know!” chorused the youngsters. Then the girl nodded to William.

“Leung Wailam wants to talk to you.”

Bina jumped up before William could say anything.

“Papa Wu, Papa Wu! This poor boy is destitute!”

“What’s the problem?” asked Papa Wu, looking at William evenly, a little warily, sensing that he was about to be imposed on. Then, nodding at the young ones: “We’d better step into the other place.”

Once in the other guest house, William told him. When he spoke about Gordon vanishing, Papa Wu flickered a smile, suppressing it at once. He sat down on the couch, lit a cigarette, and sat back, crossing one leg over the other.

“Strange,” he said. “Since this anti-corruption drive started, so many of our fine English policemen have disappeared.”

“The thing is,” said Bina, “the poor boy has nowhere to live. No money either, right?”

“Yes,” said William. “Nothing, nothing at all.”

Papa Wu considered. He understood, of course, that Macleod the policeman had been playing with the flowers in the boy’s back garden. The British were all that way inclined, so people said. You had to wonder how such a race of people managed to keep their country populated, let alone produce enough surplus human beings to go off colonizing all over the world. Well, so far as Macleod and the boy were concerned, it was nobody’s business but their own. A handsome young fellow like that with no family to shelter him was probably going to be buggered sooner or later in any case. At least he had got some advantage from it. Certainly the boy had had a better life than he would have had in the mainland. Been attending a good school and done well, Papa Wu recalled from a previous conversation. Well, he could kiss good-bye to all that. Education was expensive. You could get by without it, anyway.

Papa Wu’s education had ended abruptly when he was twelve years old. This was in Shanghai, which was under Japanese occupation. On that day some Japanese soldiers had come to Papa Wu’s school. They had ordered everybody into the street outside and made the teachers stand against the school wall, with their faces against the wall. Then they had machine-gunned them to death. When the teachers were all dead the Japanese soldiers, who were in a merry mood, laughing and smiling, had shooed the students away, saying: No more school now! Papa Wu had been too scared to feel anything at the time; but later, in long hours of boredom at home, he had wept to think of his teachers all dead, especially kindly Mrs Zhang, who had taught Chinese literature. Even now, forty years later, Papa Wu knew no more of Red Chamber Dream than the first five chapters, which was as far as Mrs Zhang had got with them. He could not bring himself to pick up the book and continue.

“Well,” he said at last, “you’re old enough to work. I can find you a job of some sort, probably. Won’t be much—something in a store, perhaps, or one of the hotels. It’s a shame, after you were such a good student. But …” he shrugged, “… school costs money, and you haven’t got any.”

“I don’t mind working,” said William. “But I have no place to live.”

Papa Wu exhaled long tusks of smoke. “I don’t know there’s much I can do about that. Certainly I can’t give you a room. The tourist season’s coming up. We’ll be getting all the nightclub entertainers passing through, and the students from the West. It’s the best time of year for me. But there are hostels, single men’s hostels.”

“Oh, never mind that. He can stay with me,” said Bina.

Papa Wu looked across at her for a moment, then chuckled. He shook his head in mock, or possibly actual, disapproval. “Miss Bina, I’m ashamed of you. Making such a suggestion.” He addressed William. “How old are you?”

“He is seventeen,” said Bina, before William could answer.

“Seventeen? Hm.” Papa Wu took another long drag. “Seventeen.”

“What about Mr Gov,” asked William, “your husband?” He had not liked Gov, and felt sure Gov did not like him, certainly to the point of not wanting to live in the same room with him.

Papa Wu raised his eyes to the ceiling. With his face still in that position, he took a drag on his cigarette, holding it vertical. Bina seemed embarrassed.

“Gov is not my husband,” she said, in a rather affronted tone. “I am a single lady. Gov was merely a business acquaintance. He no longer lives here.”

William did not know what to say to this. Papa Wu was still scrutinizing his ceiling.

“Oh, come on, Papa Wu,” said Bina impatiently. “He’ll be all right with me. You’ve known me long enough, haven’t you?”

Papa Wu chuckled again, looking from one of them to the other. “Oh, I know you very well, Miss Bina.”

“There’s no alternative, anyway. He has nowhere else to go.”

“That’s true, that’s true. What do you think?” (addressing William).

“I don’t mind,” said William, who in fact thought it would be rather nice to stay with Bina, amidst her fragrance of sandalwood and myrrh, so long as Gov was out of the picture.

Papa Wu considered a moment or two longer, then shrugged. “All right. But …” he wagged a finger at Bina, “… no hanky-panky! I don’t know anything! In the meantime” (speaking to William again) “I’ll see if I can set you up with something.”

Bina still had the room she had shared with Gov, right at the end of the corridor in Papa Wu’s second guest house. Unusually for Chungking Mansions, it had a window looking out not at another wall a few feet away, but at empty space, the waterfront and the harbor, and so was full of light. It also had its own bathroom attached. When they were in the room Bina locked the door and went to start a bath. Coming out of the bathroom she smiled encouragingly at William.

“We shall take a bath,” she announced. “In this hot weather, it’s good to bathe twice a day. Come! Take off your clothes. Just put them on the bed there.”

She put her sari away as she removed it. The drawers and closet were full of saris. So many saris! William had vaguely supposed she had two or three, but there were more than twenty of them—a spectrum, an alternative spectrum of pastels.

When they were both quite naked Bina headed back to the bathroom to adjust the water temperature. Her body was the same pleasant honey color all over. She was venturing on the edge of plumpness, her breasts somewhat too heavy for their size; but her body was well-formed, nonetheless, and the sight of her made William’s jiba jump up. She saw this as he stepped into the bath, where she was already settled amid clouds of cyan foam. She looked at the jiba quite frankly, and made a little trilling laugh of pleasure. “Such a big boy!”

They did tongfang in the bath, then again on the bed after they had dried themselves. William slept after that. Bina woke him with a dish of rehydrated noodles she’d cooked on a hot plate. They ate noodles together, then did more tongfang. In the morning, William barely awake, she mounted him astride and they did tongfang again.

It was like that for the whole two weeks William stayed with Bina. Her appetite for tongfang was apparently without limit. Soon William was groggy with exhaustion, but there was no relief. She was patient and ingenious, and invariably had her way. She owned some peculiar devices, battery-powered or filled with a heavy, sluggish liquid, and showed him how to use them on her. Dimly aware that something was missing in all this, William at last, hesitantly, asked her to use them on him, too. This had some revivifying effect; but his own rallying only spurred her to greater demands, and soon William was back on the verge of exhaustion, lust rising ever more reluctantly from a slow heavy sea of satiation. Dully he watched Li Xiaolong’s memorial service on the TV in Papa Wu’s lounge, the whole family there, all weeping freely, twenty thousand people in the streets of Kowloon below.

It might have been better if he had had something to do, or someplace to go. Both were denied him. William never had a clue about Bina’s financial affairs. She was involved in a business of some sort, no doubt with other achas, and kept fairly regular hours; but he never saw her spend money, and did not know where, or even if, she carried it. Certainly if she had any she did not share it with William. She fed him, at any rate when Papa Wu had omitted to, calling food up from one of the restaurants on the lower floors of the Mansions, or heating noodles on her hot plate. She clothed him, bringing back an armful of T-shirts from the market in Shanghai Street, and some underwear and white tennis shoes. She taught him to play an acha card game named “monkey business.” And she stroked, squeezed, tickled, pulled, slapped, vibrated, kissed, licked, sucked, washed, powdered and oiled his jiba and its environs with all the patient assiduity of a Japanese sand-gardener. The rest of William seemed to have no functions or duties in her mind, except as a support system for the jiba. He sat in the lounge watching TV, chatting with Harry (who refrained from any reference to William’s living arrangements, though he could hardly have avoided noticing them), playing solitaire, or taking aimless walks around Jimshajeui, the district of lower Kowloon in which the Mansions were situated.

*

It was reaching the stage where William had begun to think of schemes for avoiding Bina’s embraces when, one Saturday evening, Papa Wu called him into the family area. The family was eating—they seemed always to be eating—and watching a variety show on Cantonese TV. Papa Wu gave William a bowl of food—white rice with beef and green vegetables—and Mrs Wu poured him a glass of tea, and Papa Wu, without bothering to take him on one side, addressed him in Cantonese.

“There is a clansman of mine, Mr Ng Syuntoi.” [Ng is the Cantonese pronunciation of Wu. Papa Wu, having been raised in Shanghai, and having dealt with foreigners a great deal, used the northern form because he knew it was easier on their tongues.] “He lives in Aberdeen, over on the south side of Hong Kong Island. He is a poor man. Works as a stock boy at one of the godowns on the Island, I don’t know where. But he is very decent and honest. He and his wife live in one of the resettlement estates back of Aberdeen. They have a grade 2 government apartment, that’s for a family with less than three children. However, in fact they have no children. They had one, a boy, but he died. He was eleven or twelve, I think—I’m not sure. He had a hole in his heart. The doctors were afraid to operate. They said the techniques were not advanced enough for his case. They told the Ngs: wait a few years till the techniques have improved. So they waited; but while they were waiting, the boy died. That was three years ago. They haven’t had any more children, I don’t know why. Probably they fear the heart problem is inherited. Perhaps it is, I don’t know. Anyway, the long and short of it is, they’re looking to adopt. They’d prefer a younger boy, but as I said, they are poor, and they can’t be choosy.”

Papa Wu paused to light a cigarette. The others were watching TV, paying no attention to them at all.

“You mean, this guy wants to adopt me?”

Papa Wu nodded. “Maybe. Of course, you should stay with them a while first. Make sure you can get on. Then, if they like you, and you agree, they’ll adopt you.”

“Does that mean I’ll be one of the Ng clan?”

Papa Wu laughed. “I don’t know. That’s for you and them to sort out among yourselves. Anyway, tomorrow’s his day off. You should go round there and introduce yourself. Take your things. I’m sure you can stay for a few days, at the worst. And this situation here, with you and Miss Bina …” he shook his head rather emphatically, “… I really don’t like it. Not moral.”

The youngest girl seemed to prick up her ears at this point. She threw them a glance, then turned back to the TV.

“Shall I be able to continue at school? I’d really like to do Advanced Level.”

“I think so. I don’t really know. You must ask Mr Ng when you see him. I’ll give you the address. You’ll have to take the ferry, of course, and a bus. Have you got any money?”

“No. Not a dime.”

Papa Wu laughed heartily. “I thought not. Oh, well.” He fished in his pocket. “Here’s twenty. Pay me back when you can.”

Bina was not altogether happy about the news. “I don’t see why you can’t stay here with me,” she said, in an irritated tone.

Because I shall die of boredom, or general systemic collapse. William did not say this, of course. He only said: “Since Papa Wu has gone to the trouble to find this guy, I should at least give it a try.”

And so next morning, after breakfast and a brisk tongfang, William put on a clean T-shirt and his clean white tennis shoes and took ferry and bus to Aberdeen.

The Ngs’ apartment was in one of the big resettlement blocks built in the early sixties to house the refugees flooding over from the great famine in China. The block stood on a long steep hill—a mountainside, actually—a mile or so up from Aberdeen harbor. The Ngs’ apartment was on the sixth floor. With the long walk up the hill, followed by five flights of stairs—the block had no elevators—William was hot and uncomfortable when he reached the door. He had hoped to cool off for a moment or two before ringing the bell; but the front door was open behind its metal grille, and a woman in the apartment spotted him at once. She came to the grille and opened it.

“Welcome,” she said in Cantonese. “I guess you are Leung Wailam.”

“Yes.” Now there was a man present, too. He had been dozing, apparently, on the bottom of a bunk bed over in the far corner of the apartment’s only real room. An opening with a plastic shower curtain over it led from the short entrance passage to a tiny bathroom. Beyond that, the third of a line with the passageway and bathroom, was an equally tiny kitchen. Everything else was this one main room, with a balcony looking out at the rocky mountainside. The mountainside blocked out much of the light, so the apartment seemed dark even now, at eleven on a July morning, the sun high and bright. The main room was not large. The bunk bed—double bottom, single top—occupied a full quarter of it. There was a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a TV on it, and folding chairs and tables stacked against the wall by the kitchen entrance. An electric fan was going, without much effect. High up in the other far corner was a little red shrine to Guanyin, with a red light burning in front of it.

“I am Ng Syuntoi,” said the man. “Welcome to our home!”

The woman had opened a folding table and some stools. She introduced herself, using her maiden name in the rather old-fashioned Cantonese style, then beckoned the men to sit down.

Mr Ng was a short, wiry man, who might have been any age from forty to sixty. He sat opposite William at the table, while Mrs Ng went to the kitchen.

“My clansman told you our situation?”

“Yes. He told me everything, I believe.”

“Good. We are poor people, as you can see. We don’t have much to offer you.” Mr Ng waved at the apartment. “But we want a son. My clansman gave you a good character. If we can get on, and if you agree, we will take you for our son. We shall do everything we can for you. What is ours shall be yours. In return, we ask that you call us Father and Mother, and act as a son to us. Are you willing to try the relationship on this basis?”

“Shall I be able to go to school?”

Mr Ng sat back as Mrs Ng laid some food on the table: cold cuts, steamed buns, a plate of wrapped candy, and two glasses of tea. “Help yourself,” she said. “Don’t be a guest!” Her voice was light and pleasant, and the normal expression of her face seemed to be a good-natured smile.

“How far have you gone in school?” asked Mr Ng when she had stepped away.

“I did Ordinary Level last month. Nine subjects.”

Mr Ng seemed impressed. “So? Got results yet?”

“Not yet. Next month. Math is my best subject. I’ve been published in the Mathematical Monthly, twice.” He said the title first in English, then translated into Cantonese: Sou-hok-ge Yut-hon. “It’s a scholarly journal published in London,” he explained.

“So?” repeated Mr Ng. “Your English is pretty good then?”

“Yes, I’m fluent. We can continue the conversation in English, if you like,” said William in that language.

Mr Ng laughed. “Never mind. My English is good enough to understand the boss at my godown, but I wouldn’t boast of it. Come on, eat something.”

William took a piece of jellyfish, and bit into a steamed bun. Mr Ng did not seem inclined to eat. Instead, he lit a cigarette.

“For our son,” he said, while William was tackling the bun, “we shall make any sacrifices necessary. Education is the most important thing for a young person. Myself, I had no chance. In the war I had to run back into Guangdong to escape the Japanese. Then after the war I was too busy trying to make a living in Hong Kong. I lost all my chances. But my son won’t lose his. Not so long as my wife and I can work. We will set your school fees before everything except food. Without food we can’t work, and you can’t study.” He laughed. “Come on, eat more.”

“There is only one matter,” said William. He had been thinking about things, riding the bus around the Island from Star Ferry, looking out to sea from the upstairs window of the double-decker.

“Condition?” asked Mr Ng, looking at him evenly.

“I … I guess so. I mean … if you can agree.”

Mr Ng said nothing, just looked steadily at him, waiting to hear.

“Suppose I stay here with you. And we get on all right, and agree to adoption. In that event, I will do everything I can to be a good son to you. You will be my father and mother in every way. I will honor you and respect you, and do everything I can to support you. However, I can’t call you Father and Mother. Just the words—I can’t use them for you. My own father and mother are dead, but I remember them clearly. They were my dear parents. We were close, so close, and very happy together. I can never forget them, and I can never use these words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ for anyone else. But except for these words, I will consider you in every way to be my parents. These words, and one other thing. For the same reason, I want to keep my family name, Leung. I really don’t want to change my name. I mean no disrespect to you, or your family, or your clan. It will make no difference to my behavior, I promise you. But my father was my father, and my mother was my mother. We were happy together, and dear to each other, chan mat mou fong [so close there was no space between]. Then they died unjust deaths. I can’t forget that, and I can’t forget them, or dishonor them by shedding their name.”

William felt very nervous, saying this. He had worked it out on the bus, and it came out more or less as he’d rehearsed it to himself, as much as these things ever do. Still, he thought the Ngs might take it amiss.

To the contrary, both Mr Ng and also his wife, who had been standing behind him for most of William’s address, seemed deeply affected by his words. Mr Ng was still and silent for a moment, looking at William with an expression of utmost gravity. Then he turned to look at his wife. She was biting her lower lip, as if restraining some strong emotion. He nodded at her, and she nodded back. Turning, Mr Ng rose from his seat. William stood up too. Mr Ng clasped his hands in front of his chest in a bai gesture, and bowed low. William did the same. Then Mr Ng reached across the table to shake William’s hand.

“There will be no problem,” he said in a low, firm voice. “Everything just as you have requested. We shall be one family now.”

Chapter 30

One Romantic Young Lady Endures a Rebuff

Another is Broken by Despair

The Ngs were simple, kind, hard-working people. William was at home with them almost at once. Mr Ng enrolled him at the high school in Aberdeen for the coming school year, and William, somewhat tense and mentally logging the exits for a quick flight, went to the government office and got a re-issue of his i.d. card, putting the Ngs’ address on the form. There was no trouble. Mr Ng went to an attorney to start the process for legal adoption.

“When conditions allow, we’ll go across the border to my clan temple, and you can pay your respects. Just a formality, to appease my ancestors. Doesn’t mean you have to take the name.”

“Are you sure the temple’s still there?” asked William. “All the temples in my own town were smashed up in the Cultural Revolution.”

Mr Ng waved away the Cultural Revolution. “That’ll all blow over,” he said. “It’s nothing. Our family temple was closed for a while, I believe. But my clan is very strong around Foshan. They will take care of the temple, don’t worry. Next New Year, maybe we’ll go over.”

Foshan was Mr Ng’s native place, a big town in Guangdong Province.

The bunk bed arrangement was awkward, and William thought it might be embarrassing at first. The thing was structured with a double bed on the bottom, where the Ngs slept, and a single one on top, for William. So he was right over them, and could hardly have avoided knowing about it if they made tongfang while he was there. Mr Ng cleared this up the first week.

“Do you know about the private relations between men and women?” he asked William one evening, when Mrs Ng was out visiting.

William said he thought he understood the essentials well enough.

“Good. Then you will understand if I tell you this. Sunday is our day off. Sunday we lie in late. I want you to get up early on Sunday and take a walk. Around eight o’clock. Get up, take a steamed bun or a batter-stick, and go take a nice long walk. If it’s raining, take a waterproof. Walking in the rain is good for the lungs, very healthful. Close the front door behind you. If you come back and the door is still closed, go walk some more. Don’t come back in until the door is open. Understand?”

“Sure. No problem.”

William’s own state, his new state of perfect celibacy, was a relief at first, after Bina’s attentions. He did not give a single thought to those things, after the conversation with Mr Ng. Then Bina suddenly reappeared.

William was trying to find a job, to supplement the family income until school started, and he had been out in Aberdeen chasing some leads. Returning, coming along the corridor that ran the length of the sixth floor, he saw Bina at the door, ringing the bell. The Ngs were both out at work. Bina was under full canvas: one of her finest saris, magenta and chartreuse slashed with bright tangerine, all flecked with gold, and her gold hair ornaments and gold and silver bangles all the way up her forearm.

“I’ve been worried about you,” said Bina when she saw him. “Leaving so suddenly like that. Not coming back to let me know how you’re getting on.”

“I’m getting on all right,” said William. “Papa Wu could have told you that.”

“Not the same thing.” She came right up to him, took his hands in both of hers, and smiled up at him. “Not the same thing at all.”

There was a face, one of the neighbors at her kitchen window. “Let’s go for a walk,” said William. “This is not the right place.”

He led her down the stairs to the courtyard. It was full of children playing. They walked across, and started down the hill toward Aberdeen.

“You’re a bad boy,” said Bina. “I’m sure you haven’t thought of me even a little.”

“Well, I’ve been getting used to my new life,” replied William, deliberately not contradicting her.

“New life! Weren’t you happy enough with me?”

“Doing what? You were out all day long. I was just sitting there watching TV.”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be like that. I was thoughtless. I can set you up in the company I’m working with. We need more Chinese staff. You can make some money. Do something interesting.”

It dawned on William—a revelation!—that Bina was pleading with him. He stopped dead—they were halfway down the hill—and turned to face her.

“What are you saying? That I should come back?”

“Of course you should come back! What else will you do? Live in that slum the rest of your life?” She pointed back up the hill. “I can make something of you, William.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry I neglected you so shamelessly before. It won’t be like that now.” Smiling up at him again, something quite new in her eyes—something yearning, and a bit scary. “It won’t be like that now.”

“Why, Bina? Why do you want me back so much? You came all this way, and … why?”

Amazingly, unexpectedly, she flung her arms round him, pressing her face down on his shoulder. “Because I love you, you stupid boy! I love you! Don’t you understand?” His nostrils were filled with her scent, the heavy exotic scent, overlaid now with some elements of perspiration—it was a very hot day.

Terrified, William pushed her away, so hard she almost fell over. He ran off down to the town, hearing her screaming behind him. “William! WILLIAM! Don’t, oh don’t! I need you, I love you! Come back, please come back!” He could hear it until he reached the town, and lost himself in the crowds.

William thought about this a lot in the days that followed. This woman, whom he had thought so worldly, so sophisticated—she was in love with him! He could not help but feel pleased with himself. Who would feel otherwise, after such a confession? William began to regret his impulsive retreat. The poor woman! Perhaps she would kill herself in despair, and her ghost come to haunt him, like something out of Strange Tales from Liao’s Studio. He began looking at himself in the mirror, the simple plastic-framed mirror that hung on the wall in the Ngs’ bathroom. Handsome—yes: his face smooth and unblemished, teeth white and more or less even, his shoulders broadening, arms and chest thickening. Well, it was understandable. Certainly he had done his best to satisfy her. Three, four times every day. Five times one day, he was sure. Perhaps only Chinese men were so virile. Perhaps Indian men couldn’t satisfy her like that. No, that couldn’t be right: Mr Ng was Chinese, and he only did it once a week. Still, it was understandable.

With his thoughts running on these lines, and the stunned enervation of the weeks with Bina now a month in the past, certain natural and instinctive forces began to reassert themselves. Soon William was at school again—a co-educational school, with a statistically predictable proportion of very pretty girls and handsome boys. The teachers were dull, William was far ahead of his classmates in the most important subjects, and he found it difficult to keep his concentration. In the third week of October, he buckled.

Papa Wu was in the lounge of Washington Guest House, alone, when William knocked on the glass door. Papa Wu got up and let him in.

“Everything all right?” he asked, with that wary about-to-be-imposed-on look.

“Oh, yes. Everything’s fine. I get on very well with the Ngs. We’re doing a formal adoption.”

“Good, good!” Papa Wu nodded vigorous, and no doubt relieved, approval.

“It’s only that …” William cleared his throat. “Miss Bina. I left something here. If I could just ask her …”

“Miss Bina?” Papa Wu threw back his head and laughed. “Forget it!”

“I’m sorry?”

“She’s gone, that’s what!”

“Gone?” (Killed herself! For love of him!) “Gone where?”

“Got married. Mr Dipoo, do you know him?”

“I … No, I don’t think so.”

“Rich guy. Imports precious stones. Got a big place up in mid-levels. Came here to walk out with her—oh, three or four times. Next thing, they were married. It was in the newspaper, Hong Kong Standard, a couple of weeks ago. So fast! And her with no dowry. For the achas that’s important, you know. The woman must bring a dowry. But I guess Mr Dipoo has so much money he doesn’t care about the dowry. Or maybe she bewitched him, like she did you. Ha ha ha! Anyway, there they are in mid-levels—married.”

“Oh.”

“Of course, I could look in the room if you like. But I’m sure she took everything with her.”

*

The Ngs were not, in fact, badly off. Mr Ng earned four hundred a month at the godown, Mrs Ng half as much doing piece work, packing in a toy factory. They paid the government a hundred a month rent for their apartment, and carried no debts. Mr Ng drank a bottle of beer whenever he got the chance—average one a day, probably—and smoked rather immoderately. However, he did not gamble; not even mahjong, the principal enemy of family budgeting in Hong Kong. His wife dressed modestly and kept a frugal house. From a chance remark, William gathered that they had saved a great deal for their son’s operation, and had used only a small part of it for the funeral. There were smart new utensils and gadgets in the apartment: a patented thermos flask that poured at the press of a button; a big radio/cassette player on which Mr Ng liked to listen to Cantonese opera and American Country and Western music; an ingenious shower worked by a foot pump. For William’s sixteenth birthday in October they all went to one of the floating restaurants in Aberdeen harbor, for a meal that cost a hundred and fifty dollars, with shark fin soup and French brandy.

“It’s not just your birthday, it’s your welcome to our family,” said Mr Ng, raising his brandy glass.

For all that, William had fallen some way from the life he had been used to in Kowloon Tong. He noticed this most at school. His old school had been a good one, he vaguely knew. However, it had been the only school he knew in the Colony, so he had had no standard of comparison. It had just seemed to him to be as bright, clean, new and efficient as everything else in Hong Kong. Now he understood how lucky he had been. Not that the Aberdeen school was disgraceful in any way. It was merely dirty, crowded, under-staffed and under-funded. There were sixty to a class. The teachers were overworked and underpaid. They droned through their lessons, mostly just reading through the textbooks. Few could speak English, and none of those few could speak it well. Most, indeed, could not speak Mandarin with any facility; and there was even one, old Mr Sung the history teacher, whose very Cantonese slipped in and out of comprehensibility, he being a villager from the mainland with some exotic local dialect, which he had left behind only in middle age.

The classmates were a mixed bunch. There was a rough element, slum kids from the waterfront. There were some Hakkas from the New Territories, diligent and well-behaved but clannish. There were even a few Egg People, who lived on the boats moored in the harbor. Most, however, were from families like the Ngs: honest working people who could afford nothing better. They were diligent in their studies, and a few showed real promise. Overall, though, the standard was not what William had been used to. He was far ahead of his classmates—and of his teachers, for that matter—in both math and English, and his being a Mandarin speaker excused him from that class altogether.

His good looks and comparative academic brilliance secured him a light sort of popularity, some occasional envy, and a great many admirers among the female classmates. By the end of the first term he could confidently name five girls who he knew were in love with him, and had deep suspicions of two or three of the boys. They were an unworldly crowd, though, confined, out of school hours, to the crowded apartments of the resettlement estates or the even worse, older, private buildings in Aberdeen itself, and there were few opportunities for dalliance, even if anyone had known how to go about it. So all the yearnings and longings, all that fine romantic passion, hung suspended in the stuffy air of the classrooms and the ill-lit murk of the corridors.

William had, in any case, been deterred in some way by the business with Bina. This man-woman thing was far more complicated than he had allowed for, with much more to know. This complexity, this unpredictability, scared him. He bent himself to study, aiming to take four subjects at Advanced after two years at the school. The math would give him no problem; but the physics needed work and travel (the school shared a lab with two others), and the Advanced English included three texts from Literature, one by Mr William Shakespeare that he couldn’t make head nor tail of on a first reading.

His closest friendship at the school was with Fong. It had not (so it seemed to him at any rate, looking back on things later) it had not been his initiative that started things. Fong had taken him up, seeking him out to sit next to in class, hastening to catch up with him in the corridors. Fong looked up to him in some odd way.

“You seem so worldly,” said Fong one time. “You pretend not to be, but I can see you are. You seem to know things I won’t know till I’m forty!”

“That’s nonsense,” said William, not altogether comfortable with this line of talk. “I’m the same age as you. I live with my family in Aberdeen, that’s all.”

“Everybody says you’re a swimmer.”

“All right, I’m a swimmer. It’s not a big deal, and not a big secret. Fuk Loying’s a swimmer, too. You don’t call him worldly.”

“He’s just a peasant from a village. You’re sophisticated. Your English is so good! Half the girls are in love with you, do you know that?”

“Not half, only five of them. I know who: Ho Cheuiyip, Jang Tinfa, …”

Fong was laughing. “You should be more modest, Wailam. Or, you should take advantage of them.”

Fong was good-looking himself: tall, though a little thinner than the ideal. He had a shy smile that was very charming, and a kind of wry, irreverent humor that William liked very much. He had his own admirers among the girl classmates. There was one in particular, who used the English name Lucy, who seemed to dote on him. Many times William saw her gazing dreamily across the classroom at Fong; twice or three times she saw him seeing her, and turned away hastily with a quick pinched frown. William thought Lucy did not like him, perhaps because Fong did. However it was, Fong seemed to be quite oblivious of Lucy’s attentions, and never mentioned her.

Nothing might have happened but for the picnic at New Year. The classmates went on a picnic trip to Tapmun Island, far out in the east of the New Territories. Like most islands, Tapmun had a fishing village, two or three scanty beaches, and a great many rocks. The classmates barbecued on a hilltop, then went off in little groups exploring. William and Fong, with Lucy and one of the girls who was in love with William tagging along, climbed down to one of the beaches. It was rough and stony, with an arc of smooth flat rocks curving round to a hundred yards out, making a kind of tiny bay.

“I’m going for a swim,” said William on impulse. The others all laughed at him. “In February?” said Fong. “It’ll be freezing cold.”

“And so rough,” said William’s girl. “Look at the waves! It’s dangerous. I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Well, I feel like a swim.” William was already stripping off. He stripped to his underpants (the girls giggling, their hands pressed to their cheeks in mock outrage). The water was certainly colder than he had expected, but by no means freezing. William struck out for the rocks. When he reached them, he climbed up and stood on top of the flattest one to wave at the three on the shore. But there were only two; Fong had stripped and gone into the water, too. He was not such a strong swimmer as William, though, and seemed to be making no progress against the waves, which were quite high. Watching him, William began to feel alarmed. He dived back in and swam over to where Fong was flailing away ineffectually, in the wrong direction altogether now.

“Take a break,” he said to Fong. “Don’t exhaust yourself. Float on your back. Press the water down slowly with your hands, and keep your body straight. Good, good. Head back, belly up—relax! Now just back-stroke slowly, like this. Straight back, back to the shore. I’ll tell you when you can touch bottom.”

When they came out the girls were shrieking in panic, or simulated panic. William and Fong laughed to reassure them. William thought the girls had not noticed him helping Fong; but then he saw Lucy looking at him with pure hatred. Such a strange business, this man-woman thing! But William’s rescue, or his tact, had made a deep impression on Fong. From this point on there was something earnest about Fong’s attachment to him, something unconditional.

On the way back from Tapmun, Lucy fell asleep in the minibus from Taipou, her head on Fong’s shoulder. It was dark when they reached Kowloon; midnight when William got back to Aberdeen; then it was New Year, the year of the tiger.

*

In the summer term there was another picnic, this time to Poutoi Island. Poutoi was even more remote than Tapmun, so remote there was no ferry service. They had to hire a sampan in Aberdeen harbor and chug across several miles of open sea. Only seven classmates ventured on this trip, five boys and two girls. The two girls were attached to two of the boys; neither Lucy nor any of William’s conquests made the trip. After the barbecue everyone wandered off in different directions. William and Fong explored a small cove with a cave going back from it. At the back of the cave was a tunnel, sand almost up to the roof, through which could just be made out a neighboring cove, the booming of the waves oddly refracted through the tunnel.

They sat on dry sand by the cave entrance, out of the sun.

“It’s too bad Lucy couldn’t come,” said William.

Fong shrugged. “Lucy’s a pest. Always hanging around me.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“Not that way.”

William laughed. “Now it’s my turn to tell you to take advantage. Since she’s clearly willing.”

“You shouldn’t say that. I don’t want any of that business. Not till I’m into college, anyway. Too much distraction.”

“But you’ve played anti-aircraft, haven’t you?” asked William, using the common Cantonese expression for self-abuse.

Embarrassed, Fong looked down, and dug his fingers into the sand. “Sure. Of course. Everybody does. Not very polite to talk about it.”

“Oh, come on! If everybody does it, why not talk about it? Is talking worse than doing?”

“I guess not.” Fong hadn’t looked up. He was running the sand through his fingers, distractedly. William felt no better than half sure about Fong, and he had really wanted to be more sure than that. Yet … something in the eyes, when he could catch them. More than half sure. But the thing that he had been missing for many months, he was missing very much indeed now. Well, give it a try. He felt the breath tight in his throat.

“Have you ever done it with somebody else?”

His nightmare was, that Fong would jump to his feet, eyes blazing, and storm off to denounce him to the classmates. Get him thrown out of the school, possibly. But Fong only sat there in the bright shadow, sifting the dry white sand through his fingers.

“No,” he said after a short pause. Then, looking up now: “Have you?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s fun. No harm in it.”

“I don’t know.” Sifting sand again.

Now William felt sure. He opened his zipper. His jiba was stiff. “Look,” he said. “Oh, Fong, come on. Do it for me. I really want you to.”

Fong looked. William thought he was breathing hard.

“Do you really think it’s all right? I don’t know.” He looked over at William, and William knew everything would be fine.

“Of course. Of course it’s all right.” He took Fong’s hand and pulled it over, closing it round his jiba. The fingers were rough with sand, but this proved not to matter very much, as the thrill was so exquisite William’s juice flew out immediately.

“Do it for me. Do it for me.” Fong was thoroughly into the spirit of the thing now, fumbling with his own zipper. William reached in and felt Fong’s jiba. It was as hard as his own had been. “Oh, oh, oh,” said Fong, and fell back on the sand with his hands over his face. “Oh, oh.” William pulled out the organ and stroked it three or four times. Then he leaned over and took it in his mouth. He played on it for a while with his tongue and lips, then tasted Fong’s juice gushing hot across his tongue and palate. When it was finished he repacked and zippered up Fong, who had become quite inert, and then rearranged himself.

“Come on,” he said. “We’d best be getting back.”

Fong was just lying there, his hands over his face. “I’m so ashamed,” he said through his hands. “So ashamed.”

“Oh, for what? It’s only a bit of fun. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

Fong sat up. His face showed him distraught—near to tears, William thought.

“Yes. It was wonderful. But it’s wrong. You know it is. It’s against nature.”

“Oh, nonsense. Wearing clothes is against nature, isn’t it? Animals don’t wear clothes, not that I’ve noticed.”

“That’s different. Wearing clothes is customary. This—it’s not customary.”

“Who says not? What do you think Gam Wing in Red Chamber Dream is talking about, when he’s taunting Cheun Jung and Heung Lin? So Chinese people were doing it two hundred years ago. They didn’t think it was against nature.”

“I’m sure they did. You can’t judge from literature. Literature always exaggerates.”

They were sitting up on the sand, William rubbing at a small stain on his jeans.

“Don’t take it so seriously. It’s only a bit of fun. There’s no harm done. It’s not like with a girl, when you can get her pregnant. Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant.”

To William’s immense relief, Fong laughed: not a nervous or defensive laugh, a giggle of real amusement. Then: “You planned this from the beginning, didn’t you? When we all split up after the barbecue.”

“No. It was just opportunism.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re so sly. I thought you just wanted to be friends.”

“Well, we are friends, aren’t we? Who better to make hangfong with, than your friend?” [Using the Cantonese term.] “I mean, we trust each other, don’t we?”

“Don’t call it hangfong. It’s not hangfong.”

“Well, it’s near enough. But we can do hangfong, too, if you like.”

“No, no.” Fong stood up abruptly. “No, that’s really unnatural.” He seemed disturbed and unsettled again. William wished he had not mentioned hangfong.

“All right.” He stood up. “Let’s get back.”

*

Now more than ever missing that thing, William planned carefully. On a blazing Sunday morning in June, he took a trip to Kowloon with Fong, to window-shop in Nathan Road. Riding over on Star Ferry, he rolled the dice. “Let’s do it again,” he said.

“Do what?”

“You know. What we did on Poutoi Island.”

“What, here?” Fong laughed. They were leaning on the rail, watching the approach to Kowloon. “You’re crazy.”

“Of course not here. But I know a place nearby where we can go.”

“Where?”

“In Kowloon. Nathan Road. Come on. It’s a bit of fun, that’s all.”

Fong said nothing. He said nothing coming off the ferry, and nothing walking up to Nathan Road. William turned in to Chungking Mansions. Instead of taking the elevator, he went round to the stairs at the back. This was a mistake: the stairs were filthy, garbage everywhere. It made the whole enterprise seem seedy. Still Fong said nothing, following three or four paces behind. They went up three flights to Princess Guest House. There was an old Chinese woman at the desk, her face so dark it was almost black, creased and folded like a lizard’s. Expressionless, she took the money for one hour’s rental, and handed over a key.

“Room Seven,” she said, in a thick Shandong accent.

Fong was hanging back. William went to room seven and opened the door. Fong obviously had to pluck up his courage to get past the old woman. He need not have troubled himself. The old woman had seen everything since fleeing her home village as a child, back in the warlord period sixty years previously. Everyone had had to flee because there was no water to be had. The reason there was no water was that the village well was clogged with corpses. She had had her feet bound, then unbound when it was too late to save them from deformity. She had been sold twice, the first time at age nine to a brute who had invited his drinking friends in to watch while he deflowered her. She had buried him, and two more husbands, and eight children besides, and was now content to sit here in silence all day waiting for Lord Yanwang, the Emperor of Hell, to summon her to join her ancestors in his own good time. Fong would have fired no spark of interest in her withered soul if he had been a dromedary.

William closed the door and locked it. Turning, he saw Fong standing in the middle of the room, an expression of anguish on his face.

“Oh, Wailam. I’m really not sure.”

“It’s all right. Come on, let’s take a shower together. It’ll relax you.”

William began to undress. From the corner of his eye he saw that Fong, after some hesitation, was following his example. When both were naked they stood facing each other. Fong had a pleasant body: pale and smooth, slim but well-built, marred only by a small appendix scar. His jiba was already stiff. When William saw this he knew he could not wait.

“Let’s lie on the bed,” he said, aware that his voice was not normal.

“I thought you wanted to take a shower.”

“Shower afterwards.”

Assuming Fong would need instruction, William had the whole thing choreographed in his mind. To his surprise, however, Fong took the initiative, rolling them over and then, after some tangling and untangling, ending up on top of William, both of them face down. After half a dozen strokes he climaxed, moaning and gasping hot into William’s ear. William spent himself more or less simultaneously, from ecstasy and friction with the bedclothes. They lay there together for a while, gasping.

Suddenly Fong jumped up and ran to the minuscule shower cubicle. The water started running. William got up slowly and walked over to the cubicle. It was so small, there was room only for one at a time.

“So disgraceful, so disgraceful.” Fong sounded as if he were sobbing.

“Oh, come on. You wanted to.”

“Yes. I wanted to. That’s what’s so disgraceful. Oh! Oh!”

“Hey. It’s all right.” William tried to edge into the cubicle.

“No, no, don’t come in. It’s too small, anyway.”

“All right. I only wanted to tell you, it’s all right.”

“You want to do it to me, don’t you? What I did to you, you want to do it to me.”

“No. No, I don’t. I’ve already had gouchiu. I’ve finished. I just don’t like to see you upset.”

Fong pushed his way out, leaving the water running. The tiny, windowless room was full of steam. Fong took a towel from the rail set helpfully next to the bed, and began pummeling his hair.

“You’re evil. You seduced me,” he said. Now he sounded angry, William thought. One minute angry, one minute blubbing in self-reproach, one minute squirting his juice into your bottom. What kind of guy was this? He began to regret having taken up Fong. Annoyed, he went into the shower. When he came out, Fong was dressed and lacing his shoes.

“Please, Wailam, please don’t say anything about this to anyone.”

“Of course not. It’s just between us two.”

“I’m so ashamed, so ashamed.”

“There’s no need. You enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. What’s to be ashamed for?”

“So filthy! So disgusting!”

“Not at all. We took a shower, didn’t we? I can’t see what you’re so excited about.” William thought he was not keeping the irritation out of his voice.

“I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived. But my life isn’t like that. If my family knew—oh!” Fong stood up. He shot William a strange, bleak look, then wrestled with the door for a while before getting it open. William, still naked, backed off to be out of sight from the doorway. Fong paused in the doorway.

“I really wish I’d never met you.” And he gave William that same look: eyes wide and mobile, head at a slight angle. He left.

What a neurotic, thought William as he dressed. But worth it, well worth it, all things considered. He recycled the memory of Fong’s slim, pale body, and of the wonderful satisfaction of Fong inside him. Definitely worth it, neurotic or not.

He did not think much of it when Fong failed to show up at classes the following Monday. When on Tuesday Fong still did not show, William felt a tremor of apprehension. He asked a classmate who lived in the same resettlement block as Fong.

“No idea,” said the classmate. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

It was this same classmate who gave them the news later in the week. Fong’s dead body had been found on Poutoi Island. He had taken a boat out there on Monday afternoon, telling the boat to come back for him. Once there he had found a secluded cove, then cut his wrists and his throat. Inexpertly, it appeared, as he had eventually died from exposure, not exsanguination. The sampan had gone back for him; but when he hadn’t been there to meet it, had gone blithely back to Aberdeen. Some fishing people had found him on Wednesday morning.

William crept around for some days in a condition of cold terror. This was not conscience: he honestly did not feel he had anything to be conscience-stricken about. It was only that he feared the discovery of a note, a letter, a diary, a confession. He also feared Lucy, who had become very strange since the news: red-eyed, distracted, jumping up to leave class suddenly, taking sudden absences. She looked at him with a new look now, a look that seemed, to him, to contain elements of accusation and comprehension, and William did his utmost to avoid her altogether.

Soon this was no longer necessary. In the last week of the summer term Lucy jumped from the roof of her resettlement block. One of the low-grade Chinese tabloids, the one favored by Mr Ng, ran a picture of the girl’s dead body, her skirt up exposing her bare legs and underwear, her brains hanging loose from her burst skull. The first of these effects had been arranged by the newspaper photographer following payment of a small bribe to the police detective supervising the scene; the second was a consequence of having fallen twelve floors onto bare concrete.

“Such a terrible thing,” said Mrs Ng. “Who can understand it?”

Chapter 31

Thought Processes of a Mathematician

The Hazards of Playing the Financial Markets

Show that there exists a set A of positive integers with the following property: For any infinite set S of primes there exist two positive integers m in A and n not in A, each of which is a product of k distinct elements of S for some k greater than 1.

William stared at the question, struggling with the grammar. Clearly he was being invited to divide the positive integers into two parts, A and not-A. But what was the criterion for this division? Working on the scratch pad, he tried some possibilities. A the set of all even numbers—of course not. A some subset of the primes … No, couldn’t be made to work. Then what? He tried negating the problem’s statement for a reductio ad absurdum, but got lost in the negation logic.

He fretted with the question—it was the first of six on the paper—but could get nowhere with it. He hastened to the next. Two mirrors set at an angle to each other, a ray of light coming in at another angle, how many reflections? His spirits rose. Nothing to it but brute trigonometry! He hacked through it without pausing, but it still took twenty minutes—and a quarter of the three hours was gone! He had wasted twenty-five minutes on that first question!

Gritting his teeth, William attacked the third question. On a first reading it was as opaque as Question One; but he forced himself to read it through again, calmly and slowly, and saw at once that it was a straightforward exercise in projective geometry, disguised by a lot of superfluous conditions. The Fourth question was an ingenious puzzle in number theory that came out in four lines once you saw the trick. Five was a messy business with a cone, a sphere and a cube resting against each other, which could be short-circuited to some degree by a change of coordinate systems. Six was a geometrical trap of great elegance: the unimaginative student force-fed with calculus formulas would attack it, and eventually solve it, via a chain of integration by parts, but if you just considered it coolly for a moment, and were familiar with a certain ancient puzzle involving tessellations of the plane, it could be solved very easily by applying a series of reflections, without using calculus at all.

Delighted with himself at having seen through this last question, William set his pen down and checked the clock. Fifteen minutes to spare! Glancing round, he saw the other students still working, every one. So! He had finished ahead of them all! Resting back in his seat, he closed the question book, which was actually just a single folded sheet, and let his head fall back, so that he was looking up at the ceiling. To emphasize the effect further, he stretched his arms up vertically, cracking his knuckles, then set his hands behind his head in a posture of relaxation. Should work over his results, perhaps, and see if any could be improved. But he felt sure he had captured the essence of all the questions, and that there was little improvement to be made. He bent forward again, anyway, to review his work … and saw Question One laughing back at him, still unanswered!

Frantically William scrabbled for his pen, dropped it, picked it up, swept the question paper off the desk while straightening up, picked that up, turned it right way round, and stared sweating at Question One. Show that there exists a set A … Made up of what? Excluding what? He fumbled with figures on the scratch pad, trying things he knew were hopeless even before the pen touched the paper. Twelve minutes. Eleven. For any infinite set S of primes there exist … So, if only he could construct this set A, he could face up to anyone challenging him with a set S, defy them, vanquish them! by producing the golden antidotes m and n. Nine minutes. The chief invigilator stirred, rising cautiously from his desk to embark on a tiptoe patrol up the center aisle.

In panic and despair William suddenly, in his mind’s eye, saw Han Yuezhu. She was grim-faced, angry, accusing, and was thrusting towards him an infinite set S of primes, in the form of a large, heavy stick of dark brown bamboo. The set was right there, cut in rough symbols along the bamboo:

S = {p₁, p₂, p₃, p₄, p₅, p₆, … }

Yuezhu was pushing it at him, thrusting it at him, challenging him, her face twisted in hatred, modified now by the beginnings of a triumphant leer. How could he riposte? What did he have to defend himself with? Cornered, despairing, he turned—and saw a long rack, an infinitely long rack, of swords, and a label above each:

k=1    k=2    k=3    k=4 …

Of course! He had freedom of choice with k! It could be anything he wanted! No matter what set of primes she challenged him with, there would be a k to meet it! And each k must correspond to a subset of A … so A was constructed from subsets … each one keyed on what? on what? … On the k-th prime, of course!

William wrote a proof out on the scratch pad. It was messy and roundabout, but once he saw it in writing all was clear. He condensed it to a dozen elegant lines on the answer sheet  … then saw that it could even be cut down to half that, if only …

DZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

“Pens down, please, ladies and gentlemen,” said the invigilator, who was English. “At once, please, young lady,” (to a recalcitrant examinee). “Thank you.”

He gestured to his minions at the sides of the room. They advanced along the outward aisles, collecting papers. William took a last regretful glance at his solutions before the boy took them. Those superfluous lines in the proof! Another thirty seconds and he could have got rid of them. That was the kind of thing that might make all the difference. But life had taught William sufficient fatalism. Putting the examination out of his mind, He left the hall and walked over the hills to Aberdeen, taking Halton Road past the Peak.

When Mr Ng got home from work he insisted on seeing the question paper, which William had brought out with him. Mr Ng scrutinized the paper in silence for several minutes, sitting at the circular fold-up dinner table, sipping at his glass of beer.

“Ha!” he said at last.

“Ha, what?”

“Ha, I can’t find even one sentence that makes sense.”

“But you can hardly read English, Uncle.”

“I can read well enough. But this … Is it really useful?”

William laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“Such things in the world. You live your whole life not knowing them.” Mr Ng shrugged, and looked straight at William. “Did you answer all the questions?”

“Yes. Every one.”

Mr Ng nodded, and dropped his eyes. “But you mustn’t get your hopes too high, you know. If you can go to the University, that will be wonderful. But don’t hope too much. Hope is a drug, you know. Like liquor, like opium. Feels very nice while you enjoy it. Afterwards—big hangover.” He held William’s eyes again.

William laughed. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I did my best, that’s all. Nobody can do more.”

Mr Ng sighed. “You have so much ability. I’m sorry …” he glanced across the table at William again, “… I’m sorry I haven’t the resources to give you the education you deserve. As things are, everything is up to you.”

“It’s all right, Uncle. You’ve done everything you can for me. I have no complaints.”

Old Ng considered this for a while, sipping his San Miguel beer. Then, without looking up: “You’re a good boy, Wailam.”

William wished he could do something for the Ngs. They had been so kind to him. It seemed wrong that such good people should have so little. He thought of Fourth Outside Uncle. There was a man with everything, yet he could turn away a penniless relative from his door. Human nature was really unfathomable.

This was in early December, William’s second and last year at the school in Aberdeen. He wanted to go to college, but the Ngs could not afford it. William especially wanted to go to Hong Kong University, the colony’s premier institution. His only chance was to get a scholarship; and there was precisely one full scholarship offered in mathematics, awarded by competitive examination, the examination William had just sat for.

Since the events of the summer he had withdrawn from his classmates altogether and buried himself in study. The school had no library, but William had joined the main Hong Kong public library over in Central district, on the other side of the island. You can walk right over the spine of Hong Kong island, from Aberdeen to Central, along quiet roads and tracks that avoid the Peak and offer spectacular views of the colony, the mainland, and the South China Sea. William often took this walk on a Saturday morning, over the hills and down into the clamor of Central.

The other pole of his solitary world now was the University bookstore on Pokfulam Road. The general library in Central had few books on higher math, and he had long since absorbed them all. The University bookstore had a much richer collection. He could not afford to buy them, of course—the cheapest were forty or fifty dollars—but he could browse as much as he liked, and in this way he managed to get all he needed, working out the exercises in his head, or memorizing them to take home and attack with paper and pencil.

*

A few days after the examination William went to the University bookstore to browse. The problem of the tessellations had stuck in his mind, and he had worked out a generalization, but needed to know more about Group Theory. However, none of the books was helpful. William’s mind wandered, and he drifted aimlessly for a while among the shelves.

There was a section, separate from the main mathematics books, of almanacs, ephemerides, statistical and nautical tables. These had a certain fascination for William. They reminded him of Abramovitz and Stegun on Father’s bookshelf, in another world long ago. Pulling down these books at random to savor the numbers all in their ranks and files, William found himself looking at some bond tables. He had no idea what a bond was, much less any inkling of rates or yields; but he at once saw the smooth regularity in the numbers, and mentally sketched a curve to fit them. The book was a compendium of business statistics, including long lists of prices of various kinds of securities and commodities on the exchanges of the world, up to the year 1969. Some of the numbers flowed regularly on simple curves, like the bond yields; others seemed to fluctuate without rhyme or reason.

The endless columns of numbers, and their odd, tantalizing patterns of behavior, caught William’s interest. He hiked round to Central and found the same book in the library’s reference section. William took the book back to a desk and scanned through the pages. The commodity and currency prices seemed to be the most irregular. Working mentally—he had no writing materials—he tried doing first and second differences, but the randomness just increased. Irritated, he tried comparing different commodities over the same time periods. This was more fruitful: there were patterns of reflection and inversion. Thoroughly captured now, William begged a pencil and some paper from the librarian, and settled down with the columns of numbers.

At dinner that evening he asked Mr Ng about commodities. He didn’t know the Chinese word, and Mr Ng didn’t know the English, so they had to look it up.

“I know,” said Mr Ng. “There’s an exchange. Like the stock exchange. Business people buy and sell those things. The exchange regulates it.”

“Can anybody do it? Buy and sell, I mean.”

“I don’t think so. You need a pot of money, anyway.”

“A broker,” said Mrs Ng. “You need a broker.”

William and Mr Ng stared at her. “Since when do you know about these things?” asked Mr Ng.

“Old Mother Lo in 621 plays the stock market. She told me all about it.”

Mr Ng stared at his wife. “Old Mother Lo? She hasn’t got two pennies to rub together.”

Mrs Ng laughed merrily, delighted with her secret. “She’s a miser. Her husband used to live in Canada, you know. He had money saved. She really shouldn’t be living in public housing at all.”

“This broker,” asked William. “Who is it? What does he do?”

“He handles the buying and selling. Ordinary people aren’t allowed to. You have to have a license. Well, he has a license. He lends you money, too. To buy the stocks. It’s called trading on margin.”

“Since you know all this stuff, it’s surprising we’re not rich,” sniffed Mr Ng.

“We never have any money,” Mrs Ng smiled back. “What would we buy with?”

“But you said the broker lends you money,” put in William.

“Mmm, yes. But still you must put up a deposit. I can find out if you like.”

They sent her off to consult with Old Mother Lo. When she was gone, Mr Ng asked: “Why do you want to know about commodities and brokers?”

“I was reading a book in the library, about commodities. The prices of different ones are related in some way. It’s complicated, but I can figure it out. If you watch what one is doing today, sometimes you can tell what another one will do tomorrow. Gold and platinum, for example. If gold goes up more than three days in a row …”

He tried to explain to Mr Ng, but could see he wasn’t doing very well. It was hard to express without using mathematics. Just as Mr Ng’s perplexity seemed to be crossing over into actual physical pain, Mrs Ng came back with Old Mother Lo.

“It’s a thousand dollars minimum,” said Old Mother Lo. “They won’t deal with you for less than that. But if you put up a thousand you can trade for ten thousand. They take a cut, of course.” She gave them a long lecture on stock trading, but seemed to know nothing about commodities.

They gave Old Mother Lo some sticky rice cakes and sent her home. “I don’t know why we’re talking about this,” said Mrs Ng when the old woman had gone. “We’re never going to have a thousand dollars.”

“Might be able to raise it,” said Mr Ng, looking at William as he spoke. “I haven’t asked my family for anything for a long time. And your people … well, there was that loan last summer. But we repaid that at New Year. Won’t hurt to ask.”

“You’re crazy!” Mrs Ng laughed at him. “Playing the stock market with borrowed money! Crazy! We’ll be in debt all our lives!”

“It’s not stocks, it’s commodities. And young Wailam here seems to know what to do.” Mr Ng had not taken his eyes off William. “Don’t you?”

“I think so. But can we really get a thousand dollars?”

“If it’s a sure thing I can get it. Is it a sure thing?”

“Maybe. I’m really not certain. I need to read some more.”

“A sure thing but not certain!” Mrs Ng reached across the table and slapped her husband playfully on the cheek. “Wake up, old turtle! We’re not business people! We’re like donkeys and oxen, born to work.”

“Let him do his research. If he says it’s a sure thing, I’ll believe him.”

And so William went into the commodities markets. Mr Ng made the rounds of the relatives, and somehow raised a thousand Hong Kong dollars—a hundred and seventy U.S. at this point in time. William was too young to have an account at the brokers, but Old Mother Lo introduced Mr Ng, and the broker took him on. William watched the price of gold, matching the patterns. On the appropriate day, he told Mr Ng to buy platinum futures. They put in the entire one thousand, on margin, and tracked the investment in Mr Ng’s daily newspaper.

“Can’t see much movement,” complained Mr Ng. “It’s inching up, but hardly enough to cover the commission.”

“Wait,” said William. “Wait.”

They waited. Gold hesitated, as William had expected it to; then sagged. Silver trailed gold. Platinum turned up, climbed, then soared.

“Get out now,” said William. “First thing in the morning.”

They had made a sixty per cent profit in a month. Mr Ng got the brokers to write out a statement for him, and brought it home, and set it on the dining table where they could all wonder at it.

“Five thousand eight hundred dollars,” said Mr Ng. “I have never had so much money in my life. Never seen so much.”

“It’s a miracle,” said Mrs Ng. “But if you won all this, somebody must have lost it.”

“I can do it any time,” said William.

His second venture, however, was less successful. He had developed a complicated rule he called the W Theory. According to this, when the price of gold had executed a symmetrical W shape on one of his time series, silver would fall and then rise. This worked, but not as well as he had hoped, and their profit this time was just four per cent. Still, Mr Ng’s confidence in him was now total.

“If we can play a few more like this, you’ll be able to go to the University after all,” said Mr Ng.

William tried a new, vastly more complicated ploy: returning to platinum, but with cross-bets on silver, gold, and three different currencies. This time he had to monitor the trades himself, as Mr Ng had been unable to grasp the strategy. Day by day William checked the listings in the South China Morning Post. The Yen and Deutschmark rose against the dollar, then parted company in just the even, symmetrical way he wanted, like the opening petals of a flower on his graph. When their curves had diverged to a pretty cornet shape, he sold silver and bought gold. When his figures summed to a certain figure, he sold Deutschmarks and gold, bought dollars and platinum. Platinum obediently rose, rose, rose—not by any means beyond his wildest dreams, but strongly, sufficiently. It would rise through to the end of the week, he knew.

Or thought he knew. On Wednesday platinum stalled; on Thursday it dropped like a stone. Mr Ng enjoyed his first margin call, or would have if he had been at home to take it. Not being at home, his positions—futures and currencies all—were liquidated.

“Big new platinum find in central Africa.” (This was the broker, when Mr Ng and William went there on Friday morning.) “The French cut a deal with the government. Mining will start soon. Demand pretty fixed, you know. Get a new supply, prices gonna drop. These things happen.”

It could have been worse. The silver trades, plus the appreciation of the Yen, had almost covered their net deficit. By the time they walked out of the broker’s office they knew that they were only four hundred dollars poorer than when they had started six weeks before, except that the thousand dollars Mr Ng had borrowed from his relatives had disappeared into the futures market along with all their winnings.

“I’m sorry,” said William, as they walked down Nathan Road to the Star Ferry. The broker was on Kowloon side. “Really sorry.”

“Guess it’s true what people say,” said Mr Ng: “The markets are really a lottery.”

“I’ll get it back,” said William. “I’ve got a new theory …”

“Using what?” Mr Ng wasn’t mad, but he wasn’t smiling, either. “We’ve lost our funds. I owe a thousand to my cousins and four hundred to the broker. Not to mention lost wages from taking the morning off work. No, let’s learn our lesson. No more markets. We are small people, working people. We shouldn’t get involved in these rich man’s games.”

“But then how can we pay back what we owe?”

“Oh, we’ll go short for a while.” Mr Ng shrugged.

“I’ll get a job after school.”

“No, you won’t.” Mr Ng stopped, and faced William. “This is not your fault, don’t feel bad. I’m the head of my family. I took the decision to invest. I had too much faith in you. No, not in you, Wailam, in your mathematics. Seeing that examination paper you brought home, I thought, wa!—a person who can understand this stuff can surely crack the stock market. But the market is a worldly thing, and mathematics is a mental thing. I didn’t think of that. You’re just a kid, you don’t know anything about the world. No-one could expect you to think of it. But me, I really should have. A new platinum mine in Africa! Who could predict it? How could your mathematics tell you that? So I didn’t think things through as I should have done. Now I am much wiser. It cost me fourteen hundred dollars, that’s all. But you know …” he grinned up at William, “… wisdom is cheap at any price.” He laughed—freely, genuinely, at himself. “So don’t worry about the fourteen hundred. We’ll get it together somehow. But no more market games!”

*

Back on Hong Kong side they went their ways, Mr Ng to his job in North Point, William back to Aberdeen for school. The bus went along Pokfulam Road past the University. Little hope now of studying there. That damn Question One! It was his fault, like the fiasco with commodities. He had been overconfident. If only he had gone straight back to it, in that extra couple of minutes he could have perfected his proof. After all, who was he to be so confident? A country boy from a town no-one had heard of. A vagabond, a thief, bum-boy to a foreign devil, plaything of an acha nymphomaniac.

William reached school overcome with shame and self-doubt. He had intended to slip into the last class of the morning, which was English. However, one of his classmates met him at the lab door.

“Wailam, where have you been? The Principal wanted to see you.”

So now he was to be scolded for skipping classes. Well, it was no more than he deserved. Resigned to his fate, William made his way to the Principal’s office. One of the secretaries sent him straight through. The Principal was a small, clerkish fellow named Kong. Somewhat to William’s surprise, he stood up as William entered, grinning unnaturally from behind his thick glasses.

“Well, well! Congratulations!”

Taking this as sarcasm, William momentarily wondered if Principal Kong had got wind of his speculations on the commodities exchange.

“Our star pupil! Such an honor for our school!”

Principal Kong had come out from his desk to shake William’s hand. William was baffled. This did not seem like sarcasm. Kong shook William’s hand with both of his, like an American.

“What … I’m sorry. I know I was late in today, but …”

Principal Kong raised his eyebrows and stepped back. “Did Mr Cheui not tell you? I thought he had told you. Then it is my pleasure to tell you!” He was beaming, clearly delighted about something.

“Tell me?”

“You have won the math scholarship to Hong Kong University! You placed first in the whole territory!” (Hong Kong people, speaking in Cantonese, never said “colony.”)

“Really? Oh!”

“Not only that, but you got a perfect score. One hundred per cent! The first time in twenty-seven years! It’s a sensation! Perfect score! Such an honor for our school!”

Mr Ng smiled when William told him, and nodded his satisfaction. “Sak Ngong lost his horse,” he said. “Sak Ngong lost his horse.” This idiom referred to an old story about a man named Sak Ngong—“Sai Weng” in Mandarin.

Sai Weng Lost His Horse

There was a man named Sai Weng who lived near the Wall. One day Sai Weng lost his horse. His neighbors expressed their sympathy, but Sai Weng only said: “Human beings cannot understand the play of fortune and misfortune. It is too complex. Perhaps some good will come of this.”

After a few days his horse came back, bringing with it a herd of wild horses from the grasslands of the west. Sai Weng captured and tamed the wild horses. His neighbors said: “What good fortune! With these horses, you can be considered a rich man. It must be a gift from Heaven!” Sai Weng only said: “Who can tell? Perhaps some evil will come of this.”

Sure enough, one of the horses, whose blood was still wild, threw Sai Weng’s son. The son broke a leg and became lame. When Sai Weng’s neighbors came to offer condolences, he only said: “Nobody can understand the ways of Heaven. Perhaps some good will come of this.”

Soon after that, barbarians broke through the Wall. All the young men of the district were conscripted to fight them, and all the young men were killed. Sai Weng’s son, however, was not conscripted because he was lame. So of all the people in his district, only Sai Weng had a son to care for him in old age.

At the University William was interviewed by four members of faculty in a pleasant little sitting-room overlooking the campus. They introduced themselves to him one by one, coming up out of their armchairs to shake hands, all of them addressing him in English. Three of them were Europeans, one Chinese. The Chinese, and one of the Europeans, seemed to be full Professors.

“You gave a very impressive performance, young man,” said Professor Meld, when everyone was seated again.

“Avoided all our little traps,” chuckled Lecturer Moore.

“You were the only one who made a dent on Question One,” said Lecturer Michaels. “Nobody else got anywhere with it. The pons asinorum.”

“And your change of coordinates,” said Professor Cheung. “I had not thought of it myself, until I saw your solution.”

“Thank you,” said William. “Thank you.”

Chapter 32

Excessive Purity Turns Away Affection

Weilin Finds the Tinder Box at Last

It was in towards the end of his first year at the University that William’s disappointment became acute.

The University was run on the British principle: students were required to pay their fees and were expected, though not required, to attend lectures and examinations. Nothing else was asked of them at all. This was not the best possible environment for a nineteen-year-old with underdeveloped study habits and a budding obsession with the financial markets.

There was, furthermore, an undue concentration on logical rigor in all the courses. William had been aware of this aspect of mathematics from his high school studies, but had never before felt so hindered in his advances through mathematical topics by his instructors’ insistence on pausing to construct strict proofs of even the most obvious assertions. He chafed under this puritanism, felt more keenly than ever his lack of early training, and fled to the University library, which had good historical tables covering all the major financial indices.

At the end of that first year their Analysis course culminated in Jordan’s Curve Theorem, which asserts that every simple closed curve in the plane—a circle, for example—possesses both an inside and an outside. The instructor stretched out the proof over three lectures, in the third of which William fell asleep, having spent the previous evening in the Ngs’ apartment constructing a model for the short-term movements in the prices of U.S. money-market instruments. He took a scolding from the lecturer, a good deal of cheerful joshing from his classmates, and passed his first-year exams the following week with only a middling mark.

“Don’t waste this opportunity,” preached Mr Ng on the first week of summer vacation. “I can see you’re not satisfied. Things can’t always go the way we want, you just have to stick them out.”

“It’s just that I thought things would be more practical once I got out of high school,” said William.

The second year things only got worse. In Algebra they were taught group theory, ring theory and field theory, in none of which were the objects of their attention any less abstract than rotations and permutations. In Analysis they explored Riemann surfaces, which could only be adequately visualized by regarding the heretofore-friendly Cartesian plane as a sheet of infinitely stretchable rubber, capable of being folded over on itself an infinite number of times. The lecturer in Applied Mathematics, a fierce lanky Scotchman with red hair and beard, attempted to persuade them that Newton’s laws of motion merely described lines of least distance in certain curved n-dimensional spaces. William developed a strategy for evaluating the comparative worth of stocks by taking ratios across, instead of within, the balance sheets of the underlying companies. He itched to try it out on the Hong Kong market, but had no funds.

In the British academic calendar, three semesters comprised one year. Tuition fees were payable at the beginning of each semester, which was also the time William received each portion of his scholarship. Being privately funded, the scholarship came to him as a check. He cashed this check at the University bursar’s office, paid his tuition fees for the semester at the registration office, and gave the balance to Mrs Ng, who managed the family finances.

At the beginning of spring term, in January 1977, William cashed his check but did not pay his fees. Instead he went out of the University and down into the business district. The broker recognized him, and made small jokes as he wrote up William’s deposit into Mr Ng’s account, which was still open. William then gave careful instructions for some stock purchases, after which he went back up the hill to the university, and sat in the library wondering how he would explain things to the Ngs.

William’s theory about stocks proved false, or perhaps true only over a much longer term than he had allowed for. His investments stolidly failed to earn, and in fact slumped somewhat. As the weeks went by, he grew more and more despairing. Should have stayed with commodities. Fast results—either good or bad, but fast.

Meanwhile his position at the University was becoming untenable. A certain degree of latitude was allowed in the payment of fees, but after two weeks notes from the registration office began appearing in William’s pigeonhole at the Department of Mathematics. After two more weeks a large Englishwoman from that office came seeking him, cornering him as he came out of a complex variable class.

“Is there a problem, William?” asked the woman in a kindly way. “Some family problem?”

“No,” said William. “Not at all. It has just slipped my mind. I’ll pay tomorrow.”

The next day William put on the suit and tie the Ngs had bought him when he started at the University and left the apartment, explaining to Mrs Ng that there was a function he had to attend. He rode round to the business district and walked into the lobby of Talmadge Tucker.

Talmadge Tucker was an American trading firm. William had read about them in the Hong Kong Standard financial pages. They had opened a Hong Kong office the year before, “to dip a toe” (this had been the Standard’s metaphor) “in the Asian markets.” From subsequent reading, William gathered that Talmadge Tucker had not proceeded from toe-dipping to full immersion, being more averse to risk than suited the oriental temperament; but they were highly regarded none the less, as being American and therefore not likely to disappear to Taiwan one night with the clients’ funds.

The lobby of Talmadge Tucker reminded William of Blitzer, where he had studied English an age ago. It had the same dark, grave furnishings in polished wood with shining brass accoutrements, the same cream-colored venetian blinds; but the carpet was a pleasant fawn color, not green. The desk featured a pretty Chinese receptionist talking on the telephone. William waited for her to finish.

“I want to speak to Mr Wolf,” said William in English, naming the man who had been interviewed for the Standard piece.

“Have you an appointment?”

“No. I …”

“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist, concealing her sorrow with a very high order of dramatic skill. “Mr Wolf will not see you without an appointment.”

“Won’t you ask him, please, siuje?” William asked, using Cantonese for maximum connection. “I’m from the University. Department of Mathematics. We think we’ve made a breakthrough in analyzing commodity price fluctuations. I know Mr Wolf would be most interested.” William had brought with him a thin folder, outlining his theories on commodity prices. He had spent hours typing it up on the Selectric typewriter that Mathematics shared with Psychology.

“I’m sorry …”

A door opened at the side and a foreigner came through, putting on a suit jacket. “Just going for a club sandwich, Daisy,” the man said in English.

William stepped forward. “Mr Wolf?”

The man stopped, not altogether pleased. “No, I’m Murray Seidman. And you are …?”

“My name’s William Leung, Mr Seidman. I’m a student at the University. Department of Mathematics. Mr Seidman, I’m a keen student of the financial markets, and I think I can improve on the current pricing models. By an order of magnitude, I believe.”

“Is that so?” Seidman was broad, though you would not have said fat, and somewhat taller than average. He had a round, pleasant face with blue eyes. He was bald on top of his head, but had carefully brushed some hairs across to soften the effect. Now, as he contemplated William indifferently, he was making the last of the shucking movements involved in settling into his jacket.

“Why should I be interested in this?” he said.

“Talmadge Tucker is a securities firm. You deal in commodity futures, I know you do. You’re a registered broker-dealer, acting for some of the biggest investors in America.”

The man smiled—a tight, cautious smile, but a smile for all that.

“You want me to give you a job, is that it?”

“Mr Seidman …”

Unexpectedly, the man laughed.

“You Hong Kong kids, I love you. You’re so hungry! Tell you what, young man. You can walk with me up to the sandwich shop on the corner. If you can convince me to give you a job by the time we get to the counter, you’re in. If not, I’ll buy you a sandwich. Deal?” Not waiting for an answer he turned, opened the outer door, and went through it without looking back. William scrambled to follow.

*

It was some days before William dared tell the Ngs, though he thought they must have noticed the change in his routine. Mr Ng took it much better than he had feared.

“I always said nobody got rich from mathematics,” said Mr Ng. “How many doors did you knock on before you got this job?”

“They were the first one I tried. I planned to go to every trading firm in Central, but I got lucky first time.”

Mr Ng sighed. “Well, I won’t say I approve. Whatever you want to do, it seems to me you’d do it better with a university degree. It would have been wiser to stick it out. However …” he shrugged, and looked across the dinner table to his wife, “… to get a job with an American firm, that’s no small thing. With no recommendation and no qualifications …” He laughed. “It shows ability and guts. Shows you’re not afraid to break down doors.”

“And the money will come in handy,” said Mrs Ng, pausing from shoveling rice into her mouth. “Seven hundred a month—wa! The Americans live like emperors!”

*

Mr Sheldon Wolf, though the nominal chief executive officer of Talmadge Tucker Hong Kong, was hardly ever on the premises, William soon discovered. He was a man of meetings: meetings in Tokyo, in Singapore, in Sydney, in New York. There seemed no limit to the number of meetings at which Mr Wolf ’s presence was considered indispensable. Day to day affairs were handled by Murray Seidman, and it was to Murray that William reported.

William had hoped for a trading position—buying and selling securities with the firm’s own funds, for the firm’s own inventory. This proved to have been an unrealistic aspiration. As an unknown quantity, he was assigned at first to Equity Research, performing financial analysis of local firms so that their stock could be evaluated. If, in the opinion of the analysts, the stock was undervalued, Talmadge Tucker would buy for their own account, and advise their clients to buy.

William was surprised to find that he had already taught himself much of what was required, during his development of what he called the cross-ratio theory some months before. Balance sheets and income statements quickly yielded their secrets to him. In his spare time he developed a refined version of the cross-ratio theory, and spent half his first month’s wages implementing it. He had his own account now, with Talmadge Tucker—employees were not permitted to conduct securities business with other brokers.

His shares gained slowly for six weeks. Then one of the firms involved was the subject of a glowing profile in the Chinese press, and its stock price soared. William cashed in an eighty per cent profit and took his theory to Murray.

“Interesting,” said Murray. “But a little exotic. I couldn’t commit TT to a strategy like that.”

“But look at my returns.”

Murray looked, and shrugged. “One swallow doesn’t make a summer. Could be a fluke. Look, William, it’s great that you’re doing all this research—in your own time, I think? I hope—and cooking up all these mathematical theories. But the methods and strategies we use here at TT have been tried and tested over decades. You can’t expect us to go out on a limb with something like this.”

They were in Murray’s office, Murray behind the desk in his black leather executive swivel chair. It was Murray’s habit, when discussing things at his desk, to straighten out paper clips and throw them over his shoulder. He had just straightened one, and now he jabbed it towards William to make his point.

“You’re a diamond in the rough, William. I can see your head is buzzing with these wild ideas—all this math and statistics. But you’re working now in a billion-dollar industry with tried and true ways of doing things. You have to learn those ways. It’s like art: you have to pay your dues, do your still lifes and your landscapes, then you can experiment with abstract painting. Otherwise people won’t take you seriously.”

Murray tossed the paper clip over his shoulder, swung forward and pushed William’s worksheets back across the desk to him.

“Don’t worry, William.” He laughed, the broad open American laugh William liked. “We’ll make a respectable financial analyst out of you.”

For all his outward caution, Murray privately thought William a genius. He had never been any good at math himself, and held the younger man’s mathematical skills in exaggerated, though well-concealed, awe. He believed what he had said, though: that William was rough, unschooled, and needed the discipline of two or three years dogged analysis—studying actual firms and their actual financial statements—before his wild theories could find any practical application. Still he understood William’s worth, and respected what he always called his hunger, and so when the training proposal came through from New York, it was William he thought of at once.

Talmadge Tucker, like most Wall Street firms, sent out recruiters to the best colleges and business schools every summer, looking for the brightest prospects to take on as analysts. After two years of back-office drudgery these youngsters would be considered for positions on the trading floor, or in management. This year, with awakening interest in Far Eastern markets, the firm decided to fill two of these positions with native speakers of Asian languages, the better to come to grips with financial statements printed up in Japanese or Chinese. They accordingly asked the Tokyo and Hong Kong offices to put forward recommendations for these two positions. Murray proposed William.

“It’ll be tough,” he told William, across the desk in his office that September. “In New York they’ll work you to death. And you’ll be working alongside high flyers, Uncle Sam’s best and brightest. Don’t go pushing your graphs and charts at them, not the first two years anyway. Just listen and learn, let them educate you.”

There was a great fuss over travel documents. It dragged on for months. William was a Hong Kong resident—technically a subject of Her Britannic Majesty, but with no right to a British passport. His citizenship was Chinese; but whether this meant that he owed allegiance to Beijing, or to Taipei, or to both, neither of them seemed willing to tell him. With Talmadge Tucker pushing, it was all sorted out at last, and in January 1978 William landed in New York, pitifully ill-equipped for the freezing air, and rode a cab to TT’s fine grand offices at Wall and Nassau.

*

It was Jeffrey who showed him the computer. There had been a computer at the university, of course, an ICL mainframe. The Department of Mathematics had had four teletype terminals, and the students had all had to learn FORTRAN. William had learned with everyone else and had done the required programming exercises, but it seemed to him like a trivial discipline, mechanical and uninteresting. There had been no computers at Talmadge Tucker’s Hong Kong office and William thought he had probably forgotten FORTRAN.

Jeffrey was William’s first friend in New York. He was an American, of course, a recent graduate of the Wharton school—one of the previous summer’s intake of young financial analysts, assigned with William to Fixed Income Support. Jeffrey was tall, with the broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped physique of an athlete—the figure Americans call “rangy.” Though smart and hard-working, he had an amused, irreverent attitude to things, an attitude William found very engaging. He liked William at once, and took it upon himself to induct William into the little mysteries of New York office life: how to use the phones, the copier, the fax, how to fill out a medical-insurance claim or expense voucher, where to get the best sandwiches and doughnuts, the right way to eat a bagel, hail a cab, order a drink.

“This is New York, Willy boy,” Jeffrey was wont to say. “In New York you have to walk a little faster, talk a little faster, and think a whole lot faster.”

“Willy boy” was one of Jeffrey’s names for William. Others were “Professor,” “The Chink with the Chart,” and “The Graph Paper Geek”—the last two alluding to William’s endless calculations, with which his desk at the office was always cluttered.

William wondered about Jeffrey. Did more than wonder, in fact; he fantasized, with a quality of graphic immediacy he himself found shocking. But the business with Fong had left his appetites stunned and stunted. He had been celibate, if not precisely chaste, for over three years. Jeffrey was open, friendly and mildly protective, but gave no indication whatsoever of deeper interest. He had a regular girlfriend, a brisk pretty girl named Grace, who accepted William readily and easily; but William’s past experience of human affairs had left him with no conclusions at all about the exclusivity or otherwise of sexual orientation. Pushing away the fantasies as best he could, William accepted Jeffrey’s friendship gratefully, tried hard to understand his jokes, and shared with Jeffrey some of his more straightforward theories about bond pricing.

They were in Jeffrey’s apartment when Jeffrey showed him the computer. Jeffrey shared a two-bedroom on Thirty-Third Street with another guy, also one of the young analysts. The apartment was a glorious mess of skis, sweaters, jackets, tennis racquets, laundry, bedding and dirty dishes. It was from this chaos that Jeffrey extracted the computer one evening in May.

This was not a mainframe. In fact, you could hold it in one hand. It looked like nothing more than a large electric-typewriter keyboard, with attachments you could plug in to a TV to make a display. There were other attachments that could be connected to a cassette recorder, so that you could save your work on tape. Jeffrey showed him how the computer could play a game, a silly business with space aliens trying to land and a gun with which they could be destroyed.

“How about programming? Do you use FORTRAN, or what?”

Jeffrey knew nothing about programming, and had never heard of FORTRAN.

Somehow, this time, the computer hooked William. He began spending more and more time at Jeffrey’s apartment, fiddling with the odd little keyboard. There was a programming language built into the machine, he soon discovered; a simplified version of FORTRAN called BASIC. He began running some of his yield calculations through the computer, using this BASIC. At his suggestion they bought one of the new daisy-wheel printers, going halves on the expense. By the fall of that year, 1978, his interest in the machine far surpassed Jeffrey’s, and Jeffrey was beginning to grumble about never getting a chance to watch TV. William bought the computer, and Jeffrey’s share in the printer, and a TV set of his own, and set up the system in his own apartment, a tiny dark studio on Second Avenue, with a bed that folded down from the wall. He developed a way of displaying yield curves on-screen, and began to notice things he had never noticed before. Things which, as it soon turned out, nobody had ever noticed before. In October he invented the Bosco.

The Bond-Originated Securitized-Collateral Obligation met with a cool reception at Talmadge Tucker. William took it to Overstone Bruys, the manager of Fixed Income Research. Overstone Bruys frowned, then laughed.

“I can’t see our investors going for a thing like that,” he said. “Too complicated. How on earth do you calculate the yield?”

“Why, it’s just a program. We could have it print out tables. It’s only a function of four variables.”

Overstone Bruys laughed again. “William, William. Try telling the CFO of some bank in Pokeville, Alabama that you want to sell him an instrument which isn’t exactly a stock, and isn’t exactly a bond, and whose yield is a non-continuous function of four variables.”

“It is so continuous. It’s the first derivative that’s not continuous, that’s all.”

Overstone Bruys drummed on his desktop with the eraser end of a pencil, and looked again at the graphs William had printed out. They were very neatly done; William had figured out how to make the daisy-wheel place a dot anywhere in the page, to an accuracy of one-thirtieth of an inch. He liked computers now.

“Sorry, William. It’s ingenious, but I don’t see a market. Too strange.”

“That’s what they said about interest-rate swaps. Now everybody’s doing them.”

The manager nodded. “True. But a swap’s easy to understand. You’re exchanging one kind of obligation for another. With this thing the investor can’t see what he’s getting.”

“He’s getting a conservative instrument, backed ultimately by the full faith and credit of Uncle Sam, with an exceptionally stable yield curve.”

Bruys laughed again, shaking his head. “Sorry, William. Did you get those Treasury spreads for me?”

William told Jeffrey about the Bosco, though he had not yet thought to use the acronym. Jeffrey listened, grinning across at William impishly as William went through the mathematics.

“The Graph Paper Geek,” he said when William had finished. “You tried to sell this to Bruys?”

William confessed that he had.

Jeffrey laughed. “You’re crazy. This white-shoe crowd will never go for that stuff.”

“White-shoe” was a term that surfaced repeatedly in Jeffrey’s talk. It apparently referred to the old-established Wall Street firms, with their wood-paneled executive offices, their patrician Managing Directors, their conservative trading strategies. Jeffrey himself came from a lower-middle-class background, his father a school administrator in Long Island.

“It’s us against them, Willy boy,” he liked to say when he was riding this particular hobby-horse. “The white shoes versus the white trash. Or in your case, yellow trash.”

William took the Bosco to the only other manager he knew well enough, the man in charge of the government desk down on the trading floor. The result was even more negative.

“Why the hell would we mess up perfectly good securities like that? Commingling different kinds of Treasuries? I couldn’t even say if it would be legal.”

“Then let’s have Legal look at it. Legal and Regulatory both. To make sure it’s okay.”

The desk manager shrugged. “All right. Put in the request. You can use my name. But I don’t think it will fly.”

Legal and Regulatory were unenthusiastic but not negative. Legal issued a 12-page opinion asserting that, provided the proper agreements were signed and in place with the appropriate counterparties and/or investment advisors (see suggested form of agreements in Annex C), and contingent upon there having been obtained the necessary and appropriate signed trading authorizations from same (Annexes D and E, with provision for event of default), the obligations as presented did not infringe upon any aspect of current securities law, reserving only that … Regulatory wanted daily reporting of positions and segregated trading accounts, but could see no breach of rules. William took the opinions back down to the desk manager. Now, however, the man was frankly brusque.

“Maybe it’s legal, and maybe the SEC won’t jump all over us. But it’ll never get past the Trading Committee. Think of the trouble they gave us with interest-rate swaps. This is a whole lot more derivative.”

“Won’t you bring it up with them anyway? Since we’ve gone to the trouble to get opinions.”

The desk manager shrugged. “All right. Give it a try.”

But when William checked with him after the Trading Committee’s monthly meeting, the desk manager had gone from brusque to icy.

“No chance to bring it up. Sorry, kid.”

“You’re the wrong color, that’s what,” said Jeffrey, across the desks in the tiny cluttered office they shared. “Face up to it, Willy boy: you’re a slitty-eyed gook, a yellow-belly Chink. You’ll never cut the mustard with the TT crowd. They took you in to sit here in the back office reading Chinese quarterlies. You’re not supposed to go around inventing new kinds of securities. I say, Cuthbert …” (Jeffrey had adopted an exaggerated mock-British accent, the white shoes all being devout Anglophiles, apparently), “… know what that little coolie of yours had the nerve to ask me? Could we start trading some cockamamie instrument his momma back in Ping Pong Po has cooked up? Bit of a cheek, what? Ta ta old boy, knock me up in the mornin'.”

A few days before Thanksgiving Jeffrey invited William out to lunch in a restaurant. When they got there there was a third man waiting for them. He was fat, disheveled and sweating in a heavy gray coat with a black fur collar, and obviously Jewish even to William’s untrained eye—nothing at all like the sleek traders and managers at Talmadge Tucker. Jeffrey made introductions.

“Lenny Goldfarb, William Leung. Lenny does Fixed Income for Wechsel Cassidy Bruno. I told him about you.”

“Not so much told as sold,” said Goldfarb. “Jeffrey here says you’re a fucking genius.”

Jeffrey nodded. “See, Willy boy, I’ve been thinking about our position there at TT. You, like I told you, they’re never going to let you out of back office. Don’t want your chinky little face darkening up their annual reports. Me, I’m not in a much better condition. My Dad doesn’t belong to their yacht club, my grandma didn’t come over on the fucking Mayflower, and it’s going to be a long hard climb for me. But there’s other firms on the Street that have a more open attitude.” He nodded at Goldfarb.

“What d’you know about Wechsel Cassidy?” asked Goldfarb.

William shrugged. In truth, he did not know much, having little insight into the Wall Street pecking order. “I know you’re a big player,” he said. “Corporate bonds, commercial paper. Trading, underwriting. High yields.”

“Right. Big, and gonna get bigger. We need bright young kids like yourself and Jeffrey here. Not to turn cranks in the back office, clearing equity margin crap for little old ladies—to be out front trading and selling, or on the computer playing the angles. These old white-shoe firms, they don’t know what age they’re living in. Government controls are loosening up, trade barriers are coming down. Look at the high-yield markets.” He laughed. “TT aren’t even players. They don’t believe in the fucking things!”

“Thing is, Willy boy,” put in Jeffrey, “I’m going to jump ship. I think the opportunities are better at Wechsel. And the career path faster. It’s gonna be tough, they look for results right away. But I’ll be on the trading floor where I can make things happen.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“Like I said, you’re not going to get anywhere at TT. After twenty years, maybe they’ll make you a VP, so long as you promise not to scare the clients with your yellow gook face. It’s a dead end for you, Willy boy.”

This was a new way of looking at things for William. He had felt obliged to Talmadge Tucker for giving him the chance to work in New York, for giving him a job at all. His heritage, his tradition, his blood told him that his loyalty was to Murray, who had opened the door for him, and to Talmadge Tucker, whom Murray represented. On the other hand, he suspected that Jeffrey was right about his future prospects. His failure to get anywhere with the Bond-Originated Securitized-Collateral Obligation reinforced that suspicion.

“Did you tell him about my ideas for a new type of collateralized obligation?” he asked Jeffrey.

“Sure he told me.” Goldfarb nodded eagerly. “I didn’t follow the technicalities, I must admit. But that’s the kind of new thinking we’re looking for. We’ll look it over and give it a shot, if we think it’s worthwhile. But we’d like to have you join us anyway. Your pal here says you’re a real whiz at research.”

“That’s where I’d be working, in research?”

“Sure. We’d give you the run of our computers. We’re getting these new desktop models in for all the research geeks.” Goldfarb laughed. “No offense. But Jeff says you’re the geek de la geek.”

“How about my visa? I think it’s only valid if I work for TT.”

Goldfarb laughed again. “We have immigration lawyers on staff, they’ll sort it out for you. No need to worry about that. Stuff like that, you just need lawyers. We got lawyers up the fucking Wazoo. We got lawyers in the mail room. Fucking doorman’s a lawyer.”

William looked from one to the other. He thought of Murray, and what he owed him. Then he thought of the long road he’d traveled from Seven Kill Stele. Then he summoned up the not inconsiderable amount of Wall Street smarts he had absorbed these six months past.

“Make me an offer,” he shrugged.

*

The work environment at Wechsel Cassidy Bruno was quite different from TT’s. The desks were more often steel than mahogany, the lights garish fluorescent in place of subdued recessed spots, the carpets were scuffed and coffee-stained, and when a meeting was called it was called, the floor manager—a Marine Corps veteran—yelling down the desks MEETING! ASSHOLES AND BELLY-BUTTONS, ON THE DOUBLE! HUP TWO THREE! instead of, as at TT, circulating a memo three days in advance with the precise time and location printed up and a room booked with club sandwiches and coffee catered.

The Bond-Originated Securitized-Collateral Obligation was a tough sell, though, even here. William went over it in detail with Lenny at the end of his first week. Lenny frowned.

“Is it legal? To commingle securities like that?”

William showed him the opinion from TT’s legal department, which he had photocopied and brought with him. Lenny grimaced, turning the pages, struggling with the attorneys’ Esperanto.

“Looks all right,” he said at last. “Will anybody buy it?”

“I’ll be glad to make a presentation to the sales force. Any time.”

Lenny laughed. “We’re not too much in the way of making presentations here at WCB,” he said. “Call the fuckers up. See what they say.”

William called every sales rep in the company directory. None displayed much interest. The best reaction was from the San Francisco rep: “If it’s available, I can probably sell it.” San Francisco, thought William, putting down the phone: the Golden Mountain! [The name by which the city is known in Cantonese.] He told Lenny what the San Francisco rep had said, coloring it as best he could to make it sound like a general opinion among the sales force.

“All right,” said Lenny. “Bundle up a few of these things, total face value no more than five million, and see if the sales force can move them. Run ’em up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.” (Which was a thing everyone said at that time.)

It was the San Francisco rep who christened the new security “the Bosco.” William had called him back. He called him at lunch time—start of business on the West Coast—and again in the evening of the same day. He called him the next day, and the next, and every day for a week. He called the other reps, too, though not daily, and perfected a line of patter: Perfect hedging instrument in the current interest-rate climate, and Innovative product with superior yield potential, and Full faith and credit of Uncle Sam with enhanced-yield profile. Thinking to himself: Heaven, I’m a salesman to the sales force.

The San Francisco man sold a Bosco to one of the bigger California banks. The Denver office used them in a portfolio deal with a midwestern investment advisor. Then nothing for three weeks. Then Forbes.

It was the Forbes piece that got the ball rolling. The business magazine was doing a series on derivative instruments—indexes, options, swaps—and it happened that the San Francisco rep for Wechsel Cassidy Bruno was a leading propagandist for currency swaps, then a new thing. The Forbes people interviewed him, and he started talking about the Bosco. Perfect hedging instrument in the current interest-rate climate, he said. Full faith and credit of Uncle Sam with enhanced-yield profile. This was just before Christmas. When trading picked up after New Year’s, everybody wanted Boscos in their portfolios.

All William knew at first was that his routine twelve-hour days were stretching to fourteen, sixteen hours. He was given two trading assistants to do the drudge work of trawling through the firm’s inventory for suitable combinations of securities to be packaged as Boscos. Then he got his own paralegal to keep track of the agreements. Then a programmer, quickly expanded to a project team, to develop regulatory and exposure reporting. He was promoted to Vice President, and his base salary raised to $100,000. He asked for, and instantly got, the very latest personal computer, an Apple with all the software then available.

Still he could not keep up. As well as being a convenient financial instrument for big institutional investors, the Bosco had been picked up and carried along by the zeitgeist. It was the time when financial markets were expanding, government controls loosening, business barriers coming down. The staid, gentlemanly little world of bond brokerage was being infiltrated by the Lennys and Jeffreys—smart young men and women from the suburbs, with open minds, immense appetites for work, and a quite disgraceful reluctance to defer to the way things had always been done. Innovation was in the air.

In June of that year, 1979, William gave his first newspaper interview. It was the trade press, Institutional Investor, and Lenny said he should do it, so he did it. To William’s surprise and everyone else’s Institutional Investor front-paged the story, with an evaluation of the Bosco so upbeat it might have been put out by Wechsel themselves, and a photograph of William across three columns. Suddenly everyone knew William Leung, the Golden Geek. Powerful desk managers from the trading floor came upstairs to shake hands with him. He was called in to see the Managing Directors, who stood to shake hands with him one by one, and presented him with an offer so sensational it got a column on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. A base salary in the high six figures; one million dollars “sign-on” bonus to begin a new contract; annual bonus for the current year not to be less than five million dollars. Title of Director. His own trading desk, with his own traders, dedicated to the Bosco business. A full-time support staff of paralegals, programmers, trading assistants and administrators. A new section to be established in Operations for clearance of Boscos, and a new computer system dedicated to this function. A blank check for personal computer equipment. (“When you look at what he did with that Radio Shack piece of junk,” said WCB’s Chief Information Officer, “it might not be a bad idea to give him his own mainframe.”)

The bonus paid to William in January 1980 was, in fact, $12 million, plus an assortment of stock and options worth half as much again. He banked it all, having no time to spend it—though at Lunar New Year he sent $100,000 to the Ngs in Hong Kong. He still had the studio apartment on Second Avenue, having had no time to grapple with real-estate agents and little use for an apartment anyway. He frequently slept on the large couch in his new office on the trading floor, and still owned only one suit. He was becoming a legend on the Street: the Nerd of Nassau, the Chinese whiz-kid, the Bosco billionaire. His business card—everyone with rank A.V.P. and above had cards printed up for them by the firm—became a collector’s item, trading for thirty dollars in the secondary market. Visitors to Wechsel’s trading floor would be shown the glass-walled enclave where William and his minions worked their magic, and would stand staring, hardly willing to breathe for fear their cherished glimpse of William Leung’s wrinkled shirt back might turn to mist and vanish, as in a fairy story. William did interviews in that same office for Forbes, Business Week, Fortune, Investment Banker.

William had found the magic tinder box. In March, striking the flint a second time, he invented the Mosco, constructed on the same principles as the Bosco, but with mortgage-backed securities instead of Treasury paper as the underlying bonds. Mortgage-backeds were trickier, but fundamentally just as conservative. The pricing and yield calculations were fiendish, but with a full 128K of computer power on his desktop they were eventually standardized. Wechsel made no great effort to keep the Mosco under wraps, in fact made a prefatory announcement; and when the new instrument was launched in May the markets went into a feeding frenzy. The MDs met in solemn conclave, William’s base salary crossed into seven figures, and he was given an oral guarantee of a $20 million minimum bonus payable in January 1981.

By the end of the year every bank, savings and loan, and pension fund in the country had a drawer full of Moscos. Wechsel split off a subsidiary, Wechsel Cassidy Bruno Financial Engineering, to handle the Bosco/Mosco business. For regulatory reasons—he was still a Chinese citizen—William could be only an employee of the new entity, not a principal; but WCBFE was awash in profits before the ink was dry on their letterhead stationery, and William’s salary disappeared into the stratosphere.

Now the mainstream press was taking an interest. The New York Times interviewed William for a front-page story in its business section. Newsweek ran a cover story on “The New World of Securities Trading,” highlighting derivative instruments, profiling William with a picture of him in his office, and devoting a full-page sidebar to explaining the Bosco and Mosco. Lenny persuaded William to abandon his computer for long enough to attend Wechsel’s Christmas party, held at the Waldorf Astoria. The whole room turned and applauded when William walked in.

In January William banked two bonuses—one each from WCB and WCBFE—for a total of fifty-five million dollars. When this was known in the Street, the Journal front-paged him again, and ran a stern editorial about out-of-control remunerations, trading instruments based on esoteric mathematics, and the need to show restraint in a potentially inflationary environment. Then at the end of January William found himself on the cover of Time, alongside a caption reading: “The New Breed of Financial Wizards.” He actually bought a copy—the first non-technical publication he had bought in two and a half years—and took it back to the poky studio apartment on Second Avenue to read. There was no interview; Time had requested one but William had declined. He thought the New York Times interview of some weeks previous had cut a little too deep into his background (“… escaped from Red China by swimming across the open sea … raised by family friends in Hong Kong …”) He regretted having been so frank with them and was wary of further revelations.

*

William was getting a lot of mail at the firm now. It had been running at ten or fifteen private letters a day since the New York Times article, rising to thirty or forty after Time put him on the cover. Most asked politely for investment advice. Some were frank begging letters. A few were from lunatics. William could not be bothered with them, and had one of the executive secretaries look through them in case there might be anything of interest. It was this person, a trim lady in late middle-age, twenty years with the firm and a byword for efficiency and discretion, who came to him three weeks after the Time cover, carrying an airmail letter.

“From Shanghai,” she said, “according to the postmark. And all in Chinese, of course. I thought you might want to look at it.”

William looked, hardly recognizing the characters of his own language at first. Then the letter began speaking to him in a voice rough—barely literate in fact—but clear.

It suddenly seemed to William that for two, two and a half, years he had been toiling alone in a diving bell at the bottom of the ocean, sifting nuggets from the sea floor mud, the outside world making itself known only by an occasional muffled clanging or thumping on the walls of his prison. Now there was this voice, loud and plain as could be, and William tasted again the memories of poverty, of desperation, of comradeship, of fear.

Chapter 33

Enterprise Blossoms in the Middle Kingdom

Big Fu is Overwhelmed by Greatness

“When I heard the machine-gun I thought for sure it was the sticks,” said Asan, lighting another cigarette. His cigarettes were State Express 555, an American brand. He lit them with a gold lighter the size of a small brick.

“I was down below, looking for good hiding places. And lucky for me I found some. I found the best one, in fact—right down on the keel, under the duckboards. Up to my ass in stinking water. Well, they came poking around but they didn’t find me. I heard the machine-gun again—I guess when they were shooting at you in the water. Then it got quiet and I chanced a look out through the window in the living quarters. I saw them sailing away. I still thought they were the sticks, so when they were far enough away I figured I was safe and went up on deck. Just as the real sticks were arriving from the other side! That’s why the pirates took off—they saw the coast guard coming up. And the stupid fucking sticks, instead of going after the pirates, boarded us! I’d gone below again, but they found me. They knew I was down there somewhere, they’d seen me come up on deck.”

Hearing Asan use the word “pirate” brought everything back, all too vividly. Oddly, William had never named the pirates in his thoughts. They had seemed to him elemental, unnamable, demon spirits from another region. But of course, they were just pirates—Occupation: Pirate. Kin to the wild but fascinating characters that had charmed him in Treasure Island as a child. Thus did William grasp for a moment the difference between literature and reality—a difference which is often revealed to bookish people too late, or never at all.

Asan looked like a million dollars. Natty western style suit, crisp white shirt, Shandong silk tie. Even here, in the bar of the Shanghai Mansions, he stood out. There were foreigners here—with China opening up now, there were foreigners everywhere—but most favored slacks and open-necked shirts. The Chinese were still in Sun Yatsen suits (which the foreigners called Mao suits, and which were, in point of fact, Lenin suits), though the kind of high-status Chinese who had access to the Shanghai Mansions were all smartly dressed, with decent leather shoes. Only William and Asan were in western-style suits. Asan had actually been wearing shades when he came in—a foreign designer brand, with a tiny label still stuck to the top corner of one lens—but these were now on the table in front of him, with his State Express cigarettes and gold lighter and Qingdao beer.

“Well, the sticks pulled me in. They could see I wasn’t a fisherman. It was no big thing, not compared with what happened to Little Fu anyway. I saw his head, the poor kid’s fucking head, rolling about right there on the deck. I lost my fucking lunch when I saw that, no kidding. After that I didn’t care what they did with me, just so long as they did it on dry land, away from those pirates.”

Asan paused to take a pull on his beer. The watch that appeared discreetly from under his shirt cuff as he reached for the glass was a gold Rolex.

“So what did they do to you?” prompted William.

“I got a year in a camp in Guangxi Province. What a dump! The work wasn’t bad, but Ai! the food. I was a bag of bones when I came out of there! Then after I’d done my time I was supposed to stay there. They said even though I’d done the time, the camp was my unit now. I was a free worker, but I had to work there, in their stinking quarry, for five bucks a week. Well, I said fuck that and headed back to the northeast.”

“Didn’t they try to stop you?”

“If they did, they didn’t try very hard. Well, of course I couldn’t afford to get a ticket all the way to the northeast. Shanghai was as far as I could get. Just like when we set out, you remember?”

He laughed at the symmetry, and took another pull at his beer.

“I remember very well,” said William. “And it seems you stayed here.”

“Yes. It wasn’t really intentional. Just happened. I thought it would be the decent thing to do, to call on Mrs Fu and tell her about her boy. Shit, why’d they have to do that?”

“I don’t know, Asan. They were very bad guys.”

“You got that right. You saw them do that? Take his head off?”

“Yes, I saw.” William thought he didn’t want to say anything to Asan about what the pirates had done to Little Fu before they killed him. He could see that even at this distance in time—it had been more than ten years ago—Asan was still genuinely upset about Little Fu.

“Those mother fuckers. Well, anyway, I went to see Mrs Fu. Her old man had died a few months before. Then I had to tell her her younger son was dead. She kind of knew, anyway. It had been a year and a half, and she’d heard nothing. But she’s a strong lady. Didn’t shed a tear, not in front of me, anyway. Her older son was still in the northeast, of course. So she was pretty lonely. She was glad to have me around, I guess. Anyway, she let me stay there. She was very kind. Because I’d been close to her son, I guess. She sort of felt having me around was like next best to having him around. And there was her religion, of course.”

“Oh, yes. She’s a Christian. I remember.”

“Yes. There’s a nest of them in Shanghai. They take turns to meet in each other’s houses. When they came to her house, of course I felt I had to take part. Wa! how they go on! Singing, chanting sutras, praying! It scared me to death. I mean, what if somebody heard them from the street? It’s against the law, to be a Christian. I told her right out, she could get arrested.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that would mean Yesu had chosen them to be martyrs. It would be a great honor, she said.”

“You have to admire their nerve.”

“Maybe. But I wasn’t going to get pulled in for counter-revolutionary activities. I’ve seen all I want to see of Reform Through Labor. So I knew I had to get out of there. Well, I’d been checking out Shanghai. It’s a lively town. Was, even then. This was, what? ’72, early ’72. I got back into the book business. Oh, there were book stashes all over Shanghai. It was easier than Flat All Around. I was going round all the units, nosing around, finding out where the Red Guards had stored the things they took. In Shanghai it wasn’t just books, it was all kinds of stuff. Paintings, porcelain, antiques, gramophone records. Shit, I had two stalls running. But Shanghai people are smart. The units realized they could cut out the middle man and sell the goods themselves. I lost my suppliers. Things were tough for a while. Then Mrs Fu got me an introduction to Old Zhang. He’s a big wheel in the Railroad Bureau. It was through him we got our tickets to the south, remember? Well, I got to thinking about how difficult it was to move around the country. Just getting a rail ticket is a killer. But there’s a big demand, you know. Aside from official business, the Cultural Revolution scattered people all over the country, so now there are more people than ever who have to travel a thousand miles to see their relatives. Most people do it through their units, of course; but there’s still a lot of folk that just want a ticket. And there are generally tickets to spare, if you don’t mind going by an indirect route. It’s just a question of connecting the buyer and the seller.”

William laughed. “So you’re China’s first travel agent.”

Asan waved this aside. “That was just the beginning. Big Fu takes care of that now. Little Fu’s brother, that is—I brought him down from the northeast. He didn’t have a residence permit, but then, neither did I. We were making so much money it didn’t matter. Now I’m working on freight. That’s the thing nowadays. This last couple of years they’ve been licensing private factories in the country districts all over. They need raw materials, and they have to move their stuff. They can’t do it through the Bureau, it takes six months of standing in line to get the fucking permits. So they come to me and I fix it. It’s very profitable.” Asan laughed gaily. “I’m a real capitalist.”

“You certainly seem to be doing well. But aren’t you afraid the wind will change?”

“So if it does, what can I do about it? Live for the moment, that’s the slogan in China nowadays. There have been many changes, Little Liang. After Lin Biao got his ticket punched in ’71, nobody cared about class struggle any more. They knew it was just a game among the leaders, with the common people as pawns. They started looking to their own advantage. You’re right, of course: if there’s another Cultural Revolution, I’ll be out of business. Well, I survived the first one, and I’ll survive the next one. At least this time I’ve got some funds squirreled away.”

“Your funds won’t help you, if the Red Guards come along.”

“Not if they’re in China, no. But if I can stash something away overseas, in America say, I’ll be more secure. I wanted to ask you about that. Do you know a way to do it?”

William laughed. “I should have known you had a proposition.”

Asan shrugged. “We have to help each other. You can’t say I didn’t help you in the past.”

“No, I can’t. All right, we’ll figure something out. It’ll be tricky, with the currency non-convertible, but there’s always a way.”

They finished their beer. Asan wanted to show William his apartment. William called the waiter over and asked for a check. The guy did a double-take, then went away. Asan was grinning.

“What? What did I do?”

“Tell you outside.”

Asan had a taxi waiting outside, an ancient black Skoda with wooden fixtures and worn leather seats. “Hired him for the whole day,” he explained to William as they got in. “He’s all right. I know him. You can say anything.”

“All right. But what did I say back there that was so funny?”

“Oh. ‘Settle the account.’ You said to the waiter, ‘settle the account.’”

“That’s funny?”

“That’s bad. Things change fast in China nowadays, Little Liang. Things change, words change. You’re out of touch.”

“Why? What’s so bad?”

“‘Settle the account’—those are loaded words in China now. You should say ‘add it up.’”

“What’s the difference?”

“A lot of people got persecuted in the sixties and seventies. You know that. Now they’ve got their authority back. They’re going after the people who persecuted them. ‘Settle accounts’ means taking revenge. Also repaying a favor. Somebody gave you a break, you know, you repay the favor—that’s settling accounts, too. But mostly it means revenge. You remember the Cultural Revolution, you know what it was like. Not too many people were getting breaks.”

Asan’s apartment was very grand, inside a new-built compound with a big iron gate. There were parquet floors, air conditioners, some fine new furniture—hi-fi in brushed-chrome cabinets, a huge Japanese TV. The rooms smelt of new paint and floor polish. The door had been opened for them by a middle-aged woman with a rough peasant face.

“Housekeeper,” explained Asan when they were at ease on the balcony. “She’s ugly, ain’t she? But she keeps the place clean and doesn’t distract me. I tried having a live-in girlfriend. Forget it! Whining, arguing, spending all your money, You Don’t Pay Attention To Me. Who needs it? I can get fresh young pussy any time I want it, why waste time over it?”

It was a warm March afternoon. From an alley outside the compound could be heard the sound of children playing. Somewhere in the middle distance some heavy machinery was working: thunk, thunk, thunk. The housekeeper had brought them iced Pepsi before retiring. On the glass-topped coffee-table were some glossy Hong Kong magazines, and Asian versions of western magazines—including the copy of Time with William on the cover, which had caused Asan to write his letter. It was an English-language publication, and of course Asan couldn’t read a word of it; but he had recognized William’s face and had someone translate the article for him.

“You should start a family,” said William. “You can’t go on living like a wayward teenager for ever.”

“Why not? I like it. It suits me. A family? Hey, sure. When I retire, maybe. Ten years from now. Someone from a decent family herself, with good connections. Connections are everything, you know, Little Liang. I tell you, there isn’t an official in Shanghai who doesn’t know me. I flatter them, kiss up to them, bring them gifts, help them out with their problems, send nice clean girls over to play Kiss The Lizard with them. And they’re all connected to the other cities: Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou. I travel round the country, and get an Emperor’s welcome anywhere I land up. I tell you, Little Liang, life is good.” Asan laughed easily, and flicked his cigarette over the balustrade into the courtyard below.

Inside the apartment a telephone began to ring. Asan turned his head at the sound, but made no move. He was looking thoroughly relaxed, having removed his jacket and tie on entering the apartment. And his shoes, of course: he and William had both put on soft leather slippers, and had their feet up now on recliners. William could hear the housekeeper taking the call. She came out to the balcony. “It’s Mr Hou in Chongqing,” she said.

“My main contact in the interior.” Asan got up to take the call. He was gone for some time. Sitting there on the balcony, looking out over the rooftops, William’s thoughts drifted. He had left Shanghai a pauper, returned a millionaire. What if he were to go back to Seven Kill Stele? He recalled one of the old poems:

I left home young. Now, old, I return.

The local dialect hasn’t changed …

The poem had been one of Mother’s favorites. Thinking of Mother, he thought of Father, and of all that had happened. He could see clearly the room he had known in the Professors’ block at Hibiscus Slope Teachers’ College: Mother’s character scroll on the wall, Father in his chair listening to the gramophone, the window above the bed looking out to Mount Tan. The hollow behind its screen of bamboo; Yuezhu dancing in the twilight. Now the old rage burned in his stomach. He tried to turn his thoughts away from it, but could not. Such an ache, after so many years! This phrase—settle accounts …

Asan had come out through the sliding door on to the balcony, and had been standing by the door grinning down at him in his reverie.

“What?”

“How much are you worth, Little Liang?”

“Huh? Heaven, I don’t know. It’s all artificial anyway. On paper? Eighty, maybe eighty-five million.”

“So much? Really? Wa! That means you’re probably the richest person in China at this moment.”

“Mmm. If you don’t count Hong Kong, that’s probably right.”

Asan lit a cigarette and went over to the balustrade. “Makes my little enterprises look like very small turnips.”

“Don’t say that. You’ve done amazingly well, in a very tough environment. And laid a good foundation. With all your connections, I mean. If China stays open for a few years, you’ll probably end up richer than me.”

Asan had turned and was leaning with his back to the balustrade. He smiled at the possibility. “Maybe. But you know, it’s not the money. It’s the things you can do.”

“Is it? I really haven’t thought about it. Been too busy making the money. I’m not sure you’re right, anyway. In America, what you can do is strictly controlled by the law.”

Asan laughed. “Yes. That’s your disadvantage. In China, there is no law. Only connections.”

*

At Asan’s suggestion, they went to see Mrs Fu. She still lived in the old winding alley off Sluice Gate Road.

It was eerie to come again, after so many years, to the same door in the same wall. Seeing Asan had not been eerie because he was so transformed, from a coarse young delinquent to an individual of wealth and influence. Here, by contrast, very little had changed, except that everything seemed much smaller and dingier than William remembered. The furnishings of the reception room were just as they had been, the only exception a character scroll on the wall facing the window out into the courtyard. It was a peculiar sort of character scroll. Most character scrolls were old poems, from the Tang or Sung dynasty. Sometimes they were exhortations or maxims, from Mao or (in Hong Kong) from Mencius. This one was nothing like that. Presumably it was a sutra, a Christian sutra.

The Master of Heaven is my shepherd.

I lack nothing.

He takes me to lie down in green fields.

He leads me beside calm waters.

He restores my spirit.

He shows me the way of benevolence and truth—praise to Him!

Even if I walk through the valley of death’s shadow, I fear nothing,

For he is with me, His strong hand comforts me.

He spreads a banquet for me in front of my enemies.

He crowns me with fragrance. My bowl overflows.

I know that righteousness and justice will follow me through this world;

And then I shall live in His Hall of Peace for ever.

Mrs Fu was exactly the same, too. You couldn’t even say she looked ten years older. Same straight-backed dignity, same calm, sad face. There were other people living in the house, it seemed. A girl had opened the street door for them, a coarse young girl with a thick Zhejiang countryside accent, acting apparently as a house servant. And as they were seated talking in the reception room a very old man came in, and crossed the room without paying the slightest attention to them, tapping his way forward slowly with a stick, disappearing down the corridor that led to the bedrooms. Mrs Fu did not seem to feel obliged to explain the presence of these people, only commenting, after the old fellow had gone: “He’s blind, I’m afraid.”

“Asan tells me you have done well for yourself in America,” said Mrs Fu.

“Yes,” said William. “I have been lucky.”

“I hope you are sharing your good luck with those who are less fortunate. That’s the right way.”

“I’m afraid I really haven’t done much in that direction. I have been too busy to think of it.”

“It’s never too late.” Mrs Fu smiled at him. “The Master of Heaven is very patient.”

Big Fu came over to have dinner with them. He was indeed a big fellow, square and handsome, in whose face William could see the ghost of a shadow of Mr Fu, as he remembered him on his bed of death. He was in smart casual clothes—slacks and loafers, short-sleeved shirt in pastel blue—and sported the compulsory gold Rolex.

“We thought you had died,” he said, shaking hands. “Asan said you jumped into the sea, far from land, to escape my brother’s fate.”

“I was lucky,” said William. “I am very sorry about your brother.”

“I will consider you my brother,” said Big Fu, holding on a little too long to William’s hand, beaming a little too eagerly.

“For you I should have slain the fatted calf,” said Mrs Fu to William. “But I’m afraid I have lost the habits of luxury.”

They went in to dinner. The young peasant girl served table, sitting down with the others as Mrs Fu said grace, then rising again to fetch dishes from the kitchen. Mrs Fu herself helped the old blind man to his chair. There was another woman present, a plump woman of forty or so who smiled at everyone in a rather silly way, and giggled, putting a hand over her mouth, whenever anyone addressed her. These house guests paid no particular attention to William. They seemed to regard him as just another feature of the passing scene. Big Fu, however, was clearly overwhelmed by him.

“Such a great man!” he murmured, delicately placing some morsels into William’s bowl. “A Wall Street genius, sitting here at our table!”

The food lived down to Mrs Fu’s modesty: a single meat dish, some boiled green vegetables in a nondescript sauce, plain white rice, unspiced bean curd. The only drink on offer was weak red tea. Mrs Fu asked polite questions about Hong Kong and America. The plump woman giggled. The peasant girl aerated her sinuses from time to time, but was otherwise silent. The blind man said nothing. Big Fu gushed. Asan enjoyed his proprietorship of William for a while, then began to give signs of restlessness, perhaps regretting the visit. At last William was glad to get away.

Back in the taxi, which had been waiting outside for them the whole evening, Asan explained about the house guests.

“They’re just people she’s taken in. People she feels sorry for. She does that all the time since her old man died. I guess she’s lonely. The fat woman is some kind of retard. She suffered somehow in the Cultural Revolution, and it broke her mind. The girl is a whore. You know, these country girls come into the city without a residence permit, looking for work, and get themselves into trouble. The blind guy I don’t know anything about.”

“Well, she’s very kind, to take people in like that.”

“Huh! You don’t know the half of it. When I was living there, she used to bring beggars home. I couldn’t believe it—beggars she found sleeping on the street! She’d feed ’em, wash their clothes, give ’em a dollar or two, send ’em on their way. One of them had fleas. They got away from him, all over the house. I was scratching for a week!”

“Wasn’t she mad about that?”

“Not her! She said the fleas were a gift fromYesu, to teach us humility. Well, I blew up over that. I said, lady, I’ve been poor all my life, I don’t need any lessons in humility. People like that, you know, well-born people, they never have a clue what life’s like for the rest of us. They think they do, but they really don’t, and never can. It’s a closed door to them. If you haven’t grown up poor, your life is a dream.”

“You said that to her?”

“Not so much said as shouted. I was pissed off. Fleas! I spent my whole childhood picking fleas out of my clothes and lice out of my hair. Now, here in Shanghai, I finally get on my feet and suddenly I’m scratching again. I was mad.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t throw you out.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be her way. She heard me out, then she said: ‘You’re right, Little Brother, we were raised in different worlds. But we are both human and we both know how to suffer. Don’t reproach me with having lived a soft life. My last ten years have not been soft, you know very well. I have suffered a lot. That suffering is my own gift to Yesu. I offer it to him gladly. But you know, it will not be enough. Yesu especially favors the poor. Even in all my suffering, I have never really been poor. So I’m at a disadvantage with Yesu. By nature he loves you more than he loves me. So I have to work especially hard to get merit with Yesu. Don’t blame me if I overdo it sometimes.’”

“Wa! What a strange philosophy!”

“Yes. That’s how they are, the Christians. I tell you, they’re a peculiar crowd. It would never do for me. Nor you, either, I’d guess, Little Liang. But they give a good example. The world needs people like that, though I’m not sure it needs too many. Did you see how she treated you?”

“What? What do you mean? She was perfectly polite.”

Asan laughed. “Yes. But that’s not what I meant. Cast your mind back eleven years, little Liang, to your previous appearance at her door. What were you?”

“Why, I was a dirty kid. A beggar, in rags.”

“Yes. And today you’re a millionaire. Like I said: at this moment in time, you’re probably the richest guy in China. Did she treat you any different?”

“I don’t think so.”

Asan nodded. “Exactly the same. Now, I ask you, how many people will show the same face to a millionaire as they will to a beggar?”

“Very few, I should think.”

“You’re damn right. She’s the only one I ever met.”

*

The night club was an unofficial one, something Asan knew about, in the basement of a building in the old French Concession. There was a band: middle-aged men with glasses playing saxophone, trombone, double bass. They played sentimental American tunes from the forties. In front of them was a dance floor on which two middle-aged couples were foxtrotting carefully. One of the women was wearing a skirt. At a dozen little tables scattered around the room, patrons were sitting, talking in low voices, watching the dancers and the band. Men heavily outnumbered women, and hardly any of those seated were as old as the dancers, or the band. Leather jackets were popular. So were cigarettes: William’s eyes smarted from the tobacco smoke. After the dash and buzz of New York, the scene seemed to him very melancholy. It was a source of great pride to Asan, though.

“The best in Shanghai,” he said, leading the way to an empty table against the wall at one side. “They only let in people they know. I do a lot of business in here.”

A white-jacketed waiter drifted over from the bar at the opposite side. “Anything you like,” said Asan, taking out a cigarette. “Whisky, brandy, vodka, they have everything. They can do cocktails, too.” He waved his cigarette hand breezily to indicate the scope of the night club’s facilities. “Whatever you like.”

William smiled to hear the word cocktail in Chinese. Asan had used the most direct translation: “chicken” and “tail.” “A scotch will be just fine,” he said. “With water, half and half.” Then: “Things are really changing.”

Asan ordered a brandy. “Puts lead in your pencil,” he said as the waiter ambled away. “I feel like getting my end wet tonight. How about you, Little Liang? I know where we can get nice clean girls. A virgin, even, if you want one—fresh from the countryside. You can poke all her holes, same price—even give her a beating, if you like.”

“I don’t think so.” William was watching the waiter make his way back to the bar, and thinking again what he had been thinking on and off since paying the check at Shanghai Mansions. “Remember when we tried to rob that stupid bank?” he said, to change the subject.

“Shit, yes!” Asan leaned back and laughed. “That asshole we woke up. Zenme hui shi? Zenme hui shi?” He laughed again. “Flat All Around—we’re well out of that stinking dump.”

“Did you ever go back?”

“Sure. Last year. My Ma’s still there. I want to set her up down here, but she won’t come. Oh, up there everything’s just as it was. You wouldn’t know eleven years had passed.”

Asan’s manner had changed somewhat in there. He seemed watchful, expectant. He said nothing for a few beats, letting a silence develop, bringing William out.

“This business …” William had to clear his throat and start again. “This business of settling accounts. What do people actually do? I mean, to the ones who persecuted them?”

Asan shrugged. “Depends. Most often, you know, people coming back from the countryside end up reinstated in the same work unit that sent them off to shovel pig shit for ten years. Then they’re working alongside the people who sent them. Of course, if they can get any authority they’ll make life miserable for those people. Criticize them, get them in trouble with the authorities, refuse them promotions, get them moved to crappy housing.”

The waiter appeared with their drinks. William took a mouthful of the warm, rough whisky, and wished he had ordered a beer. He would have a headache in the morning, he knew. He had ordered the whisky just to appear sophisticated to Asan. As if, with all his wealth, with his face on the cover of Time magazine, he needed to prove such things! But when once two people have established between themselves which is the superior, which the subordinate, the terms are mighty hard to change.

“Whatever they can do, they do it,” continued Asan, after sipping his own drink. “A lot of those people who were running the movements back in the sixties, they have kids in school or college. When they graduate, they get assigned to a work unit. Well, there are good work units and there are lousy ones. If I helped put a cap on you in the Cultural Revolution, and now you’re back in your job at the Education Bureau, are you going to give my kid a good assignment?” Asan laughed. “The fuck you are. Stuff like that. But there’s really no limit. Just depends who you know, and what his price is. You can have somebody killed, even. No problem! In Shanghai, a thousand bucks will do it. Or get them framed on something nasty. Counter-revolutionary agitation—fifteen years!”

William felt the liquor warm in his belly. Settling accounts. Yes, accounts should be settled, the balances cleared. He sat forward, elbows on the table, and caught Asan’s eyes with his own.

“Asan, old comrade. You said you have good connections everywhere. All over the country. Right?”

“Sure.” Asan was looking at him levelly. He knows what’s coming, thought William. This is a guy who’s bargained and dealt and negotiated himself out of the gutter. He can read faces. He knows what I’m thinking.

“If you wanted to settle an account, I guess you could do it.”

“I guess. Depends on the situation. It’s a question of finding the right person. And expense—for sure that person’s going to want something for his trouble.”

“So let’s say this: With your connections and my money, we could nail anybody. Anybody in China.”

“That’s a fair statement.” Asan was still looking straight back at him—cool, unblinking. William could not keep eye contact. He looked down at his drink.

“Asan, old comrade. I have some accounts to settle.”

Chapter 34

Pilgrimage to the White Goddess

Harmony Disturbed by Strange Events

There was a flight now direct from Shanghai to Hong Kong, an old garage-sale Boeing 707. Watching the stony hillsides of south China drift past below him, William became aware of a sort of liberation, or perhaps of decompression. The two and a half years since he had invented the Bosco had been (so it seemed to him now) a kind of altered state, a single continuous obsession with his work, daily—indeed, hourly—calculating and re-calculating, sifting through screens full of securities, checking indices and interest rates—countless tiny acts of judgment, each building on the other. Not to enrich himself particularly, although it was satisfying to think of that, but for the thing itself, the columns, pages, screens of numbers, and the order that was to be found in them, teased from them. Perhaps, too (though William himself never thought of it in this way) for his father, or for Mr Abramowitz and Mr Stegun.

Now, having broken that one heroic train of thought, he perceived the rest of the world again. Asan had reminded him of that world, and of what he might do in it. The business of settling accounts had often been in his mind during the past years, but only as an abstract idea, a fantasy. To do it!—to strike the great steel plates of the world and see the dinge!—this was a new thought. Asan was right, of course; there was no limit to what he might do, at any rate in China.

And also in Hong Kong. The main reason for his visit was to pay his debt to the Ngs—to settle his account with them. He had heard Mr Ng say more than once that he would like to have set himself up in a little business, if only a small store or a delivery service, but had never had any capital. Perhaps he had already done so, with the occasional remittances William had sent. There had been nothing about it in Mr Ng’s letters; but then, he was not an informative letter-writer. Certainly the Ngs were still living in the resettlement estate in Aberdeen, though with the funds William had sent them they could have afforded much better. Well, Mr Ng would have his business, if he did not have it already. The colony had plenty of the kind of small concern that could be bought up lock, stock and barrel without injury to its assets or market. One or two million, perhaps five million—little enough, for all their kindnesses.

And what was five million, after all? Time had said he was worth eighty million at the end of 1980, and that was the figure he had given Asan. Going over his positions, William thought this was an underestimate. The true figure seemed to be more like a hundred million, at least on paper. Even in simple cash, he thought he could put his hands on forty million. His January bonuses alone had been fifty-five—subject to the income tax, of course, but still ready cash well in seven figures. He could certainly go five million for the Ngs. Although, considering that they had no business experience at all, it might be wise to start them on a modest scale.

William had arranged to be seated by one of the starboard windows, in the hope of seeing Dapeng Bay, but the colony was still covered by its New Year mists, and he thought the flight path would have been too far east anyway. When they came out from under the cloud base it was to Diamond Hill and the sprawl of north Kowloon. William had cabled Mr Ng the listed time of his flight, not knowing that planes in mainland China at that period took off when they pleased, and only ever in perfect weather. William was thus a full twelve hours late, and was not surprised to find himself alone in the arrivals area at Hong Kong International. He phoned the Ngs to apologize, checked into the Peninsula—Hong Kong’s grandest hotel—then rode a cab alone through the tunnel to Aberdeen. Both the Ngs were in the dark little apartment when he arrived.

“Gong hei faat choi!” William called out through the door grille. It was actually almost a month late to be wishing the Ngs “Happy New Year,” but in the press of work he had omitted to send them a New Year’s card, and was feeling delinquent. Mrs Ng opened the grille for him. Each of the Ngs presented him with a hong bao—the little red envelope with the family name on it in gold, containing a bank note, which married people give to the unmarried at New Year.

“Finished your business in China?” asked Mr Ng, setting up the folding table, as Mrs Ng went to the kitchen to prepare food.

“All finished. Things changing fast there now.”

“Oh, soon be back to normal. That Cultural Revolution business—stupid!”

The Ngs showed few signs of being related to great wealth. Mrs Ng had stopped working, but Mr Ng had doggedly refused to—If I don’t work I shall begin to feel old—and William had no idea how they had spent the larger part of his remittances, which he thought must by now have totaled a quarter million U.S. dollars. If he had not known Mr Ng better he would have suspected him of succumbing to the curse of the Chinese and gambling it all away. Probably they had just put it into certificates of deposit. There was an air-conditioner now, in the window on the balcony, and a huge color TV, and a refrigerator roughly the size of the Ngs entire kitchen stood awkwardly next to the chest of drawers in the main room. Otherwise all was as before. They sat at the folding table and drank beer.

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Mr Ng, when William mooted the idea of going into business. “Something manageable, with a decent profit coming in. I’ve had the idea myself, been looking round in fact. But it’s tough starting from nothing, even when you have the capital. So we’ll be partners?”

“No. I’ve no time to run a factory. The business will be yours.”

“Hey. Then I definitely wouldn’t mind. What kind of business is it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to come to the colony.”

Mr Ng nodded. “I wish you had come before. Three years is too long.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle. I got so absorbed in my work, the months just melted away.”

“So you have been like the man of Qi snatching the gold,” said Mrs Ng, laughing. The reference was to an ancient story from the philosopher Liezi.

Snatching the Gold

Once there was a man in the state of Qi who wanted to get some gold. Early in the morning he dressed himself well, put on his hat and went to the market. Arriving at the shop of a gold dealer, he snatched some gold and ran away.

A constable soon arrested him and said: “Wasn’t it foolish to snatch the gold when so many people were present?”

The man answered: “At the moment when I was snatching the gold I saw nobody, only the gold.”

William himself laughed. “Not quite like that. I didn’t really set out to get rich, or to be on the cover of Time. It was just … I got fascinated by numbers, by the prices of bonds. It’s not like stock or commodities, where you have to get into a deep study of the businesses you’re dealing with. It’s … abstract. Yet of course not abstract at all.”

Mr Ng was shaking his head, grinning. “Don’t tell me! It makes my head spin when you talk that jargon. We’re simple people, eh, Ma?”

“Simple we may be, but we picked a winner.”

Mr Ng frowned in strong disapproval. “Don’t boast of good luck, Ma. There are many twists and turns in this life, you can never know what they’ll be.” Then he cracked a grin, and raised his glass to William, looking him right in the eyes. “Don’t second-guess the future, just enjoy the present! ‘Today we have wine, so today let’s get drunk!’”

*

Settle accounts. Next morning William called first at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank to arrange some fund transfers. After that he went to see Murray at Talmadge Tucker.

“We should have held on to you,” said Murray, and laughed easily, and patted William’s back, and bought him lunch. From Murray William picked up some leads in the local business community, and spent the two days his funds transfers required following them up, visiting import-export offices, small hotels, and factories in the New Territories.

After stopping at the Hong’n’Shang again on Tuesday morning he took a cab up Nathan Road toYaumadei, where all the jewelry stores were located. Selecting one at random, he walked in. He was the only customer. There were three assistants, each centered behind a counter: front, left, right. The one in front was a fiftyish guy with glasses, the others both young women. Papa and his two daughters, perhaps, family firm. Papa greeted him with a nod, not much impressed by his jeans, plain white T-shirt, scuffed sneakers and airline shoulder bag. William turned to the prettier of the two girls and began browsing her cases. Nothing was price-tagged.

“This one?” William, speaking in English, indicated the grandest of a number of necklaces, a gold lunule studded with diamonds, set on a fine gold chain.

“Ah, one of our best pieces,” said the girl, in the same language. “Would you like to look at it?”

“I’d like to buy it. How much is it?”

Papa had come round. “A beautiful piece, beautiful,” he said. “Let me show you …” and began fiddling with the locks of the display case.

“I can see it’s beautiful,” said William. “I want to buy it, if the price is right. How much?”

Papa could not be deterred from bringing the thing out on its bed of black velvet.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. “Beautiful.” He turned the lunule carefully into the spots, to give the customer its best refractions.

William looked ostentatiously at his watch. “I’m rather busy,” he said. “If you could just quote me a price.”

“Hm. Ah, this one … three hundred thousand, I’m afraid.”

“And this one?” (A lovely brooch—diamonds and rubies, in the shape of a butterfly.)

Papa was very carefully replacing the lunule, positioning it just so. He closed the case, and opened the next one for the brooch. “Sixty thousand,” he said, without further prompting—perhaps beginning to suspect he was being practiced on by this hippie.

His suspicion only really began to show half a dozen items later, at which time he stopped bothering to open the cases and merely read off the prices. A hundred and twenty … eighty … two hundred and ten … The girls had given up on William altogether, and were gossiping quietly in the doorway back of the center counter, until two more customers came in—an elderly Japanese tourist and his wife. Papa greeted them rather too emphatically in bad Japanese, switching William off for a moment, then turned back to him, very brusque, as one of the girls took them in hand.

“Anything else?”

“I don’t think so,” said William. “What’s the total?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The total. For the items you’ve quoted me.” William repeated himself in Cantonese for clarity: “Haambalaang do chin?”

At this point William, who was rather enjoying himself, thought the old boy might really throw him out. But no; he went back over the thirty-odd items William had selected, totaling them up doggedly on a pocket calculator. To avoid embarrassing the Japanese couple with all this nonsense, he just turned his hand so that William could read the calculator display. Five million, eight hundred and forty-four thousand Hong Kong dollars—just short of a million U.S.

“Four million cash,” said William.

A blank stare. “Excuse me?”

“Four million cash.” William set the airline bag on the counter and unzipped it. The Hong’n’Shang had bundled the money in fifty thousands—a hundred five hundreds each bundle, bound with a paper strip. He set them out in stacks of ten bundles on the counter, eight stacks. The Japs were staring, pop-eyed, the girls too. Papa had slipped into catatonia.

“If you could just wrap them for me.”

Papa jerked back to life. “Ha ha! Mister, ah. Ha ha ha ha ha! Four million … I see! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! But, ah, you see … The total …” he looked at his calculator, but somewhere in his confusion had erased the display. “Total is … five million and … I think it was eight …” He lunged frantically at the calculator, keying numbers in a frenzy.

“I think four million is very fair. Of course, if you don’t agree …”

Recovering his wits, the old boy held out for five five, soon came down to five oh, then stuck hard at four eight. Understanding perfectly well that, after a couple of feints for the door by himself and staged displays of desperation on both sides, they would eventually settle at four five, but tired of the game, William set out sixteen more bundles. Papa and the second girl went into overdrive, rattling open display cases, matching items to boxes, deploying reams of fine pastel tissue paper. With everything packed, the airline bag was a dead weight on his shoulder, much heavier than William had expected. He shook hands with Papa, then with the girls, who blushed and bowed; then, for the hell of it, with the Japs, who really bowed. Outside, William flagged down a cab and negotiated a price to the New Territories.

The village had changed little. Same single dusty street, same rickety jetty. The whole place apparently empty, as before. But there was a power line now, coming down on poles from the hillside, and every dwelling had a TV aerial. William told the cab to wait by the jetty, and walked down the street to the temple. Stepping inside from the bright sunlight, all he could see at first was Guanyin. She was a new Guanyin, or—more likely—had been newly painted: all white, except for the flesh-colored face and a painted-on necklace of bright green. In front were some little offerings: some tangerines, strips of squid pressed and dried.

William had not been quite prepared for Guanyin’s scale, which he had remembered as life-size, and had scaled down further in his anticipations after finding Mrs Fu’s house smaller than he had recollected. In fact she was at least twice life-size, this obscured by her being in a kneeling position, and none of the necklaces could meet its clasp. There was, however, a long gold chain, worked in the form of a rope, which could make the circuit of Guanyin’s neck. He fastened this, standing up on the plinth to close the clasp, and fixed ten or fifteen other pieces to it. There was a filigree gold tiara that, with some careful bending, sat on her head. The rest of the pieces William draped over her arms and hands, or just laid on the plinth by her knees. It was a remarkable display when done, the diamonds glittering and flashing even in this dim light.

William stepped back—noticing, for the first time, that there was a boy standing at the temple door. The boy was tiny, three or four years old probably, dirty and entirely naked, though this was still March. He was staring at William with an expression of extreme idiocy. William dismissed the boy from his mind. Kneeling in front of Guanyin he made bai, then a full koutou, knocking his head nine times, three times three, on the bare earth of the floor. Three times three, what was that? Oh, the bird man opera Gordon had liked so much.

The infant backed away, then ran away, as William left. The bright spring sunshine made William’s eyes squint. Down at the jetty the cab driver was reading a pornographic magazine and smoking a cigarette. William had him drive back to Kowloon. He took a nap at his suite in the Peninsula, got a haircut at the hotel barber’s shop, then rode the ferry to Wanchai, the district on Hong Kong side where most of the bars were. The first two bars had nothing he was looking for; as in a fairy tale, it was the third that yielded up a fine strapping Danish sailor in a smart white uniform, who was entirely willing to do what William suggested, in exchange for free run of the room service at the Peninsula’s premier suite.

*

Mr Ng thought the button factory would suit him best. Not many product lines, the business easy to master. The equipment reasonably new, the finances in good shape so far as he could tell, the location good, room for expansion, plenty of people used to factory work. Mrs Ng would enjoy the design side, and personnel matters—interviewing the workers and so on. He felt sure he could handle marketing, financing, the sales force, import-export. A nice little business: always a demand, raw materials no problem, turning over a few million a year. Not beyond his scope, not at all.

William felt pleased. Old Ng was a level-headed sort. He’d been afraid he might go for the electronics firm, which William felt, on reflection, really would have been beyond his abilities, and which he regretted having included in his short list. Old Ng had made a sensible choice, though.

“But will he sell?” asked Mrs Ng. “Such a nice business! Is he really willing to sell?”

“If the price is right, he’ll sell,” said William.

He spent the next day in Kowloon with Mr Ng: a lawyer, an accountant, a separate firm for the audit (you can’t be too careful in Asia), back to the Hong’n’Shang to talk terms, up into the New Territories to look at the factory. The owner—a young playboy type who had inherited the factory from his uncle—was gambling in Macau, but there would be no problem with the sale. Mr Ng had sufficient grasp of things, there was a good steady manager in the factory, and what Mr Ng couldn’t handle would be covered by the attorneys.

William had wanted to do some real-estate shopping, to set Mr Ng up in a nice apartment reasonably near the factory, but Mr Ng wouldn’t hear of it.

“You’ve paid me back, son, setting me up with this business. This is the chance I never had. Up to me to make it work, make a profit. When I have profits, I’ll buy an apartment and a car.”

They went to the tiny supermarket in Ocean Terminal and loaded up with imported beer, then back to Aberdeen and sat drinking and talking until late at night, Mrs Ng laughing merrily at them as they got more and more flushed and maudlin. Instead of going back to the Peninsula, William slept in his old bed that night, his old bunk bed, waking next morning to the sound of children in the courtyard below, birds singing on the mountainside above, and the small cheerful kitchen noises of Mrs Ng making breakfast.

*

Mr Chauncey Yip was vexed. He was sitting in his tiny, windowless office in Kowloon with a Chinese newspaper spread on the desk. The thing that had vexed him was an article in the paper, a report that the government was to bring in drastic new penalties against mail tampering. A good forty per cent of Mr Chauncey Yip’s business involved acquiring and opening other people’s mail. This called for the cooperation of Her Majesty’s servants at the post office, appropriately remunerated of course. Presumably that cooperation would now be harder to obtain, or would command a higher price.

Hearing footsteps on the bare concrete stairs that led up to his office, Mr Chauncey Yip hastily slipped the newspaper into a drawer and leaned back in his chair, pretending to scrutinize some papers on a clipboard, an attitude he thought appropriate to a busy man of his calling. The client, when he appeared, was a smooth-faced young fellow wearing dark glasses. Scruffy clothes but not of the cheaper sort. He had dressed down for the visit, as sensible people do when setting out to engage a service whose scale of fees is unknown to them. The accent mainland, western—Sichuan or Hunan originally, though only just discernible through excellent Cantonese. Mr Chauncey Yip rather prided himself on picking up these little markers of speech, gesture, clothing. He liked to think of himself as a man who took his work seriously, a cut above the general run of private investigators—defrocked policemen, embezzlers left unprosecuted to save the company’s face, front men for the triads, men who had failed at everything else that can be done in the way of business with only a desk and a telephone for fixed assets.

“I am representing a gentleman who needs an investigation carried out. Following the investigation, certain actions may be necessary.”

Mr Chauncey Yip was on guard immediately. The colony was by no means what it had been, in the days before the Independent Commission Against Corruption came up. There were all kinds of creeps and snoops around, looking for illegalities.

“Certainly. We are a reputable firm, of course. We proceed strictly according to the law. I can’t commit us to anything that might be considered improper.”

“Of course. In the event you think anything is outside your rightful scope, naturally you must say so.”

“Just so. Now, this gentleman you represent …”

“All the relevant details of the gentleman are right here.”

The client took a fat brown envelope from an airline bag he was carrying. He set the envelope on the table in front of Mr Chauncey Yip, who picked it up and peered into the open end. The envelope contained two neat bundles of orange bills. Mr Chauncey Yip, who had been here before, quickly computed the amount: a hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars.

Mr Chauncey Yip swallowed involuntarily. Not a snoop, no. A snoop would never bid so high. Just a punter with more money than sense, who wanted some dirty work done. Bread and butter, bread and butter. (“White rice gruel” was the actual expression in Mr Chauncey Yip’s mind.) Mr Chauncey Yip was a gambler, and when he had regained his inward composure the gambler’s instinct asserted itself.

“I am familiar with this gentleman,” he said, putting the envelope down precisely midway between the client and himself, open end to the side. “But, you know, I could have sworn he was somewhat bigger.”

The client snatched up the envelope, stood, and stepped back. “This gentleman is very well known everywhere!” he exclaimed angrily, the southwestern accent coming right out. Sichuan Province, definitely. “He is accepted in all business offices! If you don’t consider …”

“Yes, yes!” Mr Chauncey Yip had got up and come round the desk. He took the client’s arm. “Yes,” he soothed, “yes of course. It’s quite all right. I recognize the gentleman now. He is exactly as he should be. Ha ha ha! No need for disagreement. Ha ha ha ha!”

Both seated again, the envelope in his drawer, Mr Chauncey Yip leaned back, put his fingertips together, and said: “We are, however, a firm of investigators. There are things we cannot do. In the event some actions are required that are beyond our powers, there are specialist consultants we can call on. I shall attend to these things personally. Now, this investigation.”

“A person to be located. Information about the person and his family to be gathered. After that, I shall tell you how to proceed. Here is the person’s name, and the last address I have for him. He is no longer at that address. Nor is he listed in the telephone book. That’s all I know.”

Leaning forward slightly, Mr Chauncey Yip glanced at the scrap of paper the client had pushed towards him. A name, and an address in Waterloo Heights. Mr Chauncey Yip, who had been working the colony for twenty years, knew the name perfectly well, and the first part of the investigation was already complete, though of course he would not let the client know this. He thought of the nice fat brown envelope in his desk drawer. No longer vexed, no longer vexed at all, Mr Chauncey Yip nodded.

“I shall attend to everything personally,” he said. “Personally!”

*

It was at or about this time that a number of curious events came to pass in widely distant parts of China. Whether these occurrences were directly related or not will never be known for sure.

In the small country town of Hibiscus Slope in the far southwest a struggling young schoolteacher, whose name was Liang Yi, was notified, quite out of the blue, that he had been selected to fill the post of assistant principal at an exclusive school in the provincial capital, with a large, airy apartment and all travel expenses paid for, a twentyfold increase in salary, and responsibility for educating the children of all the province’s most important people, with the benefits that would naturally accrue from such connections. Liang Yi had not even applied for the position—nor, in fact, even known that it existed.

As if to compensate for the astonishing good fortune of this obscure person, a college lecturer in that same town, actually a Party member with a hitherto spotless file, was arrested for counter-revolutionary activities. A police search of his house turned up government documents marked TOP SECRET and some printed pamphlets from Taiwan calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party. The lecturer, whose name was Wang Baojiang, wept and screamed his innocence, but he got fifteen years anyway. His wife divorced him, his children changed their name, and six months after sentencing the unfortunate man died of dysentery in a labor camp on the Qinghai plateau.

Two thousand miles away on the plain of central Manchuria, in another small town, a veritable shower of gold descended on a certain Tang Zhuohou. Comrade Tang was a low-grade clerk in the district’s Civil Affairs Office. His fortunes had been at a low ebb since the end of the Great Cultural Revolution five years before. Comrade Tang had never been involved in the cruel excesses of that period, having been too old to be a Red Guard; but when the staff of the district’s Civil Affairs Office had been purged in ’67, Comrade Tang—being of an impeccable poor-peasant background and possessing a modest secondary education—had found himself suddenly elevated to the position of Secretary in that office, with responsibility for innumerable issues relating to the birth, marriage, death and relocation of a hundred thousand people.

A decent and conscientious man, Secretary Tang had done his best to discharge his duties fairly. However, he lacked the political skills needed to stay on one’s feet in those troublous times. When the Gang of Four was overthrown in ’76 and the Cultural Revolution officially brought to an end, the staff purged in ’67 had come back and settled accounts with those who ousted them. Comrade Tang had been criticized as a leftist opportunist and demoted to a petty clerical function. For five years he had been wearing the tight shoe, reporting to people filled with a spirit of vengeance toward him, drawing a salary just sufficient to keep his family from starvation.

Then came the shower of gold: a letter arrived from the Bank of China in New York. It informed him that a distant relation of his had died in that city some months before. According to the terms of this person’s will, a sum of money had been deposited in interest-bearing securities in Comrade Tang’s name. The monthly interest on these securities, transmitted automatically to Comrade Tang’s own local branch of the Bank of China, was over eight hundred American dollars—a staggering sum by the standards of northeast China. Oddly, the letter did not mention the name of the deceased. Comrade Tang would dearly have liked to discover it, since, as best he knew or was able to learn from inquiries among family members, he had never had any relations at all in America.

These oddities were not restricted to the mainland. In Hong Kong at about this time there was an even stranger incident. It was reported in all the colony’s many newspapers, including the English-language Standard, Post, and Star. The eleven-year-old son of a wealthy man was snatched from the street as he left school one evening, bundled into an unmarked van, and disappeared. The family expected a ransom demand but contacted the police anyway, and the police officers wondered to each other whether the European fashion for kidnapping had been taken up by the Colony’s underworld.

Next day the boy turned up at the remote eastern end of the New Territories near Dapeng Bay, with a tale no-one could make sense of, then or ever. The kidnappers had blindfolded him and driven him a great distance. After a long interval when nothing happened, he had been put into a boat, which had then traveled across water for some considerable further distance. The blindfold was removed, to reveal open sea under moonlight. Before he could get a look at any of the kidnappers, the boy was thrown into the water and the boat sped away.

Fortunately the lad was a strong swimmer. He made it to shore, walked several miles to a fishing village, and telephoned his family. The newspapers made much of this odd business, none of them failing to note that the boy was the only grandson of Mr Xu Yiming, central figure in the great U.S. Navy Purchasing Scandal of ’79, who had died peacefully the previous year in Taiwan, whither he had fled when the ICAC investigators got too close.

It may be that these odd inharmonious influences even crossed the mighty Pacific. Early one breezy spring morning the students of a martial-arts school in Tacoma, Washington went to pay respects at Lake View Cemetery in nearby Seattle, in which lies the resting-place of the master Li Xiaolong, known to them by his American name, Bruce Lee. The grave had few visitors now, and the students were astonished to find it invisible beneath a mountain of flowers.

The flowers were made up in various ways: great circular wreaths eight feet across, thick-bordered photographs of the Master set up on easels, Chinese memorial tablets with white characters on black, draped with orchids, chrysanthemums, peonies, carnations, fluttering ribbons of white silk. As well as these formal tributes, flower displays in pots and buckets were set all around in no discernible order, hiding the ground and most of the gravesite from view.

“Must have cost a fortune,” said one of the students, a mechanic in an auto body shop who had given all his free time in the previous five years of his young life to a study of the Master’s techniques. “They would have needed a truck. Christ, where do you get that many flowers?”

“Must have just been done last night,” murmured another. “Look, everything’s fresh.”

In front of the flower mountain were set two black metal tripods, five feet high, each supporting a large perforated metal bowl. The inner surfaces of the bowls were blackened with fire, and inside them, and on the grass around them, and clinging here and there to the flower displays where they had been blown, were charred fragments of hell money, what must have been great masses of hell money—the paper bills printed with an image of Lord Yanwang, Emperor of Hell, that traditionally are burned to honor the dead.

As the wondering boxers stood and stared the wind picked up, stirring the grass and the bare branches of the little park, shifting the charred black flakes of hell money. The carefully-wrought displays above the tomb trembled and shook, some petals and fronds of fern blowing loose to scud to and fro in the restless air. One of the circular wreaths, stacked above a dozen others, taking the full force of a gust, turned a few degrees, then fell, rolling onto open grass away from the tomb, shedding blooms as it rolled.

The wind caught the blossoms and loose petals and fern fronds and burned hell money fragments, teased them back and forth for a while among the stone markers of the dead, then sent them dancing off down the hillside to the water, to Portage Bay and the boundless ocean beyond.

Chapter 35

Moon Pearl Ventures to the Far West

A Fellow Traveler Hopes for News from India

The bus stopped and the engine cut out. Margaret thought it had broken down. There seemed to be no reason to stop at this place. There was no marker, no crossroads, no house, nothing. The same nothing she had been looking at all day, and much of the day before: a stony plain, relieved only by scattered clumps of gray grass, some featureless rounded hills in the middle distance, rising to high mountains at the horizon all around.

“Missy! Missy!” The driver was calling her. “Arrived! Arrived!” He rose from his seat and began to manhandle her box through the door.

Margaret got up from her seat. This brought a spell of dizziness. Any kind of movement seemed to make her dizzy in this thin air. There were only two other passengers on the bus, peasants from one of the minorities, a man and a woman, who were sitting on the back seat smoking pipes. Their filthy, leathery faces watched her without expression as she gathered her small bags together and staggered down the aisle. The driver had backed down the steps with her box, and was turning to set it down by the roadside. As Margaret stepped out of the bus she felt the wind, cool and dry, refreshing after the peasants’ pipe tobacco.

The driver was standing by her box, watching her with a silly smile on his face. He was a minority, too, and spoke little Chinese. Margaret thought he might be a half-wit. At odd moments during the ten-hour ride he had suddenly burst into a screeching song in his own language, then, after singing a few lines, had begun hooting with laughter, before lapsing into perfect silence again.

“Are you sure this is the place?” asked Margaret. “I can’t see anybody here. Nor any buildings. How do you know this is the place?” She dressed this up with gestures and grimaces, in the hope he might understand. The driver peered at her for a few seconds, then showed her his four or five mahogany teeth.

“Arrived! Arrived! They find you! Nakri people find you! We go Laptok! Laptok!” He pointed forward down the road. “Laptok! We go Laptok! You go Nakri!” Now he was waving in a direction at right-angles to the road, toward the hills. “Nakri! They people come, Nakri come! Find you! After you go Nakri! Nakri very good! Very good! Factory! Nakri got factory!”

Margaret peered in the direction he was pointing, but could see nothing. There were only gray stones, interspersed with gray grass. Everything seemed to be gray—everything but the sky, which was a deep pellucid blue.

“But where is Nakri? I can’t see anything. Where’s the road?”

The driver waved at the hills again. “Nakri, Nakri! They find you!” He walked a few paces forward of the bus, then turned to beckon her. Setting down her bags, Margaret followed. After twenty yards the driver stopped and began waving at the hills again. Coming up to him, Margaret saw the point. There really was a crossroads. Leading away to the hills was a dusty track, almost free of stones. Its stonelessness was, in fact, the only thing that differentiated it from the surrounding plain; and that differentiation so slight that the track could only be seen at all when you were looking down it. Stand off a few degrees, and it disappeared. How had the driver seen it?

“Nakri!” said the driver, pointing down the track to the moon-hills. “You wait!” He held out his hands horizontally, with the palms pointing down, and pressed down a few times, inviting Margaret to sit. “They come! Nakri people come! They find you!” He nodded, showing her the wreckage of his teeth again.

He seemed to be waiting for something. Well, he had helped with her box. Fishing in her pocket, Margaret produced some change. She handed the driver a ten-cent note. He smiled at it, but with clear lack of conviction, and made no move back to his bus. She gave him another, and said: “Thank you very much.” The driver nodded, made a little bowing movement with his head, murmured something in his own language—a blessing, perhaps, or a curse—and turned away. As the bus left, the minority peasants on the back seat turned to look at Margaret standing at the roadside with her box. Their eyes stayed fixed on her until the bus was out of sight.

Margaret sat down on her box. What now? Did the unit know when she was supposed to be coming? Would they send someone to pick her up? Was that the idea? She didn’t know. Some arrangement must have been made, surely.

The wind was slight but continuous. Once the bus had gone, Margaret began to hear the wind. It was a low moaning sound, just on the edge of hearing, never quite fading away. She looked at her watch. Three o’clock, yet the sun still high and bright. She remembered being told that here in the far west, people got up in darkness and went to bed in sunlight, because the whole country was kept on Beijing time. She didn’t see anything to object to in that, and on present evidence the climate out here was by no means as harsh as she had feared. Yet the sun would certainly decline sooner or later, and she did not want to be alone in this non-place when darkness came. But surely the unit knew she was here, surely someone would come for her.

At four-thirty Margaret began to feel scared. She ate an apple and some rice-flour cake she had brought from Lanzhou in one of the bags. Nobody had come. Nothing had moved in the desert around her. Nothing had moved but the sun, which was now noticeably lower. What if no-one knew where she was? She might just be left here. The bus passed by every day, didn’t it? Could she survive through the night? Perhaps she should start walking along the track the bus driver had shown her. But that would mean leaving her box, which was too heavy to carry. If another vehicle came along the road when she was out of sight on the track, of course they would steal her things.

Margaret began a restless walking up and down. She walked from her box to the crossroads and stared down the track to Nakri, hoping to see a vehicle. Then she walked an equivalent distance beyond the crossroads before turning and walking back to her box. Each time she stopped she could hear the faint, low moaning of the wind. She had a headache. She had had a headache since leaving Lanzhou—another consequence of the altitude, she supposed.

By six o’clock she was desperately frightened. There had been nothing on the road or the track, nothing; and not a living thing to be seen, not a bird in the air, not a rabbit, not an insect. For the dull gray lifelessness of this place, she might really have been on the Moon. How foolish she had been, not to make some definite arrangement with the unit to fetch her! She had not imagined the place would be so unpopulated. A typical urban Chinese, Margaret had never in her life been out of earshot of other human beings. She had not grasped, probably had not been able to grasp, the great emptiness of the western plateau. She had supposed the bus would go direct to Nakri, the place of her assignment; or, if it did not, that she would be able to cover what distance remained on another bus, or at worst by hitching a ride on a truck or peasant wagon. Now she would die in this dreadful place, among these gray stones, among this starved grass.

Sitting on the box, she wept. Far from relieving her feelings, this only made them worse. The more she wept, the more hopeless she felt. From silent weeping she progressed to loud sobbing, then began shouting out her misery across the gray, lifeless plain to the gray, shapeless hills. Why had God given her such misfortune? Why did everything she hoped for turn to dust? Why couldn’t her life be straightforward, like other people’s? The poor girl howled and sobbed, holding her head in her hands.

At last this display exhausted her. Now she felt she hadn’t even the strength to sit. She lay down on the hard, gray grass behind her box—curled up there and passed into a state of inanition, neither sleeping nor waking, neither thinking nor feeling. The earth seemed colder than the air. Its cold seeped up into her. She could hear herself breathing. That, and the soft moaning of the wind.

*

By nine o’clock Margaret had descended deep into fatalism. The sun was very low now, the rounded hills to the south almost lost from view. The wind seemed to have increased, and to have acquired the beginnings of a night-time chill. She felt a little light-headed. She was sitting up on her box again, the ground having proved too hard for endurance, and finishing the last of the rice-flour cake. Feeling the oncoming chill of the air, she thought of her voice, and wondered if she should put a scarf round her throat for protection. Professor Shi had told them to always wear a scarf when the air was cold, showing them on an anatomical diagram how little tissue separated the vocal chords from the outside world, how susceptible the throat was to changes of temperature and humidity. Margaret thought she should get her scarf from the box. Yes, certainly she should … but opening the box was troublesome, the three locks small and temperamental, and common sense struggled for a while to overcome the fatalistic torpor that had settled on her.

Art’s discipline had won the battle, and she was just fiddling with the first lock, when she heard the truck. Instead of increasing slowly from nothing, the sound seemed to come all at once, and to be quite close. Margaret jumped to her feet, and peered down the road she had come along. The low rays of the sun flashed back at her, reflected from something in the distance. A truck! The misery of those last hours at once forgotten, she began running down the road, waving her arms and shouting. After a hundred yards she remembered her box, and stopped, and stood in the middle of the road waving.

The truck was an ancient ex-army Changchun model, the back open and stacked high with wooden crates and burlap bags. There were four or five people in the cab, and more peered round at her from among the piled cargo in the back. All were men; all were minority, with dark dirty faces.

When the truck had stopped, the doors on each side of the cab opened and two men jumped down. One of them, the driver, was a burly fellow of thirty or so. He called out something to her in a language Margaret didn’t understand, his face furrowed with puzzlement and concern.

“Can you speak Chinese?” she asked. “I have to get to Nakri.”

The clouds lifted from the driver’s brow. He nodded vigorously and laughed, looking at the other man who had stepped down. The other man laughed with him. Then he turned and said something to the men still in the cab, and they laughed, too. He turned back to Margaret.

“Nakri, hah? Good, Missy, good! We all go Nakri together. Hah!” His Chinese was quite clear, though not very grammatical. “We all Nakri people, all live Nakri. No problem! You come!” He turned back to the truck, and began shouting at the men in the cab. They shouted back.

“Wait,” said Margaret when she caught a lull in the shouting, “I have a box. Please help me with it.”

The driver turned, and saw her pointing to the box.

“Hah! No problem!” he averred. But he turned back and continued his argument with the men in the cab. This seemed to be getting quite heated. The second man joined in, obviously on the side of the driver. It ended with the inhabitants of the cab piling out, grumbling and stamping, and transferring themselves to the back of the truck. Satisfied, the driver gave Margaret his attention again.

“Good, Missy! Now you come along us! Come Nakri along us! Come!” He motioned toward the cab. “There!”

“My box,” said Margaret, “my box.”

“No problem! No problem, Missy! Go! Go!” He pointed to the cab, then turned and set off in the direction of the box.

Margaret gathered up her small bags and went to the cab, but cumbered with the bags she could not get up the step. She called to the second man. “Help me, please.” The man frowned at this, perhaps not understanding; then he got it, jumped into the cab from the other side, took the bags from her, then reached down an arm to pull her up. By the time she got herself seated the driver had arrived, with her box on one shoulder. Effortlessly he pushed the box—it weighed at least eighty pounds—up to his colleague in the cab, then climbed to his own seat. Margaret was in the passenger seat. The second man was sitting on the coping of the shift mechanism, with the box between them. The driver slammed his door, started up the engine, set a dark thick hand down on the shift stick, and gave her his grin again.

“Now we go Nakri!”

And so they did. It was the most uncomfortable ride of Margaret’s life. The box would not stay put, and had to be held in place with an effort. There was a circular manhole in the roof of the cab above her head, covered inadequately with a piece of sacking which let in a vile draught. The cross-track, once they were on it, was uneven, and the driver seemed to go much too fast. The light soon failed, and the truck had only one feeble headlight. Her head throbbed. Her two companions both inhabited clouds of rich, rank body odor. Never a good traveler, Margaret began to feel motion sickness.

“Missy go Nakri what place?”

“It’s the Agricultural Research Station, Number Three. Is that where you’re going?”

“Yes! Yes! A-gya-kol Number Three! No problem!”

“Is it far?”

“No! Haven’t far! Soon arrive!”

The driver seemed to be a cheerful soul. His round, open face had a shiny texture. She supposed he had never washed it. It seemed to Margaret that a long time had passed since she had met anyone acquainted with common soap. To keep her mind off the idea of motion sickness, Margaret tried to make conversation.

“Excuse me. You’re minority, aren’t you?”

“Tibet-race. We all here Tibet-race. Nakri many Tibet-race. Many, many!”

Margaret relaxed. She knew, from books and movies, that the Tibetan people felt great gratitude to the Han Chinese for liberating them from a terrible feudal oppression. No doubt that was why they were being so pleasant to her.

The second man said something to the driver in a low voice, using their own language. The driver made no reply.

“I’ve heard there’s a factory in Nakri.”

“Factory. Nakri. No. A-gya-kol Number Three got factory. Bang! Bang! Make the top for bottle.”

“Oh. But Nakri itself is a separate place, isn’t it?”

“Ah, yes. Nakri got town. Trade, do trade. Got army. Got government office. Got the Party, big office.” He looked sideways at her in the light of the head lamp. “Missy you Party member?”

This was not a polite question. But these were rough people, they couldn’t be expected to know manners.

“No. No, I’m not a Party member. I’m a singer.”

“Singer? Hah! Wonderful. You sing-a me, Missy! Sing-a me, I like very much!”

“Oh, no. I can’t! I mean … I’m a special kind of singer. Foreign languages. I need musicians to accompany me. And … to prepare. I need to prepare.”

The second man said something. There was a long conversation between him and the driver.

“What’s he saying?” ventured Margaret.

“Ask you. He Chinese not so good. Want to know you do what. Why come this place. You why come this place?”

“I was assigned here,” said Margaret. “I graduated from college, and they assigned me here.”

“Oh. Missy you do bad thing?”

Heaven! Margaret felt as if she had had an electric shock. Here? They even knew about the Conservatory scandal here? Minority peasants, deep in Qinghai Province, in the remote west? No, no. Impossible, surely. But it didn’t seem impossible.

“No. No, of course not. Why do you ask such a question?”

“Chinese people come here, always army, or Party. If not army, Party, then do some bad thing, so come here.”

“Oh. Well, because it’s so remote, I guess. People don’t want to come here.”

“Ah.” The driver played this back to the second man. The second man said something brief, with great force, and they both laughed. “Missy, they want you sing Nakri A-gya-kol Number Three? Sing the foreign language?”

“No. I’m to be a schoolteacher there.”

“Teach sing?”

“No. Teach Chinese and English.”

“But you tell me you singer. Why no teach sing?”

“Because that’s my assignment, that’s why. We have to go where the Party sends us.”

Margaret wished she had never mentioned being a singer. It just sounded so nice. Me? I’m a singer. And true, after all, at any rate on paper. In spite of everything the Conservatory had allowed her to graduate. Then they had assigned her to this Nakri place, a place so small and remote she had been unable to locate it in Father’s atlas.

The driver had become grave. “Missy I guess you do something bad, something very bad. You don’t want tell me, is okay. Never mind.” He took one hand from the wheel and pressed a finger to his lips. “I no ask you, I no say any thing.”

The second man spoke. The driver answered him.

“He say you very pretty. Skin so white. Must be princess.”

Margaret laughed. “No, I’m not a princess. There are no princesses in New China.”

The second man spoke again.

“He say, you speak the foreign language, must be visited foreign country? He wants know, you been India?”

“What a strange question! No, I’ve never been to India. Why does he ask that?”

No answer came, and Margaret thought he hadn’t heard her. She repeated the question.

“He father live India.”

“Really?” She looked at the man. He was looking at the road. “That’s interesting. But I’m afraid I’ve never been to India.”

“Never mind. He just want know that.”

*

Nakri Agricultural Research Station Number Three was a heavy wooden gate in a rough stone wall. Above the gate was a semicircular metal framework with a quotation from Chairman Mao fixed to it in red letters: IN AGRICULTURE, FOLLOW DAZHAI. Dazhai had been a model commune during the Cultural Revolution. The quotation was surmounted by a red star. Nothing else could be seen in the ellipse of the headlight’s beam.

The driver leaned on his horn. This had no effect. He clambered down and began kicking on the gate and shouting. After a few minutes the gate was dragged open by two ancient Tibetans. The driver went to the back of the truck and returned with a small cloth bundle, which he gave to one of the gatekeepers. Then he climbed back into his cab and drove into the compound. “A-gya-kol Number Three!” he announced, and cut the engine.

Margaret climbed down gratefully, and her box was taken down and set beside her. The night was dark, with no moon. The air was now cold, and she regretted not having put her scarf on. In front of her was a large two-story house of peculiar architecture. It had a wide entrance door. Light showed at one of the windows at the side of the door. The driver had gone inside and could be heard shouting. When he came back out there was an old man with him, rubbing his eyes. He carried a flashlight in one hand.

“I’m the new teacher,” Margaret introduced herself.

“New teacher? Your mother’s!”

The man, who seemed to be Chinese, did a long clearing of his nose and throat, sucking mucus from the innermost recesses of his skull, and spat twice.

“I suppose I’d better take you to the dormitory. Ai, your mother’s, what a nuisance!” He turned away from her and set off into the darkness.

“Wait! Wait! My box!”

With the driver carrying her box, and sleepy dark faces peering out at them from the back of the truck, they set off behind the wavering flashlight. After crossing some open space they reached a brick building with a closed wooden door. The two men kicked and banged at the door for a full ten minutes. At last an old woman appeared.

“The new teacher’s arrived.”

“New teacher? Her mother’s! Why can’t she come in the daytime?” The crone peered at Margaret. “Damn nuisance! All right.”

The little party entered. There was a long corridor, lit by feeble electric light. They followed the old woman to a door at the far end. “Here. Got one free bed. Yes. Here.” She switched on a light. Figures moved on bunks. Three women’s face blinked at them. “Put the box here.”

Margaret’s companions left. Two of the faces had disappeared under their quilts again; the other, on the upper bunk opposite, watched her. It was a dark-skinned, plain girl of twenty or so.

“Hello,” said Margaret. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“You the new teacher, from Beijing?”

“Yes. Oh, you were expecting me.”

“Yes.” The girl giggled and disappeared into her quilts.

Something about the giggle aroused the same irrational fear Margaret had felt in the truck. They knew about her—about the reason for her banishment! And at once she realized that here, in the unit she had been assigned to, the fear was not at all irrational. Her file—of course!

Like every other Chinese citizen, Margaret had a file, kept in the office of one of the Party Secretaries at her unit. But now, this was her unit, and her file would have been sent here. Any of the Party secretaries here could have read it, and gossiped. Since everyone at the Conservatory seemed to think she had been giving intimate favors to Mr Powell, presumably that would be what was written in her file. But no, surely the file wouldn’t have arrived so soon. People sometimes waited months for their file to catch up with them. Surely not, surely not.

The door opened. The old woman came in and flung some bedding onto the empty bunk. “Washroom at the other end, round the corner,” she said, and slammed the door.

Chapter 36

A Brief Introduction to the Culture of Our National Minorities

Why Are There So Few Trees in Tibet?

Margaret’s worst fears were confirmed the next morning, when she went to report to the Principal of the middle school.

The school was a collection of brick buildings a hundred yards away from the single women’s dormitory. Inside the entrance was a counter, with a small office behind it for mail reception and other petty tasks. A young Chinese woman was leaning on the counter, in conversation with a middle-aged woman of indeterminate race inside the office. Margaret addressed herself to this second woman.

“Excuse me, comrade, can you tell me where the Principal’s office is?” The first woman was staring at her as she spoke.

“Go to the end here and turn left. It’s the second on the left.” The woman spoke Chinese with a northwestern accent.

Margaret thanked her and set off along the corridor. The two women at the counter were silent until she reached the turn, then there was an explosion of whispering. Just as she turned into the corridor leading to the Principal’s office, Margaret clearly caught the word foreigner. Her insides went cold. Everybody knew! Even here, two thousand miles away! So the one thing she had hoped for from her exile—that her disgrace, and the absurd rumors surrounding it, might not be known—was vain. Numb, she knocked on the Principal’s door. There was no response. She knocked twice more, louder each time, but still without result. As she stood wondering how to proceed, a door further along the corridor opened and a man’s head peered out.

“Are you Han Yuezhu?” asked the man, in Chinese with a Sichuan accent.

“Yes. I’ve come to report to the Principal.”

The man laughed. “Waste of time. He’s never there. Come in here. You can report to me.”

Margaret walked along to his office. He had left the door open and gone to sit at his desk. She closed the door and went to the desk. The man watched her with a good-humored half-smile.

“Oh, sit down, sit down. Don’t be so polite! Want some tea?”

“No, thanks. I don’t drink tea much.”

The man was about fifty, short and rough-featured. He wore a rumpled blue tunic and cap. His teeth were brown.

“I’m Zhang Dalin. Branch Secretary for the middle school. Welcome to our unit! I heard you got in rather late last night.”

“Yes. It’s my fault. I didn’t make proper arrangements to get here. I had to wait on the road for a truck. Oh! I had to wait several hours.”

“That’s not good. Not good. We should have been told. And it was bad luck you had to wait so long. Usually there are four or five trucks every day. But two of them broke down yesterday.” Branch Secretary Zhang shook his head. “Anyway, you got here. That’s the main thing.” He paused to light a cigarette. His fingers were stained nearly black from cigarette smoke, and the ashtray on his desk was overflowing with stubs.

While Branch Secretary Zhang’s eyes were focused on the match, Margaret looked around the office. Behind Branch Secretary Zhang was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf of the same ancient, dark wood as his desk and chairs. It was piled with battered cardboard folders, sheaves of loose papers tied with thread, and yellowing old newspapers. On the desk itself was the ashtray, a cracked tea-mug, and a newspaper, which Branch Secretary Zhang seemed to have been reading when she entered. Behind her, against the interior wall, was a bed, with a low locker set beside it. In the center of that wall was a crudely colorized picture of Chairman Mao, in a frame.

“So you’ve come from Beijing, hm?”

“Yes. From the Conservatory of Music.”

“Yes. You’re an opera singer. Foreign style of opera.” Clearly Branch Secretary Zhang had read her file. “Can you sing Chinese opera, too? Sichuan style?”

“No. Not at all. I was only trained in the foreign style.”

“Ah. Pity. We might have had you give a performance. Some of the older comrades like our Sichuan opera. But foreign style …” he shrugged. “… Nobody could appreciate it.” He laughed.

“I’m from Sichuan myself, actually,” said Margaret. “Before I went to Beijing.”

Branch Secretary Zhang nodded. “Yes, I caught the accent. Though I must say, your Chinese is very standard now. That’s good, that’s what we need here. Someone who can teach good Chinese. And English, of course. A new thing for us …” He started to say something, but went into a coughing fit instead.

“Are you from Chongqing?” asked Margaret politely when the coughing had subsided, naming the biggest city in Sichuan Province.

Branch Secretary Zhang nodded. “Yes. But I’ve been here almost thirty years now.” He took a pull on his cigarette and regarded her in silence for a moment through a veil of smoke. “Conditions are different here, you know.”

“Yes. I mean, I expected they would be. But I don’t mind any kind of hardship. So long as I can make a contribution.”

Branch Secretary Zhang looked at her levelly. “That’s right. Make a contribution. We must all try to make a contribution.” He nodded, sending smoke out through his nose. “You know this is a minority area?”

“Well, they didn’t tell me. But I’ve seen that a lot of the people are minority.”

“Right. It’s not an autonomous district, nor even an autonomous county, but as a matter of fact the population here is mostly minority. Tibetan, that is.” Branch Secretary Zhang turned aside, scraping his chair on the concrete floor, to spit into a cuspidor.

“But they can speak Chinese, can’t they? The truck driver who brought me here, he can speak Chinese quite well.”

Branch Secretary Zhang laughed, not altogether humorously. “Can. ‘Can’ is one thing. ‘Willing’ is another. I know that driver. Old Bolmo. He’s all right. He’s what we call a silly Tibetan.”

“Silly?”

“Yes. There are two kinds of Tibetans: silly Tibetans and hard Tibetans. Silly Tibetans are easy to deal with. They learn a bit of Chinese—though never very much, because they’re too stupid—do some kind of useful work, and don’t make trouble. Old Bolmo’s one of those. Then there are hard Tibetans. Your hard Tibetan won’t speak Chinese unless he has to, and sometimes won’t even then, because he’s refused to learn it. If you give him a job to do he’ll just go through the motions. And if you don’t keep your eye on him, he’ll make trouble.”

“Trouble?” This word made Margaret feel nervous, on her own account. To hear of other people making trouble reminded her that she herself had made trouble, and was known for it even here, in this far place.

“Trouble. I’ll tell you frankly, little Han, we have a lot of splittists here. You know what I mean by a splittist?”

“Of course. People who want to split the Motherland.”

Margaret was relieved that the conversation seemed to be staying on general lines. She knew about splittists. There had been a big movement against splittists in her last year at middle school. For weeks the Political Study classes had been given over to denunciations of splittists. Nobody knew why. Margaret had never grasped the finer points of the campaign—by late middle school, nobody paid much attention to Political Study—but knew it was connected somehow with the minorities. Some of the minorities wanted to split their territories off from the motherland, to form their own countries. That was the essence of it, she thought.

“That’s right. I’ll explain the situation. After Liberation, our country re-asserted control over Tibet, which of course had been Chinese for centuries. In a spirit of reconciliation, and because we had more pressing matters to attend to, our government allowed the old feudal Tibetan society to continue. The landlords still had their land, the priests still had their monasteries. That was a wrong policy. The landlords and priests took advantage of it to stir up the people against the Communist Party. At last there was an insurrection. We had to use the army to restore order. When they saw their insurrection was going to fail, the landlord classes and the priests all fled to India. Well, the Indian government is not altogether friendly to our country. They set up the Tibetans with a little state of their own, a little Tibet in India. They gave them a lot of money. Of course, the Imperialists also gave them money. So now there they are in India, making propaganda for the Imperialists against our Party, and sending their spies into our country to make trouble amongst the minorities. That’s the source of the problem. That’s why we have strict rules here. For example, you should never go out of the compound alone. We don’t allow that. Your experience yesterday was very bad, very bad. You should never go out alone in this district.”

All this was quite new to Margaret. Other than the fact of their being grateful to their Elder Brother Chinese for liberating them from feudalism, the only thing she had ever heard about the Tibetans was that they were filthy. Tibetan indifference to personal hygiene was legendary in China. Father himself had been with the army in Tibet at the time of the landlords’ rebellion. As a child, she had heard him tell stories about it, all centering on the filthy personal habits of the Tibetans.

“All the Tibetans, whether men or women, wear a kind of long, loose robe,” Father had said. “And when they want to shit, they just spin themselves round like this …” he stood up and tried to spin on his toes, “… to make the robe come out. Then they haul it up, and squat down, and do their business right there, wherever they happen to be. In the street, in a shop, in the living-room of your house! They just shit anywhere!”

This little tale had left Margaret helpless with laughter, rolling on the floor clutching her sides, partly at the outrageousness of the Tibetans’ behavior, partly at the spectacle of Father—not a man equipped with much physical grace—twirling on tip-toe with his arms held out like a huge, clumsy ballet dancer.

Now, in this place, she was to be among Tibetans herself, and had to grasp something about these matters of policy. Bewildered, she asked Branch Secretary Zhang: “What about the common people? Aren’t they grateful to the Communist Party for liberating them from the feudal landlords?”

Branch Secretary Zhang scowled and shook his head. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? I tell you, many brave young soldiers suffered and died, so that these people could enjoy a modern life, with education and hospitals and socialism. Yes, they should be grateful for that. They should love the Motherland. But the problem is, Tibetans are very stupid. Very stupid. Stupidity is in their bones. You can’t get it out. My own theory is, it’s the thin air up here. They don’t get enough oxygen in their brains. Generation after generation, it makes them stupid. To tell you the truth, little Han, Tibetans are no better than cattle.”

“Oh, dear. Then I’m afraid it’s going to be very difficult to teach them.”

“Teach them? Ha! Teach them to use the toilet, that’s all you’ll be able to teach them. If you can teach them that, you’ll have done a service to the Motherland!” Branch Secretary Zhang turned away to spit again.

Margaret felt herself blushing a little. But curiosity mastered embarrassment. “Is it true then, what people say? That Tibetans have no regard for hygiene?”

“Oh, it’s true, all right. You’ll see. One thing you must pay attention to in your classes is that pupils use the toilets. You must be very strict about it. They won’t do their business in the classroom—they get severely punished for that—but when they excuse themselves to go out, they often don’t bother to go all the way to the toilet. They just do it in the corridor, outside the classroom door. They think that as soon as they’re out of sight, you won’t be able to figure out what they’re doing. Always check outside after class, if anybody excused himself. And if there’s anything there, report the one who was excused. Now …” Branch Secretary Zhang scraped back his chair and stood up. Hastily, Margaret stood too. “… I’ll show you around the place. Come on.” He held the door open for her.

*

“Used to be a People’s Commune,” said Branch Secretary Zhang. “That was the original idea.”

They were crossing the open space between the school and the women’s dormitory, the way Margaret had come.

“There were some fields here before. So the authorities reasoned that it would be a good place for a commune. But it wasn’t successful. Too many mistakes were made.”

They had reached the women’s dormitory, but were walking past it to the main administration building where Margaret had arrived the previous night.

“The authorities wanted to grow all wheat. But the soil’s wrong here, and the peasants didn’t know how to grow it. And they wouldn’t eat it anyway. That’s another thing about Tibetans, they’re very conservative. They won’t change their customs. They went hungry, rather than eat wheat. Anyway, then the policy changed. They tried to break up the commune, but that wouldn’t work either. At last the army set up this research station.”

“Oh. Is the army here, then?” asked Margaret.

“Not now, no. There’s a garrison down the road, between here and Nakri. But we don’t see much of them. They lend us a truck once in a while, that’s all. But at that time this whole area was under military jurisdiction. Because of the troubles I told you about. In here.”

They had reached the administration building, where Margaret had arrived the night before. It was quite imposing. The front part was two-storey, the only two-storey structure in the Station, and of a peculiar architecture, with wide square windows and doors at each side of the main door. It seemed to be old. Newer buildings had been added at the back. Just inside the entrance was a large lobby. Two cadres were standing there in conversation. Branch Secretary Zhang walked right up to them.

“Old Ma! Here’s the new teacher! The English teacher!” Then, to Margaret: “This is Secretary Ma. Secretary for the whole Station! Big responsibility!”

Secretary Ma was short, no more than five three, with an oddly childlike face, the features all seeming too small and too far from each other. The impression was unpleasant somehow, conveying not the innocence of childhood, but its ignorance and cruelty. He was wearing a dingy dark-blue cadre jacket. He stared at Margaret for a few beats, then made a thin little smile and said: “How do you do.”

“Secretary Ma was fifteen years in the army. Little Han comes from Beijing.” (Thus ended Branch Secretary Zhang’s introductions.)

Again, Secretary Ma said nothing for a space of time that was just too long. Then: “You have cold winters in the capital.” He had a strong southeastern accent—Zhejiang Province, Margaret thought.

“Yes,” said Margaret.

Secretary Ma nodded. “It’s cold here, too. Summer is pleasant enough, but winter is very cold. Better put more clothes on.”

“Yes. Thank you.” There was something in the way he looked at her that made Margaret feel very uncomfortable. The content of that look—or one part of the content, at any rate—was unmistakable: I know all about you.

“And this is Branch Secretary Lian. From the factory.” Branch Secretary Lian made a tired smile. “I’m just showing little Han around the Station.”

Secretary Ma nodded. “Good, good. Be sure to show her the factory.”

Branch Secretary Zhang led her outside again. “Old Ma came here five years ago. He’s very capable. Can arrange everything. Last year the poultry unit wanted to try a new kind of chicken feed they’d read about. Couldn’t find it anywhere. He found it. Got the army to fly it in for us. They have an airstrip at the base. Oh, he really knows how to arrange things. It was he who got the factory set up for us. It made a big difference. To our income, I mean.”

“What does the factory make?” asked Margaret.

“Stampings. Metal stampings. For bottle caps, electrical fittings, and so on. You’ll see. Over here.” He cut off across another open stretch of ground where two trucks were parked. In the distance were some concrete buildings. As they approached, Margaret could hear a sort of rhythmic thumping sound.

They entered one of the concrete buildings and walked down a corridor. The sound was much louder now. After some turns they came to a thick, grimy curtain over a doorway. Branch Secretary Zhang pushed it up and the sound of the factory flooded out, deafeningly loud. Margaret stepped inside. It was a long, low shed. Along the walls at each side, and in two rows down the length of the place, were benches. Sitting on stools, hunched over the benches, were women. Each woman had a machine which she operated by swinging a large handle about a vertical axis. At the opposite end of the handle was a counterweight, a ball of black metal. Swinging the handle caused some part of the machine to come down with a thump, and the handle then swung itself back for the process to be repeated. Between the women were crates into which pieces of metal were continually falling. At the far end of the shed were two freestanding larger machines which seemed to be under their own power, and which were creating most of the noise. There was a smell of steam and oil.

Branch Secretary Zhang led her between the benches to the machines at the far end. Faces looked up at her as she passed. The women seemed to be all Chinese. “They can earn two dollars a day when we have full production,” shouted Branch Secretary Zhang above the noise. “It’s been a big boost for the local economy.”

“It seems that everybody is Chinese,” Margaret shouted over the noise.

“This kind of work isn’t suitable for Tibetans. You see, Tibetans are fundamentally nomads. They can’t stay long in one place. If you try to get them to work in a factory, well, they may turn up for one or two days, then they disappear. It’s not suitable work for them.”

The freestanding machines were worked by men. Both men were Chinese. They gaped at her. Branch Secretary Zhang tried to explain the stamping process to her, but she didn’t get much of it. The noise was too loud, and anyway she had no interest in machinery. At last they nodded good-bye to the workers, and Branch Secretary Zhang led the way out through a door at the back. Margaret felt the eyes of the men on her as she stepped away. The reduction in sound as Branch Secretary Zhang closed the door was blissful.

“Of course,” Branch Secretary Zhang was saying, “it depends on our supply of sheet metal. With two trucks out of action, we’ll probably run out for a while.”

“What happens then?”

“Oh, we have to close the factory for a few days. Same when we run out of coal, or if one of the belts breaks, or the power generators fail. It’s a struggle to keep it going. You can really say we’re pioneers in this region. As I told you, conditions are difficult here. But we’re making progress. Now …” he indicated some brick buildings to their front, “… I’ll show you the arboriculture unit. You’ll like that.”

“Arboriculture? I don’t think I’ve seen a tree for days.”

Branch Secretary Zhang shrugged. “To tell the truth, it’s not a big success. It was another one of Old Ma’s ideas. He thought if the trees could get a start in a controlled indoor environment, then they would be able to survive outside. But they don’t. The soil’s too poor, and conditions too harsh. They have a small plantation going down by the river, where the ground is exceptionally good. But it has to be guarded all the time, otherwise the peasants just steal the trees. Here.” He opened a door. Inside the air was warm and humid. “Ah, feel that. This is the right job to have when the winter sets in. Let’s find somebody to show us around.”

They wandered by some empty offices, then through another of the heavy cloth curtains into a sort of large greenhouse. The walls were brick, but the ceiling was made of glass. A narrow path ran down the center, and on each side were trays filled with rich dark soil. Growing in the trays was a wide assortment of plants: ferns, small bushes, shoots of various kinds. Kneeling at one of the trays, working in the soil with his hands, was a young man. He looked up when they came in, but at once went back to what he was doing.

“Norbu! Hey, Norbu! This is our new teacher.”

The young man looked up again. His expression was not altogether pleasant. There was something contemptuous in it. For a moment he seemed undecided whether or not he should pay any further attention to them. Then he came to his feet in a single slow, smooth movement—he might almost have been a dancer, Margaret could not help thinking—and stood regarding them, brushing the soil from his hands.

Standing, he made a striking figure. He was tall—well over six feet—and powerfully built. His skin was dark, but not as dark as most Tibetans’, and he might have been Chinese; but something about the composition of his features was wrong for a Chinese. He wore an unbuttoned green army jacket, with protective over-sleeves, and nothing but a T-shirt underneath. The T-shirt was tight across the muscles of his chest. He watched them with that same expression Margaret had first seen—wary, insolent. She thought him no more than twenty-five.

“Norbu’s in charge of these plants,” said Branch Secretary Zhang redundantly. “He’s been here—how long now, Norbu?”

“This is my second year.” His Chinese was good standard Mandarin, the book-Mandarin of people who have learned the language at school or in the military.

“This is Han Yuezhu. She’s going to teach English and Chinese in the middle school. You know, we’ve been trying to get an English teacher for a long time. Little Han is a college graduate. Her English is first-rate. We were really lucky to get her.”

Branch Secretary Zhang said nothing about her being a singer, for which Margaret was profoundly grateful—though probably (she reflected) he just hadn’t thought it relevant.

Norbu had fixed his eyes on her while Branch Secretary Zhang spoke. It was a deliberate kind of look, a stare—as if he wanted to make her feel uncomfortable. Margaret thought it rude, and stared right back.

“It’s good,” he said after a short pause, still looking at her. “Good to teach English.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he lifted up his head, put his hands on his hips, and laughed so loud that Margaret involuntarily stepped back. “Very good.” He looked at her again, smiling easily now. “Perhaps I’ll come to your classes. Perhaps I’ll learn English.” This idea seemed to come to him as a huge joke. He threw his head up again and rocked backward and forward, his laughter rolling around the greenhouse. His teeth were very white.

Branch Secretary Zhang seemed to have taken offense at something. “If you want to go to classes, you’ll have to get release from your unit,” he said rather curtly. “All right, little Han, we’d better get back. Come on.” And he hustled her out. The outside air seemed cold on her skin after the greenhouses.

“As well as being stupid, I should tell you that a lot of Tibetans are just not right in the head. Mental problems. As I said, it comes down to lack of oxygen in their home region. You never know what they’ll do.”

“He seemed like a very odd character,” agreed Margaret.

Chapter 37

Johnny Liu Waits for an East Wind

Unexpected Encounter on the Mountaintop

Everybody knew about the business with Mr Powell. It was as if her file had been pinned up on the notice boards. Worse than that, in fact; for though her file was no doubt full of rumors and falsehoods, only the Party Secretaries had actually read it. Everybody else was working from rumors they had cooked up themselves. Rumors developed from rumors, falsehoods breeding falsehoods. What rumors? Margaret could not know. She could only guess. Nobody would speak to her about it directly. It was all in the silence as she approached, the whispers and titters that started up when she had passed. To the inhabitants of this remote hill station a newcomer was noteworthy enough; that Margaret had come from Beijing, the nation’s capital, was sensational; that she had been banished here as a result of a scandal with a foreigner—a spy!—was Grand Opera.

The one consolation Margaret had nursed, since learning of her assignment here in the far west, was that she would be well away from anyone who knew what had happened, and from the whispering, rumors and sly glances that incidents of that kind always generate. She had not thought that her file would arrive ahead of her and its contents become so generally known. Margaret cursed her demon, who snatched away from her even her feeblest hopes.

Margaret tried to act as if there was nothing unusual in her situation. She approached her new colleagues in an open and straightforward way; but it all went wrong. If she spoke to a woman, she would be stared at even as she spoke. Then there would be a quick answer, or a silly one, or sometimes a cutting one. The older women were the worst. Once Margaret went to an office in the administration building to get some supplies of paper. The woman in charge was a middle-aged Chinese from Gansu. She had a pinched, cold face—a Class Struggle Face. As this woman counted out the last sheets of paper, she suddenly said: “Tell me, Teacher Han. What do you think is the most important attribute for a young woman in our socialist society?” Quite off guard, Margaret improvised something about the value of education. Class Struggle Face cut her short. “No. The most important thing is self-respect. Don’t you think so, Teacher Han?” Caught unawares by the thrust, Margaret could think of no riposte. Walking back to her classroom she could not hold back tears of rage and indignation.

Male colleagues were not so bad. Some even showed her goodwill and small acts of kindness, though with what motive she didn’t know. Best of all was Branch Secretary Zhang, who never allowed her to pass by without stopping her for a chat, giving her some advice on the weather or local conditions. But these were small comforts. Margaret had no wish to be close to any man.

At last she adjusted. Submit to Heaven and follow your fate, she chanted to herself as a mantra. Fate was fate, and there was nothing she could do but let it play itself out. She withdrew from her colleagues, keeping all talk on a purely professional level. In the refectory she sat by herself, or, when that was not possible, kept her eyes on the table or read a book. She tried to absorb herself in her work, and spent two or three hours every day preparing lessons.

Margaret shared a dormitory room with three other single women. All were Chinese. Tibetans and Chinese did not share living accommodation, she was told. Why not? “Because Tibetans are too dirty,” said one of the girls, giggling. Of the four, Margaret was the only teacher. The others worked in the administration. Two were from Sichuan. They were low types, almost illiterate and with coarse manners. The other was from Shanghai. Her name was Wang Yong, and she was an old Red Guard who had been sent here in 1968, when the authorities re-asserted control after the first wild phase of the Cultural Revolution. She was an intelligent, serious-minded woman, who had had a decent education before leaving the city. Thirteen years of exile, however, had made her melancholy. She rarely seemed inclined to talk, and spent most of her time reading and re-reading an incredibly dog-eared copy of Red Chamber Dream. Though not bad-looking, she was extremely short-sighted, her eyes hardly visible behind thicknesses of lens. Margaret guessed (but was too polite to try to find out) that she had never married because she still cherished the hope of being able to return to Shanghai. If she had married a local man, all hope of that would have disappeared. A move to Shanghai would have involved not only getting a residence permit and job for herself, but for the man too—a double impossibility.

Margaret loved Red Chamber Dream herself, and had read it often enough to know even the minor characters and incidents. She tried to make some conversation out of this, but was hopelessly outclassed. Wang Yong could repeat word-for-word long conversations between servant-girls whose names Margaret only just remembered. Margaret felt drawn to her anyway. If Wang Yong had heard the rumors about the Conservatory incident, she showed no interest in them. The two exiles took to sitting alone in the dormitory room after supper, reading silently, while the Sichuan girls played cards in a recreation room in the administration building.

Wang Yong’s surname was Wang, her given name Yong. Among Chinese people of her and Margaret’s generation, a person with a two-syllable given name could be addressed in a friendly, familiar way using the given name alone, in the way that Margaret’s own family and friends called her Yuezhu; but when the given name was just a single syllable, nobody did this. You just used the entire name. Margaret started out in this fashion, addressing her roommate as Wang Yong. A week or two into the acquaintance, however, Wang Yong asked Margaret to call her just Yong. It seemed odd to Margaret at first, a throwback to the rather self-consciously modern style of pre-Liberation intellectuals, but usage soon overcame her doubts and she saw the rightness of it, appreciated the little extra warmth it added to both their lives.

Better than the quiet evenings sitting reading with Yong were the occasional movies shown in the auditorium at the back of the administration building. Then she could sit in the dark, with no-one’s eyes on her, and lose herself in the stories, or in her own thoughts.

The teaching work was not bad. Margaret found herself taking to it with something near enthusiasm. Few of the pupils were actually Tibetan. Most were Chinese, sons and daughters of the workers at the Station, and of the better-off Chinese peasants from the nearby production brigades. The Tibetans were mostly too poor to send their children to middle school (there was a fee—five dollars a term). Those Tibetans who did attend were cheerful, co-operative, and doggedly studious. In contradiction to Secretary Zhang’s assertions, they scored well on all her tests. However, they suffered badly from a rough element among the older Chinese students, who beat them up and spat on them when they thought no teachers were looking.

The novelty of having an English teacher drew in a wider clientele, too. Even out here in Qinghai Province, everybody wanted to learn English. A scattering of adults would turn up at her classes: all Chinese, most from the Station, but one or two from further afield. There was a doctor who came in by bicycle twice a week from Nakri, ten miles away, and an officer—quite a senior one, according to Branch Secretary Zhang (this was in the period before insignia of rank were re-introduced into the armed forces)—from the nearby army base.

“You see,” said Branch Secretary Zhang, “we’re not so backward out here. Everybody wants to learn English!”

To Margaret’s relief, the big strange boy from Arboriculture did not show up.

*

In November there were snowfalls. The road to Nakri was still passable; but Nakri was the end of the line, with nothing beyond but high pasture land, the great mountain wall, and Tibet. The road from the provincial capital was closed for days on end. The Station went into hibernation. The factory closed down for want of supplies, though of course the workers were paid just the same. Coal was used ever more sparingly, so that those buildings—the single women’s dormitory was one—which were heated from the central boilers were kept at near-freezing, and everyone was heavily padded the whole time. In the older buildings each room had a kang, which could be heated by burning grass, or dried animal dung which the local Tibetans sold at two cents a pound. Those who could crowded into these older buildings with friends and relatives.

At New Year a drama troupe came from the nearby army base and put on a show. There had only been two movies the whole winter, so everyone welcomed them. And they were, indeed, very good. The play was titled Incident at Chungbok Village. It was about the 1959 landlords’ insurrection in Tibet.

Incident at Chungbok Village

Chungbok Village was a place in central Tibet—a real place, according to the prologue. After Liberation the people there had established a commune, under the leadership of a wise and upright cadre named Tashi. Tashi had a beautiful daughter named Pasang. She was being courted by a handsome young peasant named Penba.

A monastery near the village had been infiltrated by the enemy. The aristocrat who had owned the village before Liberation was hiding there as a monk, with some of his henchmen. When the older peasants came to the monastery to worship, the monks filled their heads with suspicions about Tashi. They planted rumors that Tashi was hoarding away the profits of the commune for his own use. Led by the handsome young Penba, who was among the deceived, the peasants arrested Tashi and beat him. When his daughter Pasang tried to intercede, they beat her too. She and her father were imprisoned in a tiny cell at a corner of the stage. Then the peasants ran wild, and began fighting among each other for the land.

At this point the enemy arrived: the former aristocrat and his henchmen. They told the peasants to stop fighting, that they were taking control again and everything would be just as before Liberation.

The peasants, now realizing their folly, were dismayed and protested, but the aristocrat just laughed and told them: “Don’t think the People’s Government will help you! Heaven is high, and Chairman Mao is far away! Do as we say, or it will be so much the worse for you!”

There was nothing the peasants could do but submit. The aristocrat forced Pasang to become his concubine; but one night she tried to stab him to death. He woke just in time, and beat her, and put her back in the cell with her father.

However, the handsome young Penba had seen through the enemy’s schemes, and bitterly regretted taking part in the insurrection. He ran away from the village and made a forced march through the mountains. He got lost, and collapsed, and was near death. Then a detachment of the People’s Liberation Army came on him lying by the road. They revived him, and he told them what had happened at Chungbok Village.

The detachment went to Chungbok and defeated the enemy. The wicked aristocrat was captured and dragged away, squealing for mercy. Pasang was freed from her cell, weak and wasted, and re-united with a repentant Penba. Her father Tashi, however, had died from his mistreatment.

The play ended with a beautiful dance by the peasants, to show their gratitude to the People’s Liberation Army. It was, as a matter of fact, a dance Margaret knew, one she had done in high school with Baoyu. Bringing back those carefree times, of course the dance had an extra dimension for her. But even allowing for that, Margaret thought the play as good as anything she had seen outside the capital. The army troupe was really first-rate. The girl’s part was actually played by a girl—presumably one of the nurses from the base, or one of the officer’s wives—and the villainous aristocrat was very convincing, with thick upward-sweeping eyebrows and dark jowls. At the most moving parts of the action—when Penba was near death in the mountains, or Pasang was weeping over the body of her father—Margaret was close to tears herself.

At the end of the play, Secretary Ma himself came up on the stage and thanked the actors personally. Then he made an emotional little speech, recalling his own life in the army, and asking the audience to support “our heroic young soldiers.” Still filled with the excitement of the play, they applauded till their hands were sore.

In the midst of this euphoria, Margaret suddenly saw a strange thing. Among those standing by the wall at the side of the auditorium—there had not been enough seats for everyone—was the big strange boy from Arboriculture. And he was not applauding at all. He was just standing there, his feet slightly apart and his arms folded across his chest, looking toward Secretary Ma with the same insolent expression she had first seen. He really was very strange!

*

At Spring Festival Margaret went home to Beijing. The driver, Old Bolmo (everyone seemed to call him Old Bolmo, though he could not have been much past thirty), took her all the way to the provincial capital, from where she rode a train back across North China, all bleak and swept with snow.

All through the winter she had looked forward to this time, but in the event the holiday was not a happy one. Half Brother could not be with them. Father’s heart problem had been troubling him, and he was forbidden to drink liquor, eat rich food, or engage in anything that might excite him. Furthermore he was still smoldering from the previous summer’s disgrace. Mother had become obsessive about Father: his diet, his exercises, his bowel movements, his temper. She had no other conversation.

With little to keep her at home, Margaret took to window-shopping in the new stores that were springing up everywhere now. The whole city was under reconstruction, it seemed. New roads, new apartment blocks, a grand new hotel. Some of this must have been under way when she left—it had only been five months ago—but the bustle and noise were more striking to her now, after the silent desolation of Qinghai. She mingled with the crowds in Wangfujing, in the parks, in the dumpling restaurants.

She stayed well clear of the Haidian district, where the University and the Music Conservatory were, having no wish to be reminded of what was past. The past, however, came looking for her, in the figure of Johnny Liu. Johnny appeared at the apartment one afternoon after siesta, three days before the end of her leave.

“Enrico Wang saw you at the Hundred Goods department store,” he explained, naming one of their classmates. “Couldn’t get close enough to greet you, just saw you in the crowd.”

Johnny had come up to the capital from Shanghai a month before to get a visa from the American Embassy. His cousin in New York was sponsoring him, as promised, and the Chinese authorities had just granted Johnny a passport. The passport was at the American Embassy, waiting for the visa.

“Ten thousand preparations all made,

Now I only need an east wind!”

said Johnny Liu, quoting a classical tag.

At Johnny’s suggestion they went walking in Jade Abyss Park. There was a thin pearly ice-mist everywhere, and the bare branches of the trees were rimed with frost.

Johnny had been looking up old classmates. Several were in the capital, including all those chosen to form the new national opera company. Alfredo, Enrico, Leonora, … This one was getting married, that one pregnant already, another was to go abroad.

“I guess you yourself didn’t look up anybody,” said Johnny in his frank way.

“How can I? I have no face with the classmates. I’m sure they haven’t forgotten that miserable business.”

Johnny Liu laughed. “No, they haven’t forgotten. You know how people love to gossip.”

“Oh, are they still talking about it?”

“They still talk. There are a lot of rumors. So bad! People are so bad! You wouldn’t believe.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“About you and Mr Powell. What you were doing in his office that evening.”

“We were talking. That’s all.”

“I know that, Little Sister. But other people like to make things up.”

Margaret considered this in silence for a while. Then: “What kind of things? Tell me. What do they say? The rumors.”

Johnny laughed, not altogether easily. “Oh, no. They’re too bad. You don’t want to hear.” Regretting now that he’d got this far into the topic.

“Yes I do. Tell me.”

It took some persuasion, but at last Johnny told her the rumors. Margaret stopped and began to cry, her tears running warm in the frosty air.

“How can people say such things? It wasn’t like that at all! Such filthy things. I could never imagine that! Oh, people are so bad!”

Johnny tried to comfort her. “Of course, not everybody believes those things. Only bad people say them.”

“Who? Who says them?”

“Just some bad people. Leonora, Susanna, people like that.”

“Leonora? She was my friend! How could she say those things? My friend, my friend! Oh, Heaven, why are people so evil?”

They walked on for a while, silent but for Margaret’s snuffling. Then: “How about Qinghai?” asked Johnny. “It must be awful.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. No poorer than some of the counties in the southwest, really. The main problem is nothing to do. Nowhere to go, nothing to buy. You know. Father said after a year or two he will pull some strings to get me back to the capital.”

“Why wait so long?”

“He has an attitude. About what happened last summer. Says I should eat bitterness for a while. Says it will strengthen my character.”

Johnny laughed. “These old soldiers! Even on that reasoning, surely one year would be enough. He should start talking to people now. It’s a tragedy for you to be wasting your life out there in Qinghai. Your life, and your voice. I guess you have no chance to sing out there.”

“To sing foreign-style opera? They wouldn’t know it from the sound of their stinking yaks bellowing. No, I’ve sung nothing for six months.”

“Well, you should keep up your voice exercises at least.”

*

Nakri Agricultural Research Station Number Three was set on the northern slope of a shallow valley. The valley embraced a small river. Between the station and the river were fields of barley and winter wheat. Ten miles downriver was the head of the valley. Here the river met another river, emerging from a neighboring valley. At the junction of the waters was the town of Nakri. The town had once boasted a factory making artificial fertilizer, but difficulties of transportation and supply had closed the factory. Now the town existed only as an administrative center for Nakri Prefecture, and as a trading post for the peasants of the district and nomads from the surrounding hills.

The landscape around the Station was by no means as bleak as Margaret had at first supposed. One morning in early April she saw the gentle slope above the station washed, for as far as the eye could see, with streaks and patches of a delicate pastel yellow. Intrigued, she rose early from her afternoon siesta and went walking out beyond the perimeter wall. This was supposed to be against the rules, but she had done it before, when the station became too confining.

The yellow color came from a myriad tiny flowers growing among the stones and rough grass. This seemed to Margaret like a miracle. There had been no rain—it almost never rained in Nakri—and the snows had melted some weeks before. She knelt to caress the tiny yellow cups. So perfect! Why was nature so beautiful, and humanity so vile? Reflecting on this reflection, she thought she ought to feel sad, yet did not feel sad at all. She rose to her feet and began to walk.

After twenty minutes or so she reached a ridge at the top of the slope. Here there was a slight breeze, cool but not unpleasant. Looking up along the ridge she saw there were some ruins in the distance. Invigorated by the exercise, and reluctant to go back to the dormitory, she walked the mile or so to the ruins. They were much more extensive than they had seemed at a distance. Their ruin, however, was complete. It was impossible to make out what function the place might have served. The only part still recognizable was a small group of stables off at one side. Everything else was just jumbled, broken stones. After ten minutes Margaret had lost interest in the ruins themselves. But Johnny Liu’s remark about keeping up her exercises had been bobbing on the surface of her thoughts since she returned to the station from Beijing, and even as she was climbing the hill she had had it in mind to do some voice practice once she was far enough from the station that no-one would hear her.

She tried a couple of scales, but the results depressed her. There had been some change in the color of her voice, it seemed. It had a rasp to it, a hard dry edge pulling down the top notes and coarsening the lower ones. Her breath control was wobbly, too, she perceived. Diaphragm out of condition, she reasoned, and the effect of the thin, dry air. Retreating from the scales, she worked through some basic exercises, small yelping and trilling sounds, pure vowels and silent aspirations. This felt more comfortable. So: she was stuck here in Qinghai Province, where the air was thin, cold and dry. All right: she would find a way of singing suitable to the air, and keep her voice in trim regardless.

Thus resolved, Margaret stood there in the ruins on the mountain ridge, the slope flushed yellow beneath her down to the tiny silver river, and yelped and trilled, testing her voice against the thin air, probing for the necessary adjustments. Now that she was breathing self-consciously, filling her lungs with the mountain air, she tasted the clarity and purity of it. The Beijing air was very polluted, everyone knew that. It was especially bad in winter, when everyone was burning low-grade coal. Up here, between the stony unpeopled earth and the ultramarine sky, the air was nothing but air. She ended at last with some scales that did not sound so bad after all. Whether they were accurate or not (she reflected, walking back down) was another matter. She had not been blessed with perfect pitch, like Anna Wang. But then her voice was far stronger than Anna’s, even here in this thin whispering air.

It became Margaret’s habit, then, all through that spring, whenever her schedule permitted, to climb up onto the high mountain ridge and do voice exercises. The insecurity of singing unaccompanied was an irritation; but that could be remedied on her next trip to Beijing—some tuning forks, a good Japanese cassette player like the ones at the Conservatory, some tapes. The mere fact that she was using her voice—even if only for the appreciation of the occasional unwary yak—lifted Margaret’s spirits, and made her exile easier to bear. It was easier in any case by now. Colleagues still looked at her askance, and there was still a certain amount of giggling and whispering to newcomers, or when certain subjects came up, but her novelty value had worn off.

One day in May Margaret skipped siesta and went up to the ruins on the mountain ridge to do her exercises. She had progressed by now to the point where she allowed herself to sing full arias, those few she had in her repertoire: “Un bel di” from Butterfly, “Porgi, amor” from The Marriage of Figaro, “Vissi d’arte” of course, and two or three others. Standing there in the ruins on this particular afternoon, she had done all her exercises and finished up with “Un bel di”—a piece she liked to sing, as she fancied it showed off the color, the emotional expressiveness, of her voice. Now she was going through some small relaxation exercises, de-tensing her diaphragm ready for the walk back.

“GOOD MORNING!”

The voice was very loud, and spoke in English. Margaret’s blood froze. Ghosts! The place was haunted! But English? She looked around. There was nothing to see. Then someone laughed, very loud, just behind her. She looked: a broken wall twenty yards away. Then a face came up from behind the wall. It was the big, strange boy from Arboriculture. “GOOD MORNING!” he boomed, and roared with laughter again.

“Oh! You scared me almost to death! I thought you were a ghost!”

The boy, who had one of those Tibetan names you could never remember, walked round from behind the wall, grinning confidently. “How about my English?”

“Terrible. It should be ‘good afternoon.’ But you know, it’s very bad to sneak up on a person like that. How long have you been here?”

“Since lunch.” He had his hands on his hips, carelessly, and was looking at her with that arrogant, almost sneering, look she had seen at the play.

“Were you here the whole time I was singing?”

“Sure. Right here behind the wall. I ducked down there when I saw you coming. You were making very strange sounds. After a while I thought you might be ill, and wanted to jump out and help you. Then your voice started going up and down, up and down. It was very beautiful. Then you sang a song. I couldn’t understand it at all, but it was a hundred times more beautiful even than the up and down stuff. Such a lovely song! But I couldn’t understand it at all! Was it in English?”

“No. It was Italian.”

“Ah.” He nodded and repeated the word: “Italian.”

“I’m sure you don’t even know where Italy is.”

He grinned at her, large even teeth, very white. “Southern Europe. Next to Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Greece. Capital is Rome. Home of Marco Polo, also many famous painters, sculptors, architects—for example, da Vinci, Michelangelo.” (He used the Chinese versions of the names: Dafenqi, Mikailangqiluo.)

This was more than Margaret knew. Irritated, she turned her back on him and stared off down the hillside. While she had her back to him she heard a light thud—he must have vaulted the wall. She turned: he was standing ten yards away, on this side of the wall now, still grinning at her.

“My name is Norbu,” he said. “Branch Secretary Zhang introduced us. I’m sure you remember.”

“Of course I remember. What are you doing up here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be at the station, looking after your trees?”

“No. Trees look after themselves pretty well. There are no sudden crises with trees. That’s the advantage of working with plants, rather than with animals or people. Besides, it’s still siesta time. But I don’t take siesta. I go out walking instead.”

“Why?”

“Exercise. Keep me strong.” He certainly looked strong. His hands and feet were very large, she noticed.

“Usually I walk along the valley. But sometimes I like to come up on to the hills to be alone.” He made a gesture round at the ruins.

“Why to this place? It’s just old stones.”

The boy’s expression changed. He looked at her coldly. Then he dropped his head and turned away from her. He reached out to the wall, and put his hand on it, gently. “Do you know what this place is?”

“No. Some ancient castle, I suppose.”

He said nothing. After a few seconds he turned back to her. He was unfastening the buttons on his jacket. “Do you know who this is?” He pulled open one side of the jacket.

“What? Who?” Then she saw that there was something inside the jacket. She peered more closely, as best she could while unwilling to take a step towards him. Stitched into the inside of the jacket was a little fabric frame containing a small piece of paper, no more than three inches square. It was a photograph, a color photograph, she saw. Or rather it had been: friction with the inner garments had removed most of the color. All that could be made out was that it was a picture of a man, a bald man wearing glasses. He looked like an intellectual.

“No. Who is it?”

“Guess.”

“Your father?”

The boy smiled. He seemed satisfied. He closed his jacket. Then: “You don’t know much, do you?”

“What?”

“I thought Chinese people knew everything. We Tibetans are only backward children. We don’t know anything. But, thank Heaven, we have our elder Han brothers to come and teach us. Teach us how to be civilized. Teach us to use the toilet. Teach us about socialism.” (He was using the exaggerated, gushing tone of a propaganda movie.) “But actually, I find you seem to know very little.”

Margaret didn’t get this at all. “What are you talking about? We are all Chinese. You’re a minority, that’s all.”

The boy grinned his open, white-toothed, insolent grin. “I know all about you, though. You were sent away from Beijing because you were caught doing tongfang with a foreign spy.”

Margaret blushed furiously. She felt shame and rage together. “It’s not true! You don’t know anything about me! That’s just a wicked rumor!”

The boy looked at her in silence for a few seconds, then dropped his eyes. “Oh, don’t get so upset. You Chinese are such prudes. Here in Tibet we don’t make such a fuss about it. It’s a natural thing, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, ‘here in Tibet’? This is Qinghai Province. Tibet is a thousand miles away.” She waved in a random direction at the distant mountains. Now he was looking at her again. The way he looked gave her a strange feeling in her belly. He had his hands on his hips again, his big hands, insolent and self-assured.

“Would you like to have tongfang with me?”

Margaret was stunned. How could anyone be so coarse? “Why … That’s … Oh! Disgraceful! What’s the meaning of it? Oh! Oh!” She turned and ran, dodging through the scattered broken stones. Behind her she heard the boy laughing his huge laugh.

“GOOD AFTERNOON!” he shouted to her as she ran. “GOOD AFTERNOON, TEACHER!”

Margaret soon lost her breath in the thin air. She stopped, feeling dizzy and a little sick. Looking back, Norbu was still standing there among the stones. He waved. “GOOD-BYE!” he called in English. “GOOD-BYE, TEACHER!”

With as much dignity as she could muster, Margaret set off down the slope, back to the station.

Chapter 38

Secretary Ma Speaks Out Against Demons

Norbu Swears a Solemn Oath

The very next morning, when Margaret went to the single workers’ refectory for breakfast, he was sitting there facing the door. She had never seen him in the refectory before—him, nor any other Tibetan. People said they had their own food, which they preferred. When Norbu saw her, he gave her the insolent grin and called out very loud: “GOOD MORNING!” in his execrable English.

Margaret ignored him. She had some experience of boys making a nuisance of themselves. It had happened a lot at the Conservatory. A boy would follow her around, turn up everywhere she went, look at her with a sort of mournful expression, or pass her silly notes. You could stop it by just being frank with them; or, in the worst cases, by telling one of the leaders. She paid no attention to Norbu, just went to the counter for her porridge and batter-stick as usual. When she had handed in her coupon, she went to sit at the other end of the room, at a table by herself, as was her custom. At once Norbu picked up his dish and came over to join her.

“Go away,” said Margaret at once. “I don’t like you.”

Norbu gave her another yard of grin. “Why not?”

“Because you’re ugly, dirty and stupid.”

The boy raised his eyebrows and inverted the grin in mock dismay. “That’s very comprehensive.”

“Go away. I think you’re disgusting.”

“Oh, Teacher Han, don’t be so cruel. I promise not to talk about tongfang.”

“Oh! You’re really outrageous! Please go away immediately! If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll speak to the leaders about you.”

“The leaders would approve of my actions. Don’t you know about the new directive from Beijing?”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The leaders in Beijing want to encourage marriage between Tibetans and Chinese. So that we poor backward Tibetans can get some of your strong Chinese blood.”

“I don’t believe you. What do you know about directives from Beijing? You talk as if you were a leader yourself. You’re just a worker, like me. And I would rather kill myself than marry you.”

The boy took a mouthful of porridge, looking across at her over the spoon. “Of course. I’m just a silly Tibetan. Or am I a hard Tibetan? Which kind of Tibetan am I?”

This embarrassed Margaret. “Oh. You know we say that?”

Norbu laughed, so loud that people looked at them. “Of course. I can understand Chinese, can’t I? How can I be a good citizen of the Motherland if I don’t know Chinese? I know everything you say, and everything you think. Now, how about your situation? How’s your Tibetan? Ngye jyuba kyen song ngye?”

“Of course I don’t know any Tibetan. I’m Chinese. This is China. Chinese is our national language. All citizens must know Chinese. But there’s no need for any one to learn minority languages. Why should anybody do that? Minority languages are no use. What would be the advantage to me of learning Tibetan?”

“The advantage would be, that you’d know what we say about you.”

“Who cares what you say? Who cares what you think? What are you doing in here anyway? Why aren’t you eating your Tibetan food? Barley-cakes and buttered tea!” She meant this to be teasing, but it didn’t come out quite right. However, Norbu seemed to take no offense.

“Why don’t you sit with your Chinese colleagues to eat?”

“What? I prefer to eat alone, that’s all.”

“Because you’re scared of them.”

“Nonsense! Don’t be stupid. Why should I be scared of my colleagues? You really say such crazy things.”

“Because you know they think you’re a loose woman. You have no face with them.”

This was too true to deny. But really, this crude boy and his crude manners were not to be tolerated.

“How about you? You think I’m a loose woman, too. That’s why you’re following me. You think one man has already taken advantage of me. Now you want to be the second one. Isn’t that right? Well, you’re dreaming. I would never let you touch me. If you tried to touch me, I would immediately report you to the leaders.”

Quickly, deliberately, he reached out his big hand and touched her sleeve. She pulled away. He was not grinning now. “Cheap?” he said. [The Chinese idiom for “take advantage of somebody” contains a word which also means “cheap.” He had picked out this word from her sentence.] With utmost seriousness he said: “I would pay ten thousand silver pieces for one kiss.”

“Oh! Outrageous!” Margaret stood up. “Now I really shall! I’ll report you to the leaders!You’ve made trouble for yourself now, you’ll see! Oh!” She picked up her dish and walked out.

*

To Margaret’s surprise, Norbu’s knowledge of directives from Beijing turned out to be accurate. The very next day there was a big Political Study meeting in the auditorium. Everybody in the station was there, both Tibetans and Chinese. This was new in itself. Usually Political Study meetings were held by unit—in Margaret’s case, by the middle school—and Tibetans didn’t participate. They were supposed to, but they just didn’t, and nobody bothered about it because nobody thought it important. Tibetans didn’t count. They wouldn’t have understood what was going on, anyway. When there was anything they had to know, they were called in to special meetings in their own units.

On this occasion, however, a whole area of the auditorium—a full third of the seats—was occupied by Tibetans. There was a guest speaker, too. He came up on the stage with the Party Secretaries, and stepped out to the front with Secretary Ma. He was thin, bald and old, with a look of great hauteur on his bony face. By Nakri standards he was very smartly dressed, with a well-worn but clean and neatly-pressed Sun Yatsen suit and a white inner collar. On his nose he wore a pair of pince-nez. Margaret had seen pince-nez before; old Bian, the sight-reading instructor at the Conservatory had worn them. To a few of those in the auditorium, however, the pince-nez were the most interesting thing they had seen that year, and there was a buzz of comment, some of the Tibetans pointing and calling out loud in their stupid, uncouth way. This was a minority reaction, however. To most of those present the man with the pince-nez was, apparently, a familiar figure.

Secretary Ma began reading from a sheet of paper. It was something about splittists. Margaret lost interest at once, as she always did in Political Study. However, she no longer had the habit of bringing a book to read, as she had at college. The middle school Political Study meetings were too small, you couldn’t just sit reading a book. You had to go through the motions. This one was big enough that no-one would pay attention if she read a book, but she didn’t have one.

She looked round the hall. Everybody was there. There must have been three hundred people crammed into the place. All the workers, the cadres, the Tibetans, her own students … Among the Tibetans she saw Norbu. He was sitting with his arms folded, and appeared to be listening intently to Secretary Ma.

Secretary Ma stopped reading and stepped back. The guest speaker, the one with the pince-nez, began reading. Margaret could not understand a word, but from the buzzing, hiccuping sound of his speech she assumed it was Tibetan. The man seemed not to have much interest in what he was reading. When he had finished he looked up at Secretary Ma. Secretary Ma stepped forward again.

“Comrades, we must be vigilant! We all feel that we are very remote here, far from important places. But no place is too remote for the splittist demons to find it and infiltrate it! Everybody must be alert! If you see any act of splittist sabotage, or hear any of the vile splittist poison-propaganda, report it immediately! If you fail to report it, then you yourself are no better than the splittist snakes and turtles, who want to split and destroy our Motherland! Those who fail to report will be dealt with just as the splittist demons themselves! They will be smashed to pieces by the people’s justice!” Secretary Ma paused to ventilate his sinuses and spit into a cuspidor behind him.

“Comrades! Let’s all work together, one heart one soul, to exterminate this menace! Let’s drive out the filthy demons, back to hell! Let’s cherish the Motherland! Remember the Three Loves: Love the Party! Love the Country! Love Socialism! Let’s try to keep that spirit in our work, and in our daily lives! And comrades …”

Here Secretary Ma lost his place, and shuffled his papers for a while. “… Comrades! We Han Chinese can also make a bigger contribution to the elimination of the splittist poison. We should make friends with our compatriots in the National Minorities. We shouldn’t hold ourselves aloof from them. We are all one blood, one flesh. One Motherland. There should be more friendships between ourselves and our brothers and sisters in the minorities. Not only friendships: even marriages!”

This caused a stir in the audience. Some of the single girls put their hands over their mouths and dropped their heads in embarrassment. One or two of the Tibetans yelped with surprise, and looked over at the Chinese section of the audience.

Secretary Ma looked up sternly. “Why not? We are all Chinese, aren’t we? If the Han Chinese look down on the minority peoples, and refuse to mix with them, what is that but a kind of splittism? Isn’t that so? Isn’t that just another way of splitting the Motherland? We should think about this point, comrades. In future the Party hopes to see more marriages between Han Chinese and our various nationalities.”

Secretary Ma stopped abruptly and stepped back. The haughty Tibetan began reading again. Apparently it was the same text, but this time when he came near to the end, the Tibetans all exploded with laughter. The haughty man paid no attention at all, but just went on reading in the same level voice, buzzing and hiccuping through the laughter.

*

That evening, when Margaret went to fetch hot water from the boiler-house, Norbu was waiting for her outside the single women’s dormitory. She almost walked into him. Her eyes met his for an instant, then she walked off at a brisk pace, determined not to pay any attention to him. At once he was at her side.

“Good afternoon, Teacher Han.”

“Go away. Go AWAY!”

“I saw you at the meeting. You see? It’s quite all right. The Party wants us to get married.”

Margaret stopped. They were alone in the open outside the dormitory. The boiler-house was part of the station’s power unit, in the center of the compound. “Listen to me …”

“Why don’t you let me carry your flasks?” he interrupted.

Looking back on it much later, Margaret could see that what she did next led to everything else, everything else in her life, to the very end of her life. At the time, however, she had no idea why she did it, and cursed herself at once for a stupid error.

What she intended to do was speak to him as sharply as she could—rudely, if necessary—to make it unmistakably clear to him that his attentions were not wanted. What she actually did, after a slight hesitation, was hand him the flasks. He took them, slipping his big hands through the handles, touching her own hands as he did so. There were four flasks, two for each hand; she was fetching water for Yong, the shortsighted girl, too. Looking at his hands she thought Norbu could just as easily have carried eight.

“All right. Come on,” said Norbu briskly. They walked on towards the boiler house. For a few paces, nothing was said. Then he turned to look at her with a new look: friendly, perhaps brotherly. “What did you think of the meeting?”

Silly question. One didn’t think anything of Political Study meetings; one just endured them. “Not very interesting,” she said.

“Do you know what it was about?”

“Of course. Splittists. And … and relationships with the minorities.” She at once regretted the word “relationships,” which in Chinese carries a tinge of salacity.

“No. I meant, do you know the reason for it?”

“Reason? What do you mean? The reason was, that Secretary Ma wanted to have a meeting. That’s all.”

“Secretary Ma is a good soldier. He carries out the orders of his superiors.”

“Of course. That’s what he should do. And I suppose you know every word of those orders.”

Norbu laughed. “No. But I know the reason for them. All the Tibetans know. We always get a big meeting at this time of year.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there’s always trouble in Tibet in March. March ’59, that was when the People’s Liberation Army released us from the grip of feudal oppression and restored us to the warm bosom of the Motherland. Every year, every March, there are big demonstrations in Lhasa. Then, a few weeks later, when the leaders in Beijing have issued the directives, we get a big meeting to warn against splittism.”

“Demonstrations? To commemorate the victory, you mean?”

He laughed. “Not exactly, Yuezhu.”

This was the first time he had ever used her given name. At once she felt that odd sensation in her gut, as she had two days before, on the mountain. They were silent again for a while.

To break the silence, she said: “Who was the Tibetan cadre who spoke?”

Norbu did not answer for a few paces, to the point where Margaret wondered if he had heard. Then: “That was Kesang Duoji,” he said.

He didn’t seem inclined to say anything else. They walked in silence a few yards.

“Is he an important cadre?” asked Margaret at last.

“Oh, yes. He’s a very important cadre.”

“He looked very distinguished.”

“Well, he was an aristocrat.”

“What?”

“Before he was a cadre, he was an aristocrat. Owned a lot of land here in Qinghai Province. Ruled over a lot of peasants.”

This was baffling to Margaret. The word “aristocrat” brought up an image of the villain in the army play, with upswept eyebrows and dark jowls.

“You mean he was a landlord? How could he become a high cadre, after being a landlord?” She had never heard of such a thing.

Norbu seemed to have recovered his good humor. “Oh, Tibet’s a strange country. All kinds of things are possible.”

They had reached the boiler house. They went inside, to the boiler, Norbu leading the way. He set the flasks down on the floor, which was made of stone slabs. One by one he filled them, moving each to the right and corking it as it was filled. When all was done he picked up the flasks and smiled at her, the same companionable smile. “Come on.”

Outside he walked a few paces, then stopped. “Look, Yuezhu. Look.”

Margaret was caught unawares. “What? Look at what?” She looked around, but there was nothing unusual. The power house, which was made of brick. A long wall started on their right, surrounding the yard where the coal was kept. The wall was made of lumps of stone, loosely piled and roughly cemented together. Twenty yards away was the back of the administration building. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“The wall. See the wall?”

“Yes. It’s a wall. So what?”

“Those stones. Where are they from?”

“I don’t know. How should I know? What does it matter?”

He was gazing at the wall with a rather silly, fond look. “From the monastery.”

“What monastery?”

“The monastery where I met you. Day before yesterday.”

“Oh. So that place was a monastery? I didn’t know.”

“Yes. It was a monastery. Until your army … until it was destroyed.”

“You mean it was destroyed in the insurrection?” They were walking back towards the dormitory now.

“Even before, actually.”

Margaret felt a little uncomfortable. “Well, the stones are more use in the wall than in the monastery.”

Norbu said nothing to this. Then: “Would you like me to show you around the monastery?”

“‘Show me around’? You talk as if it was still in one piece.”

“All right. Show you around the ruins of the monastery.”

“No. Why should I want that? Sounds very boring.”

“It’s good to go walking. Healthy. Get you away from the station.”

“No. I don’t trust you.”

Norbu laughed his huge laugh again. Margaret felt glad to hear that laugh. The conversation had been proceeding in a way that made her feel uneasy.

“Do you think I will rape you?”

“Hush! You shouldn’t always speak so directly. And your way of speaking is really too disgusting. If you want to find a girlfriend, you should learn some sweet words. Words a girl will like to hear. Not ‘rape’ and … and … words of that kind.”

They had almost reached the dormitory. They stopped a few paces away, out of hearing of anyone inside. He looked at her solemnly. “Yuezhu, I think you know that I would never harm you.”

“I don’t know that at all. Deeds follow words. If you speak so roughly, of course I’m bound to suspect that you will act roughly.”

Now he looked rather sheepish. “Yuezhu, if I have spoken in a way that upset you, I am very sorry. You know, every people has its own manners. Tibetan manners are not like Chinese manners.”

Looking at him, she felt rather regretful of her own harsh words. “Oh, all right. It doesn’t matter. Now, give me the water.”

He made no move. “Say you’ll come walking with me. On Sunday.”

“No, I won’t. And that’s that. Now, give me the water.”

Instead of giving it to her, he set down the flasks on the ground, two by each foot. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“No, I don’t. And in any case, I don’t want to get involved with you.”

Norbu had unfastened the top button of his jacket. He pulled it aside, and Margaret caught a glimpse of the picture he had showed her at the monastery, the bald man with glasses.

“I showed you this picture. Do you remember?” He looked extremely serious now.

“Yes, I remember. Your father. Will you please let me …”

“Why do you think I carry it?”

“I suppose you have strong feelings for your father.”

Norbu passed his right hand into the jacket, with his palm toward her, so that presumably his fingertips were against the picture. “This man means more to me than my life. Whatever he told me to do, I would do it. If he told me to leap off a mountain, I would do it at once, singing a joyful song.”

His voice was low and soft, full of emotion. Margaret was impressed.

“I can see your feelings are very deep …”

“This man’s flesh is my flesh. His blood is my blood. I swear, by his blood and my blood, I will never harm you. In the name of this man, Tenzin Gyatso, Gyalwa Rinpoche, I swear.”

This was said with great solemnity, the voice low but strong and firm.

“All right. I believe you.” Then, in an attempt at levity: “What complicated names you Tibetans have.”

His mood broke instantly. Here was the great grin, the confident laugh. “Then you’ll come walking with me on Sunday!”

His laugh, and his sudden change of mood, made Margaret laugh too. Laughing, she could not resist him. “All right.”

Now he was businesslike. “I’ll come here after lunch. Right here. Don’t forget.” He stepped back and, without further ado, walked away. Margaret picked up her flasks and went into the dormitory.

Chapter 39

Does Heaven Speak?

Old Bolmo Rescues a Snake

“Do you know the story of Liu Che on Tai Mountain?”

“Who?”

“The Emperor Han Wudi. Do you know the story about him?”

“I know a lot of stories about Han Wudi,” replied Margaret, a bit defensively. She thought she probably did know a lot of stories about the Wudi Emperor, though she couldn’t think of any at that moment. There were so many emperors, so many stories. Anyway, why not just say Han Wudi? Why use his personal name? Was Norbu trying to impress her? She thought so; and she thought it a bit odd, too, to hear a Tibetan making free with the personal names of Chinese Emperors. Though Tibetans were Chinese too, of course.

They were sitting out in the open among the ruins of the monastery. Margaret was leaning back against a remnant of wall. The remnant was about three feet high. It had actually formed one arm of a corner, so that if seen from vertically above, Margaret was sitting beneath the base of a capital “L.” The wall that made the upright of the “L” had survived to a height of six feet. Norbu was sitting on the wall above and behind her, leaning back against that higher wall. They had walked up from the valley and examined the ruins of the monastery. Norbu seemed to have figured out the complete floor plan: here the monk’s refectory, here some lecture halls, here a dispensary for their traditional Tibetan medicine, here a hall for images and prayers. Tired at last they had come to this wall, to sit and eat the barley cakes and small sweet apples—grown in the arboriculture unit—Norbu had brought. His first suggestion had been that the two of them sit together on the ground and eat; but Margaret had firmly vetoed this, and banished him to the top of the wall.

“Liu Che was a great emperor, wouldn’t you say? I mean, he was successful. He chastised the Huns, he sent Zhang Qian off to explore the west, he extended the borders of China, he even wrote some famous poems. Wouldn’t you say he was successful?”

Norbu sounded like a school textbook. Well, at least it showed he did some reading. “Yes, of course,” said Margaret. “One of the greatest emperors. Everybody knows.” She glanced up over her shoulder at him. He was stretched out there on the wall, in the angle of the corner, looking off across the ruins, shading his eyes with a hand, one leg hanging down lazily against the wall to her right.

“But you know” (he went on) “Liu Che was very unhappy.”

Margaret laughed at the way this was said, as if he were talking about an acquaintance. “How can you know that?”

“It’s easy to see, from the histories. Now, do you know why he was unhappy?”

“Because his favorite concubine died.” Margaret thought she remembered this from somewhere. Anyway, it was a fairly safe answer so far as emperors were concerned.

“Hm. Well, now I begin to respect you. You really do know some history. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was, that he had no religion.”

“That’s silly,” said Margaret. “Anyway, nobody had any religion at that time. Religion came in the Tang Dynasty, everyone knows that. And Han was before Tang. You see, I know more Chinese history than you.” She felt she had definitely scored a point on this.

“Well, you’re right. Real religion, Buddhism, came in the Tang. But before that there was Taoism, you know. Since ancient times. And ancestor worship, which the Confucians practiced. So you can’t say there was no religion.”

“All right. Well, which story do you want to tell me? I’m sure I will know it. And I’m sure you’ll get it wrong.”

“Liu Che had no religion. This made him very unhappy. He wanted religion. Most particularly he wanted Heaven to speak to him. So he asked a Taoist how this could be arranged. The Taoist said he had to go to the top of Tai Mountain and perform a sacrifice.” [Tai Mountain is a peak in Shandong Province, foremost of the five holy mountains of ancient China.] “Then Heaven would speak to him. So Wudi went to Tai Mountain. He had some servants go ahead and take up all the equipment for the sacrifice. Then he went up himself, with just one servant. When he got to the top of the mountain, he made the sacrifice. Then he waited for Heaven to speak to him. Do you know what happened?”

Margaret had never heard this story before. She wondered if Norbu was just making it up. Determined not to take it seriously, she said: “The sky cracked open and a fairy came down and kissed him.” She laughed heartily at her own wit.

“No. That’s not what happened.” For a while Norbu didn’t say anything more. When Margaret glanced up at him he saw her movement, and grinned down at her.

“Well?” prompted Margaret. “So what happened?”

“Nothing happened. Heaven didn’t speak to him. He didn’t hear anything, up there on the mountain. Nothing, just the sound of the wind.”

“What a silly story. An empty story. If he didn’t hear anything, then what’s to be told? Your stories are very boring, Norbu.”

He laughed again and jumped down from the wall. He stood in front of her grinning insolently, his hands on his hips. “Sometimes what’s missing is more important than what’s there.”

“Well, you should know. In your case, it’s the brains that are missing. Really, what a silly story. What’s the point? And anyway, how do you know what happened? You said he went up the mountain alone.”

“Not alone. With one servant.”

“So I suppose this story comes from the servant.”

“No. When they got back to the capital, the Emperor had the servant put to death.”

“In that case, how do you know nothing happened on the mountain?”

“Why else would he have the servant put to death? He did it to save his face. He didn’t want people to know that Heaven had refused to speak to him.”

This was reasonable. That was the way emperors behaved. But what a silly story. She said nothing for a few moments. The wind sighed and moaned. When you heard the wind you felt cold, whether it was really cold or not. She thought of mighty Han Wudi standing up there by his altar on top of Mount Tai, all dressed in red silk and cloth of gold, hearing nothing but the wind, and the poor doomed servant on his knees in the koutou position. Somehow this picture was itself chilling. Perhaps it was listening to the wind that had made Norbu think of this story. Listening to the wind and being on a mountain, of course.

“Of course” (Norbu went on) “Liu Che could have saved himself all that trouble if he’d just read Confucius. Tian he yan zai?” [“Does Heaven speak?”—a famous rhetorical question uttered by the sage in the Analects.]

Margaret knew the tag, and knew of course that it was in the classical language; but she did not actually know it was from Confucius. She had received all of her general education during the Cultural Revolution, when the antique philosophers were personae non gratae, and such of their apothegms as she knew had come to her extramurally and at random. She had no stock of organized knowledge about the ancients. Clearly Norbu had the advantage of her here. But how did he come to know this stuff? He was the same age as herself, presumably had had the same education. He must have done a lot of reading on his own.

She stood up, brushing the dirt and grass from her slacks. “Did we finish all the cakes?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Then I think we should go back.”

“All right.”

*

They walked side by side back down to the ridge.

“You still haven’t told me the point of the story,” said Margaret.

“The point is that people need religion. Even emperors. And you can’t find religion in the sky.”

“Well, I don’t think that really applies nowadays,” said Margaret cautiously. She knew the Tibetans were very religious, though she knew nothing about the nature of their devotions. She supposed it was all a matter of exploitation, as it had been in the old society: corrupt priests enriching themselves from the gullibility of superstitious peasants. Still, Norbu had behaved himself very well, and she had quite enjoyed their little outing. She did not want to offend his religious sensibilities, whatever they were.

He was looking sideways at her as they walked. “Why not? What makes us different from Han Wudi?”

“Well, this is the modern age. We have science. Once people have science, they don’t need religion.”

“Don’t you feel religious sometimes, Yuezhu?”

“Not really. When I was a kid I sometimes said a prayer to Guanyin. But I don’t believe in temples and priests and monasteries. Those things belong to the old society.”

“If you’re going to have religion, you need monks and priests to study the principles, to figure out what’s true and what’s false. And you need temples and ceremonies to get people into a religious mood. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t think we need those things in the modern world.”

“Well, here in Tibet we think they are essential. We don’t understand how people can live without proper religious ceremonies.”

“That just proves that Tibetans are very backward. Anyway, why do you keep saying ‘here in Tibet’? This is Qinghai Province. Tibet is a thousand miles away.”

“No. This is Tibet. This is Amdo Province of Tibet. Our Dalai Lama was born here, not a hundred miles from where we are now. Have you heard of our Dalai?”

“Yes. He’s a bad person. He’s the leader of the splittists.”

Norbu stopped. They were on the ridge now, at a point where it fell away steeply at their right, down to the valley. The station was out of sight to their left; all that could be seen below was the river, silver in the reflected light of the sun, and some piles of rock. The sun was very high, though this was mid-afternoon by clock time. It was warm, too, and the air perfectly clear. Just at the threshold of hearing was the wind, sighing as Margaret had heard it that day by the roadside, when she first arrived.

They stood in silence for a moment or two, looking down at the glittering river. Norbu had slipped one hand into his jacket, as he had when he swore not to harm her; to the place where he kept the picture of that scholarly man with glasses, the picture of his father. Margaret did not much like the drift of the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about the Dalai and his splittists, nor about questions of geographical nomenclature. Everybody knew things like that spelled trouble. Best to just accept what you were told and get on with your life. Why make trouble?

Hoping to steer things in a safer direction, she said: “Norbu, I can see you have very strong feelings for your father. I hope you won’t think it’s impolite of me to ask, but is your father still in the world?”

“No. He went off to his next life many years ago.”

“I’m sorry. But I guess he made a strong impression on you.”

Norbu looked sideways at her. “I never knew him. I don’t remember him at all. I was only two when he died.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m really sorry …”

He turned to face her. His look now made her think of that first encounter, when she had gone to the arboriculture unit with Branch Secretary Zhang.

“Oh, Yuezhu. You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Let’s do some arithmetic, Yuezhu, shall we?” The concluding syllable of this sentence, ba in Chinese, was drawn out sarcastically. “How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-five, I guess.”

“I’m twenty-four, Teacher Han. Born nineteen fifty-seven. Now, when do you think my father was born?”

“I suppose … Oh, nineteen thirty. How can I know?”

“Nineteen thirty-two. Now, concentrate. How old was my father in nineteen fifty-nine?”

“Well, twenty-seven. So what?”

“And how old would my father be, if he were alive today?”

“Ah, thirty-nine. No, forty-nine.”

“Forty-nine, yes. Now, tell me, among the Tibetans at the station, how many men of that generation are there?”

Margaret was irritated. She felt she was being got at somehow, but couldn’t see how.

“How should I know? Do you think I go around counting people?”

“Perhaps you should try it. You’ll find very few men of that generation in the station. Or anywhere in this region.”

“Why?” asked Margaret, in all innocence.

“Because, Teacher Han, when the Chinese army came to Tibet in nineteen fifty-nine, they divided the country into two kinds of districts. There were ‘full rebellion’ districts, where everybody was against them; and there were ‘half rebellion’ districts, where only some of the people were against them. In the ‘half rebellion’ districts, the soldiers were given orders to kill only the men. In the ‘full rebellion’ districts they were told to kill everybody without distinction.”

Margaret did not know what to say to this. It was preposterous, of course. Chinese soldiers would never behave like that! Her own father himself had been in Tibet. How could Norbu expect her to believe this nonsense? Yet it was true, there were very few middle-aged men among the Tibetans at the station. But perhaps they had all gone to Chinese cities to look for work. Who knew?

“I don’t believe that. That’s nonsense! The Chinese army is a people’s army. The soldiers love the people. They wouldn’t behave like that.”

Norbu went on, paying no attention to her words. “My people are Khamba, from south of here. The Khamba are the soldiers of Tibet, very fierce.” He flashed a proud smile. “So our district was a ‘full rebellion’ district. The Chinese killed everybody. If you go to that district now, it’s empty. Just a few Chinese settlers and some prison camps. My father died fighting your army. Or else he was put into a camp and died there. I have never known his fate. My mother ran for her life, to here, bringing me with her. This was a ‘half rebellion’ district, so the women and children were allowed to live.” He looked down. “Of course, they suffered a lot. Many were raped, I have heard. My mother—I don’t know. I’ve never had the courage to ask her. She just survived, somehow.”

Margaret thought she had never heard such nonsense. Raped? Of course People’s Liberation Army soldiers didn’t rape people. That would completely contradict the Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention. How could he expect her to believe these tales? Actually, she was embarrassed. She didn’t know what to say to these wild stories. Perhaps Norbu was mad!

At last she just said: “I don’t believe you. It’s nonsense.”

“On what grounds?”

“What?”

“On what grounds don’t you believe me?You can see for yourself it’s true, about people of my father’s generation. And how about Nakri town, down there?” He nodded down at the valley. “What’s the use of the town? At the end of a road leading nowhere?”

“I don’t know. Who cares?”

“The road used to continue, to Golog in the south. But now there are no people in Golog, so the road is no use. All the people were killed. The Chinese soldiers chased all the people out of Golog to a place where the river makes a big bend. They trapped them in the bend, with their backs to the river. Then they killed them all with machine-guns.”

Margaret turned from him and his nonsensical tales and continued on along the ridge. He walked on with her, at her side.

“If what you said was true,” said Margaret after a hundred paces, “the Tibetan people would all hate us bitterly. But in fact, many Tibetans have been very kind to me. How can that be, if the Chinese army was so cruel to them? That disproves your stupid story.”

“No. You don’t understand Tibetans at all. Let me tell you. Some Tibetans have been infected with your Chinese attitudes. They are the ones that hate you. The least Tibetan of the Tibetans, they hate you. They would kill you if they could. Sometimes they get the chance—then they take it. That’s why you’re not supposed to leave the station alone. But those are new-style Tibetans. Most Tibetans don’t think like that. Most of them are like Old Bolmo.”

“Yes. He’s always very kind to me.”

“Yes. Do you know why?”

“I guess he’s a nice man.”

“Well, he is. A real Tibetan. But that’s not the reason. He’s kind to you because he feels sorry for you.”

“What? Sorry for me? Why?”

“Because he knows you have no religion. Listen. I take lifts into town with Old Bolmo sometimes. Once, he nearly killed me. There was a snake on the road. When Old Bolmo saw the snake, he jumped on the brakes. The truck went right off the road. Wa! I was scared. Then he got down and lifted the snake off the road with a shovel. So carefully! That’s Old Bolmo. He’s a real Tibetan, religious in his bones.”

“I don’t understand. Why did he care about the snake?”

“Because he’s religious. You see, we Tibetans believe that life never ends. How could it? ‘Beginning’ and ‘end’—these words only belong to material things. Your body, of course that can have an end, and your eyes and ears and tongue will have an end, but your spirit can never end, because it’s not a material thing. After your body has gone, your spirit will find another body. Now there are many living things in this world, millions of living things, but very few of them are human beings. So the chance that your spirit can find a human body is very small. Whether it can or not, that depends on the quality of your spirit. And the quality of your spirit, well, it’s like the quality of your body—it depends on nourishment and exercise. That’s why we have religion, to give our spirit that nourishment and that exercise. That’s why human beings must have religion. If you have no religion, then your spirit will become weak and frail. While you are alive, it will have no strength to endure suffering; and when you die, it will have no chance to find a human body. It will only be able to crawl into the body of a beetle, or a snake. And a beetle or a snake has very little opportunity to practice religion, so your spirit might endure thousands of lives as beetles or snakes before it can find a human body again. That’s why Old Bolmo feels sorry for you. Because you have no religion. When you die, you will become a beetle or a snake. When Old Bolmo looks at you, he sees a pretty young girl. But he thinks: ‘This poor girl, so innocent and sweet, yet she has no religion. After she dies, her spirit will endure a thousand years of being a beetle or a snake. What a tragedy!’ He really thinks like that. I know him well. I can tell you for sure, to see you makes him feel sad. That’s why he was so kind to the snake. He thinks: ‘This poor snake may be carrying the spirit of a pretty young girl like Han Yuezhu. I must treat it gently.’ As I said, he’s got religion in his bones. You can’t even say he thinks those things. He really doesn’t think at all. He couldn’t even tell you what he believes. He’s not an educated man. Religion just come naturally to him, by instinct.”

Margaret thought she had spotted a flaw in this theology.

“If he really believes as you say he does, he should kill the snake. Then the spirit would get a quicker chance to find a human body, instead of having to wait for years. According to your theory, we should kill all animals. Then every spirit would have the chance of a human body. Really, this religion of yours is so stupid!”

“But there are only so many human beings, and far more animals. If we killed all the animals, those millions of spirits would have no place to go. They would just wander in the darkness for thousands of years. That’s even worse than being a snake. At least a snake can enjoy some small pleasures. A spirit without a body is just existing in darkness and silence. Without eyes, how can it experience light? Without ears, how can it experience sound? That’s the worst thing of all. So the answer is not to kill animals, but to treat them with kindness.”

Margaret felt a little impatient with all this. It was all very well to say a prayer to Guanyin or Shangdi when you needed some help in life. There might be ghosts and spirits after all, for all anybody knew; probably there was some kind of life after this one; and someone must have created the universe. But priests and temples, incense and statues, one’s soul flying off into beetles and snakes—those things were all nonsense. Superstition.

“Really,” she said, “you Tibetans are very backward. Feudal.”

“But don’t you see? We Tibetans think you Chinese are backward. We look down on you, because you have no religion. We think you are backward! Like wild people, like savages, with no religion!”

Margaret thought of Mr Mackenzie, the music teacher from New Zealand, his shouting match with Alfredo Zhang. This is supposed to be a civilized country? You’re slaves, all of you! Look at you, all so ABJECT! You have no more rights than cattle! No rights, no freedom! You are savages, barbarians! You would eat each other if the dictators told you to! Savages! Barbarians! There’s no civilization without freedom!

“Ai,” she said, “we poor Chinese! Westerners look down on us because we have no freedom. Tibetans look down on us, because we have no religion. Really, we Chinese must be very primitive people! Real savages, you say! But to tell you the truth, I don’t feel like a savage at all. I feel that I am quite civilized. And my family and my friends, they are civilized, too. We Chinese have been civilized for five thousand years. We are the most civilized people in the world. We are not savages!” She had raised her voice at the end of this, but somehow the thin dry air made the emotion in her words sound harsh. She cleared her throat, and tried a more reasonable tone. “How about you, Norbu? Do you feel like that, too? Do you think I’m a savage?”

He said nothing to this for a while, until she thought he’d chosen not to answer it. She glanced at him, walking alongside her. He was looking down, deep in thought.

“No,” he said at last. “I can’t say I do. I’ve had too much Chinese education, I guess. When I was eleven a truck came and took me to Xining. Me and thirty other kids. They put us in a Chinese school. That was the policy at that time: to make us Chinese. They’d given up on the older generation of Tibetans, but they thought they could turn the kids into good Chinese citizens. We were seven years in that place. Our parents weren’t allowed to see us. My mother didn’t know if I was alive or dead. Then the policy changed and I came back to Nakri. They hadn’t made me Chinese, of course; but I wasn’t really Tibetan any more, either. I’d forgotten the prayers and the ceremonies. I didn’t even know the forms of address for the clergy, not that there were many left alive. My mother tried to teach me, but you know, if you don’t practice those things every day, you always have to strain to remember them. And we couldn’t practice, not in public. It was banned.”

“That was in the Cultural Revolution. A lot of mistakes were made,” said Margaret carefully, repeating the official line.

“Yeah, well.” Norbu seemed not to want to dispute the point. “Anyway, I can’t really be religious. Not like my mother, not like Old Bolmo, people like that, with no education at all. I can’t be that religious. Oh, I believe in religion, all right. But not in my bones, the way simple people do. I wish I could be like that, but I can’t. But yes, I believe in religion. And yes, I feel sorry for you Chinese, with your poor empty lives. Nothing to think about but money and face. And always afraid of each other, always suspicious of each other, always trying to get some advantage over each other. Yes, I feel sorry for you living like that. And your ugly concrete dormitories, and your clumsy soldiers, and your stupid Marxism which even a child can see through, and your movies full of lies, and …”

Margaret stopped abruptly and confronted him. “I won’t listen to this. Now I see what you are. You’re a splittist! You’re against the country! Well, let me tell you something: I look down on you! What’s more natural than to love your country? Even the simplest people, even criminals, love their country. But not you—you hate your country! You’re against your country! You want to split your country!”

Norbu had also stopped. He watched her levelly as she spoke, with a slight smile. “No,” he replied, “I love my country with all my heart. I hate anybody who wants to split my country.” He said this with great sincerity.

“Well,” said Margaret, somewhat deflated, “then you shouldn’t say bad things about your fellow-countrymen.”

“I was talking about religion, that’s all.”

“Oh … forget it.” Margaret turned away and continued walking. “If you want your stupid religion, you can have it. I don’t care.” She could hear him walking too, close behind her. Why was he being so disagreeable? Actually, he wasn’t such a bad guy. Much better educated than she had supposed. Better educated than she herself, Margaret was ready to admit. She tried to think of something to say, to change the subject, but nothing came.

“Yuezhu?”

“Mm?” Stopping and turning again, she saw him standing some paces behind her. He was smiling in a rather sheepish way, a way that made him look very appealing somehow—vulnerable, for all his bigness and rough manners. Margaret felt the strange movement inside herself again, in her belly.

“I want to apologize to you.” Norbu stepped up to her, right up to her. “I’m sorry. My tongue ran away with me. I ask your forgiveness.”

“Oh, all right. But you really shouldn’t say such insulting things. Nobody likes to hear them.”

He was right up to her now, right in front of her, with that uncertain smile on his face. His eyes were deep and dark, his teeth very white.

“Seal it.”

“What?”

“Your forgiveness. Seal it.”

“What do you? … Oh!”

Too quickly for her to react, Norbu took her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. His hands were so big they seemed to encompass her entire head. Margaret twisted away and stepped back.

“So much for your promise! Now I can really see you’re a bad person!”

Norbu was just standing there, grinning at her triumphantly, the smile cocky and insolent now. “I promised not to harm you, didn’t I? Well, where’s the harm in a kiss?”

“If it’s not wanted, then it’s taking advantage.” Margaret turned away. “Come on. I’ve had enough of you. This trip this afternoon was a mistake. Let’s go back.”

Chapter 40

Secretary Ma Loses His Temper

The Demographics of Our Western Regions Explained

Now Margaret became aware of some change in herself.

The first thing was a loss of concentration. Life at the station was boring in the extreme. For most of the day, most days, there was nothing to do at all. She had filled this time with preparation for her lessons, constructing elaborate conversations in English for the students to practice, and even making up little playlets for them to act out.

Now it seemed that her mind would not fix itself on these things. After dinner in the evenings she would take out her notebook, pick up a pencil, and … and come to with a start, ten minutes later, with a blank page in front of her. As to the content of her thoughts during those ten minutes, it seemed that she could recall very little. Certainly her mental state had not been that treadmill of obsession one walks when burdened with fierce hope or incurable grievance. It had been something dreamlike, something pleasant but passive. Something of refuge, of warmth, of being embraced by strength and certitude. But was there really warmth to be found in this bitter, hostile place? Perhaps there was. Perhaps this boy, with his smile, his big hands …

Some lines from one of Verdi’s operas would keep coming to her: Ah, fors’ è lui che l’anima … “Perhaps it’s he that my soul, alone in the tumult of pleasure, has so often pictured.” The pleasures available at Nakri Agricultural Research Station fell somewhat short of tumultuous, and Margaret had never before been afflicted by romantic reveries; yet these lines, and their lovely music, had lodged in her brain anyway, chiming away relentlessly until there was nothing for it but to get up and go for a walk.

The weather was positively balmy now. Out of doors she need only wear light slacks, a blouse and undershirt, and a broad-brimmed straw hat against the fierce Tibetan sun. She felt no need to protect her throat at all. There was one blouse she thought suited her particularly well. It was a rather bright coral pink, with a wide collar and a shaped waist. She had bought it on one of her shopping trips in Beijing that Spring Festival. Now she wore it again, on a warm Thursday afternoon four days after the walk in the mountains. Norbu had not shown himself this four days. Margaret had looked for him in the refectory at meal-times, but he had not been there. She had walked in the compound each evening in the general direction of the arboriculture unit, but had not sighted him. Though she would have died under torture before admitting it, she was worried that she might have driven him away. In her mind was a vague plan—she had not thought out what words to use, that would be admitting too much to herself—of apologizing to him for her rather harsh parting words, or at any rate of being particularly agreeable to him in the hope of canceling the recollection of those words.

On this fourth day Margaret had free time in the afternoon, and determined to resume her voice practice, which had lapsed for a week. She left the women’s dormitory and was crossing the open space behind the administrative building, making for the front gate of the station compound, when she heard someone call her. Turning, she saw the woman who kept the desk at the entrance to the middle school.

“Teacher Han! Branch Secretary Zhang wants to see you.”

The woman came over to her. She was an unpleasant type, with a sly, vicious face and a terrific reputation for gossip. The look she gave Margaret was almost a sneer.

“He wants to see you right now. Secretary Ma’s in his office. Come on!” She turned away and waddled off, looking back once to make sure Margaret was following.

Secretary Ma had taken the single spare chair in Branch Secretary Zhang’s office, leaving Margaret no place to sit, except the bed. Of course, she couldn’t sit on the bed. She stood just inside the door. Secretary Ma stared at her blouse. His odd, doll-like features were set in an expression of unblinking disdain.

“Ah, Little Han! Come on in, come on in! You can sit on the bed if you like.” Branch Secretary Zhang half-stood from his chair to greet her. He gestured vaguely at the bed.

Secretary Ma went Tsss! under his breath, and turned away to stare at the shelves behind Branch Secretary Zhang’s desk. Margaret took a couple of steps toward the desk.

“The concierge said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes, yes.” Branch Secretary Zhang seemed ill at ease. He took some time lighting a cigarette. “Yes. Well. Ah, you’ve been with us some time now.”

“Nine months.”

“Yes, yes. Well. Are you getting accustomed to the conditions here?”

“Oh, yes. I think so. Of course, it’s different …”

“Yes, yes. Different. Different food, different air …”

Secretary Ma interrupted. “People have seen you going out with that Tibetan boy in Arboriculture.”

Margaret was taken completely off guard. Quite unable to speak, she stared at Secretary Ma.

He stared back. “Well?”

“Yes. We … I have. Yes.”

“Of course you have. Do you think we don’t know? Do you think it can go unnoticed in a place like this?” Secretary Ma evacuated his nasopharyngeal tract and stood up to expel the fruit of this exercise into Branch Secretary Zhang’s cuspidor.

“I … But there’s nothing secret about it!” Margaret felt herself getting hot. “We’re friends, that’s all!”

“Ha!” Secretary Ma smiled for an instant. His teeth had numerous small black holes in them. “Friends! You seem to have an eccentric taste in friends, Teacher Han.”

“I don’t understand. Is it wrong, then?”

“Of course it’s wrong. You know very well it’s wrong. For one thing, you’re not allowed to go out of the compound alone. For your own safety. Branch Secretary Zhang told you that when you arrived. Those are the rules. You must obey the rules, like everybody else.”

“I didn’t go out alone.” (Thinking only of the last walk, with Norbu.)

“Yes you did. Many times. Three or four times a week, for the past several weeks. You’ve been going up the hill, alone.”

“Oh … Yes, I did. But to practice …”

“To meet your boyfriend.”

“No! That’s not true. I’ve just been going for exercise. And to practice my singing, away from the station.”

“Oh, you didn’t meet him, then?”

“I … Yes. But …”

“And last Sunday you went up there again with him.”

“That’s not alone. We went together. He invited me.”

“I’ll bet he did.” Secretary Ma laughed harshly, and looked to Branch Secretary Zhang for support. Branch Secretary Zhang made a half-hearted snicker. “‘Alone’ means with no other Chinese people, you understand that perfectly well. If you want to go out, you should go with your Chinese colleagues.”

“But … We’re friends, that’s all. There’s no … special relationship.”

Secretary Ma leered at her. “Teacher Han, you should examine yourself carefully. Criticize yourself. Try to cultivate self-respect.”

Burning inside as well as out by now, Margaret determined to speak out.

“And does ‘cultivate self-respect’ mean that I’m to have no friendships?”

Secretary Ma’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. Branch Secretary Zhang cut in.

“That boy, Norbu. He’s a bad person. You shouldn’t associate with him.”

“Why is he a bad person?”

“IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!” shouted Secretary Ma, terribly loud. At full throat his voice was, like his features, immature, and rose to a falsetto squeal. He was furious. “It’s not for you to ask questions!You do as you’re told! If you want to find a boy friend, there are plenty of young Chinese men here. No foreigners, I’m afraid! No foreigners for you to cuddle here! But plenty of honest Chinese boys!”

Margaret wanted to cry, but was determined not to. “What about policy?”

“What?” Puzzled, Secretary Ma fell back to his normal tone of voice. “What policy?”

“You told us at the meeting. We should be willing to marry Tibetans.”

Secretary Ma stared at her. Then he laughed. “You stupid cunt. We want Chinese men to marry Tibetan women, that’s the policy. We don’t want their men fooling around with our women! We know how to deal with that!”

“Well, if that’s the policy you should have said so clearly.”

Secretary Ma had never heard anything like this. He stared at her, his face changing color. For the first time in the interview, Margaret felt afraid. Secretary Ma stood up and took a step toward her. He was an inch or two shorter than herself. When he found his voice, it was low and hoarse.

“Listen to me, Teacher Hot Pussy. You don’t tell me about policy. I tell you about policy. You don’t tell me who you can marry. I tell you who you can marry. You’re a member of this unit now, and you’ll follow the rules of this unit, like everybody else. Now get back to your dormitory and examine yourself.”

Margaret could not control herself any longer. She began to cry. In shame and anger she put her hands over her face. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” was all she could say. Half-blind with tears she ran from the room, along the corridor, back to her dormitory bed. Alone there in the bright afternoon stillness, she sobbed herself to exhaustion and fell asleep. When she woke, in early evening, her pretty blouse was stained at the front from her tears. Around the stained part there was even a faint rim of white salt, like the frost on the tree branches in Jade Abyss Park.

*

The very next morning, at breakfast, he came to her. These last few days Margaret had taken to sitting facing the door of the refectory, so she saw him as soon as he came in.

Instead of going to the counter, Norbu strode directly across to her table and sat opposite her. Margaret found herself unable to speak. He looked at her, right into her eyes—his expression serious, even a little grim. Flustered, Margaret looked down into her gruel and made to take a spoonful of it, but her fingers had trouble working the spoon.

“I heard you had a fight with Secretary Ma.”

“Oh! How could you know that?”

Norbu ignored the question. “Because you’ve been going out with me, right?”

She nodded, having finally got a mouthful of gruel in place.

“Did he forbid you to see me?”

“Yes.”

“His mother’s! What did you say?”

“I said we were just friends, that’s all.”

She looked at him again. His eyes were still on her eyes. He looked angry now.

“That motherfucking son of a bitch. He can’t stop us seeing each other. It’s not against the law.”

“Oh, Norbu …” The previous evening, Margaret had worked out what she would say to him. She would say that she had had too much trouble already; that she only wanted to live quietly without distress; that she could never consider a close relationship with someone from the minorities … But all these things were now quite unsayable. All such thoughts were lost in his presence, and in the absolute imperative of keeping him near her for as long as she possibly could. But of course he was wrong. Secretary Ma could stop them seeing each other if he wanted to. He could simply transfer one, or both, of them to some other unit.

“Oh, Norbu. What are we going to do? What can we do?” She set down her spoon and, elbows on the table, lowered her face into her hands. Almost at once she felt him grip her bare wrist, his hand circling it completely with an inch to spare.

“Yuezhu, don’t worry. Please don’t worry. It’ll be all right. Look at me. Come on, look at me.” He pulled her hand down onto the table, and held it there. Margaret looked up. Two Chinese men at the next table had stopped eating to stare at them. She tried to pull her hand away, but Norbu held it firmly. He was smiling at her now; a tender smile, full of concern, yet still with that wild edge of insolence to it. “Everything’s all right. Don’t worry.”

“How can you say that? You know things aren’t all right. In fact, they’re hopeless.”

“No! Listen to me, Yuezhu. I can fix everything. Listen. This morning I have to go to Lanzhou for some seedlings. Lanzhou and some other places. I’ll be gone a few days. Wait till I come back. All right?”

Gone a few days was the main thing that registered. “How long? How long will you be away?”

“A week, maybe a day or two more. Listen. Today is Friday, right? A week on Sunday I’ll be back, for sure. A week on Sunday. Sneak away that afternoon, when everybody’s having siesta. Go up to the monastery. I’ll meet you up there. All right?”

“A week on Sunday.”

“Yes. Go up to the monastery after lunch. I’ll meet you there. We’ll discuss everything. All right?”

“Yes. Oh!”

The oh was because he had suddenly stood up, releasing her hand. It was involuntary, and was followed by panic. He was going! For a week or more! Suddenly this seemed unbearable. “Norbu …”

“What?”

“Please don’t go. Don’t go.”

He laughed down at her, showing his teeth. “It’s all right. Just wait for me.”

Norbu turned, and walked straight out—his loose, loping walk that said to the other diners Fuck all you losers and fuck your mothers too, I don’t care what you think.

Suddenly Margaret was filled with despair. All around, at the other tables, people were staring at her. With what little spirit she had left, she gathered up her dignity and walked out, leaving her bowl on the table. Outside she looked for him, but he had disappeared.

*

From lunch time that Friday, Margaret counted off the days. Nine days. Saturday, and then only eight, of which one could more or less be slept through. Sunday, then seven days, an even week. Monday, six days; a third of the time had gone. Tuesday, five days; almost half gone. Wednesday, four days; actually more than half. Thursday, three days; two-thirds gone. In her free time on Friday afternoon she washed her favorite blouse and slacks, and trimmed her hair. Saturday, one day. Sunday.

After lunch she went back to her dormitory with the other girls, and feigned sleep for half an hour until everything was quiet. Then she left the building and walked across the compound to the gate. Not a soul was about. Margaret’s main worry was the guard at the gate, who was supposed to keep an eye on all comings and goings, to prevent local peasants from slipping in to steal things. However, he was nowhere in sight, and the gate was open. Margaret followed the wall of the compound round, then struck off up the hillside.

The dead stones of the monastery were white in the sunlight. Norbu was nowhere to be seen. Margaret debated with herself whether to watch for him, or to lie down and wait. Lying down would be more fun: he could surprise her. On the other hand, it might spoil her clean blouse and slacks. She decided to take a walk round the ruins while she waited.

A complete circumambulation of the ruins took only ten minutes. Still no Norbu. She did the circuit again, but still he did not appear. Nearby was the wall from behind which he had jumped up to surprise her that first time. Was he waiting there to make another surprise? She tiptoed over to the wall, then called out his name loud. Nothing. She walked round the wall: he wasn’t there.

It was four thirty when she came back to the compound. Reckless with despair, she headed directly for the arboriculture building. Halfway there, behind the station’s little power house, a truck was parked. Old Bolmo, the driver, was sitting on the step of the cab, smoking a cigarette. He waved to her. Margaret turned from her path and went over. The driver stood up as she approached.

“Old Bolmo. I’m looking for Norbu. My friend Norbu, you know? The one who grows trees.”

Old Bolmo stared at her. He looked a little scared, she thought. This seemed very odd. Why should Old Bolmo be scared of her?

“Missy, you don’t heard about the trouble?”

Margaret’s flesh went cold. “Trouble?”

“One big cadre, Kesang Duoji, that one come here last month. Yesterday got killed.”

“Killed? Oh, that’s terrible! What happened?”

Old Bolmo was very uncomfortable. He shifted his feet, looked over her left shoulder, looked over her right shoulder, looked at the ground.

“One guy killed him,” he mumbled. “Use knife, run to him, cut he throat.”

“Heaven! Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“Missy I don’t know. Some Tibet people … they sometimes act crazy. Do bad thing.”

“But my friend, Norbu. Oh! he wasn’t … he didn’t … Oh! Old Bolmo, tell me. He didn’t …”

“No, no, Missy. He didn’t do nothing. But Kesang Duoji that time got killed, he was in Laptok. You friend in Laptok too that time.”

Old Bolmo stopped, clearly feeling he had provided sufficient information. His cigarette had burned down. He pinched it out with his bare fingers, and put the stub in one of the breast pockets of his jacket. Then he smiled at Margaret, nodding.

“But if Norbu wasn’t involved, where is he?”

“They ’rrest him, Missy. ’Rrest all Tibet boys in Laptok that day. Such a thing happen, go’ment consider very serious. They ’rrest everybody in that town, all Tibet people, they all got ’rrest.”

“Arrested? Ai, that’s terrible! But what will happen to them?”

“Hard to say, Missy. Kesang Duoji big cadre. Go’ment they like him a lot. He got killed, they very angry. Make big ’vestigation. Depends they think you friend against go’ment. They think he against go’ment, give him five years.”

“Five years?”

The driver nodded, looking at her warily, then looking around to make sure no-one else was in earshot.

“Five years the usual. Nakri got one guy. He Tibet people. He work go’ment office, with the Chinese people. One day got angry for some small thing. He say: ‘You Chinese people should go back China, leave us Tibet people alone.’ After, they ’rrest him. He got five years. Last year that happen. We don’t see him since that time.” Old Bolmo looked down at his feet, nervously. “He say that, not me. I only tell you he say that. Not me say it, he say it. I only tell you he say it.”

“You think Norbu will get five years?”

The driver shrugged. “I don’t know. Depends they think he against the go’ment. I only say, five years the usual. In such a case. I don’t know.”

Five years? Margaret’s throat was dry. Five years? “Old Bolmo, will you come and tell me if you hear anything? Any news about Norbu, I mean? Will you let me know right away?”

Old Bolmo looked at her. He seemed not altogether sure of himself. “Okay, Missy. I tell you.”

“Tell me right away. Please, please. I’m in the single women’s dormitory. You can ask the concierge for me.”

“Okay.”

Entirely at a loss, Margaret could think of nothing but to go back to the dormitory. As she was passing the administration building, however, she saw Branch Secretary Zhang just going in. He saw her too, and beckoned her over.

“Little Han. Come into my office. There’s a situation.”

Margaret followed him in and down the corridor, and waited while he unlocked his door.

“Bad situation. Very bad,” said Branch Secretary Zhang, settling behind his desk. “Sit down, sit down. There’s going to be a meeting, but I’m glad I got the chance to talk to you first.”

Branch Secretary Zhang lit a cigarette. Margaret took the free chair, wanting to ask about Norbu while Branch Secretary Zhang was fussing with his matches … was on the point of asking, then reflected that it might make trouble for Old Bolmo. Branch Secretary Zhang’s remark about a situation had barely penetrated her stunned despair.

“I think you left the station this afternoon, didn’t you?” Branch Secretary Zhang had his elbows on the desk, was looking at her over his hands, through the thread of cigarette smoke.

“Yes, I did.”

“Alone, I believe.”

“Yes.”

Branch Secretary Zhang sighed, shaking his head. “It’s not smart,” he said. “Just as Secretary Ma told you. And because of this situation, we must enforce the rule strictly now. You won’t be allowed to go out alone.”

“Situation? What situation?”

“There was an incident in Laptok yesterday. Just as I told you when you arrived, the Imperialists have some agents here in Qinghai. Stirring up trouble amongst the minorities. Well, they committed an atrocity in Laptok. Assassinated one of our senior cadres. The one that was here last month, do you remember him? With those strange glasses stuck on his nose. The agent ran right up to him as he was coming from a meeting, right up to him and stabbed him to death.”

“Terrible,” said Margaret mechanically. “A shocking thing.”

“Yes. They got the bastard, of course. Public Security will make short work of him, don’t worry. But where there’s one of these vermin, you can be sure there are others. And all the black elements in the local minorities will get stirred up by a thing like this. Province has issued a directive that none of us is to go out of the station until the situation has stabilized. There’ll be a meeting tomorrow to announce it. But because you’ve already come to Secretary Ma’s attention, I thought I should tell you sooner.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t take this lightly. It’s a serious matter. National security. The army is involved. If you’re seen out alone they might pull you in. Then we shall all be in trouble. It’s bad enough that your friend got arrested.”

“My friend?”

“The Tibetan boy. The one Secretary Ma warned you about.”

“Ah.”

“He was in Laptok when the atrocity happened, so of course he got arrested.” Branch Secretary Zhang shook his head. “He’s a bad egg, that one. Just as Secretary Ma told you.”

“No, he’s not.”

“What?” Branch Secretary Zhang seemed more amused than offended.

“He’s not a bad egg. I know him well. He’s a good boy. Patriotic and well educated. He wouldn’t be involved in an atrocity.”

Branch Secretary Zhang blew smoke through his nose in silence. Then he shook his head slowly.

“Eeee. Little Han. You’re very young. There are many things you don’t understand.”

Margaret stood up, feeling hot. “But Norbu’s not a bad guy. I know.”

“He’s a very bad guy,” said Branch Secretary Zhang quietly.

“Why? How? How can you know that?”

Branch Secretary Zhang regarded her coolly. “He has a bad file. He’s been heard saying things against the country, against the Party. He’s a splittist, Little Han, a splittist, trying to split the motherland, parroting the so-called ‘Independent Tibet’ line the Imperialists cooked up to weaken our country. It’s all in his file. You say he’s well educated? Yes, the country educated him in a special boarding school. In Xining, the provincial capital—better conditions than he ever saw in his life before. Then four years in an agricultural college, also in the capital. At state expense!—fed by our peasants, protected by our army. And how does he repay the country? With filthy words and counter-revolutionary thoughts. We know all about this character. Let me tell you, he’s a very bad person. One of the worst. I hope they put him away for a long time. Teach him a lesson.”

“No. He told me he loved the country. He told me sincerely.”

“He lied. What do you expect of a counter-revolutionary element? How do you think these ghosts and demons make an impression on people’s minds? They tell lies, they make black propaganda. That’s why we must always be on the alert. Show revolutionary vigilance. Our enemies are everywhere, Little Han. You’ve heard that many times, I’m sure. Now you know it. You should remember this experience. It will make you a better citizen in the future. More careful, more vigilant!”

He smiled at her, pleased with himself and with his little speech.

Margaret just stared. She could think of nothing to say. At last she retreated, taking a step to the door.

“All right. Vigilant. All right.” She took another step. Then: “Branch Secretary Zhang, can you answer a question for me?”

“What question?”

Margaret didn’t know how it had come into her head, but she asked anyway. “Why are there so few Tibetan men here in their forties and fifties? What’s the reason for that?”

Branch Secretary Zhang nodded in approval. “You are very observant, Little Han. That’s good. Be more observant, and you will be more vigilant.”

“But what’s the reason for it?”

“The reason is simple. It’s the Tibetans’ personal habits. You’ve been here long enough, you’ve seen it yourself, I’m sure. I don’t need to tell you. They are just a filthy people. Well, every so often they have an epidemic. Caused by their filthy habits. A big epidemic. There was one twenty years ago. Killed off most of the young people. They haven’t got resistance, you see? Killed them off, thousands of them. I remember it well. Because of their filthy habits.”

“Oh.” This explanation had never occurred to Margaret. It seemed very reasonable. “Oh. Yes. I see. Well … thank you, Branch Secretary Zhang.” She turned and left.

*

Norbu really was a splittist, though. Margaret learned this some weeks later from her roommate, Wang Yong.

Margaret had become aware, over the few months of their acquaintance, that Yong was developing a peculiar interest in the Tibetans and their absurd religion. She seemed to have acquired a few words of Tibetan from the workers at the station; and from somewhere—probably from one of those same workers—had got a decorated wooden prayer wheel, a hand-held thing like a children’s rattle, whose precise usage and function she had explained to Margaret in detail during a snowstorm the previous December.

“It’s just an aid to prayer,” she had explained, somewhat defensively in response to Margaret’s frank scorn. “It’s the prayer itself that’s important, not the gadget.”

In the spring, at the time she herself was resuming her voice exercises, Margaret had even seen Yong attempting to write the letters of the Tibetan alphabet in an exercise book, murmuring the sound values to herself: ka, kha, ga, nga, … She understood vaguely, and with silent disapproval, that Yong was, in point of fact—and to use the terminology of a different imperialism, in another time—in process of going native. Certainly she knew things about the Tibetans that Margaret had never heard before. This became apparent when they visited Dong Lo Temple, after the restrictions on movement were lifted.

The restrictions on movement lasted a month. For all that time nobody, Chinese or Tibetan, was allowed to leave the station. For every day of that month Margaret allowed herself to hope a little. She went to the arboriculture greenhouses, openly and shamelessly, looking for Norbu. Each time she went there, or to the boiler house, or to the refectory, she braced herself to see him, raised in herself a premonitory surge of joy; but he was not there, and the joy turned to a bitter taste on her tongue. She harassed Old Bolmo for information, but he had none to give. Every day she hoped, but every day a little less; and by the end of the month the demon Hope had tired of his sport altogether, leaving Margaret only cold fatalism.

In early July, when the restrictions were lifted, Yong suggested a trip to the provincial capital. Margaret had said nothing to her about Norbu, but perhaps Yong had noticed her roommate’s unhappiness, or heard the common gossip of the station.

“I’m going stir crazy in this damn place,” Yong said that particular evening. “I don’t think I shall last out the semester if I don’t get away. Let’s take a long weekend and go to Xining. There’s an ancient temple I want to see.”

They bribed Old Bolmo to take them to the road one Friday morning. From there they took the bus Margaret had ridden nine months earlier, though this time in the opposite direction, back to the provincial capital. It was late when they arrived, though still light, and they checked in right away to a Chinese hotel.

Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, was a squalid river settlement festering quietly in the summer heat. There were soldiers everywhere—more soldiers than citizens, it seemed at times, as the two women strolled the dusty streets next day. The soldiers were all in twos, threes and fours, and had a watchful look. Many were armed, carrying their rifles at the port.

“It’s because of the assassination,” said Yong. “It’s always like this for a while after an assassination.”

“You mean that Tibetan cadre, Kesang Whats-his-name? Is that what it was, an assassination? I thought it was just the act of a lunatic.”

“Oh, yes. Every couple of years there’s some disturbance like that. A riot, an assassination. When I first came here in ’68 it was worse. There were guerrillas in the mountains with guns and explosives. They blew up an army truck full of soldiers and burned down a police station. It’s quieter now. But still the Tibetans take revenge once in a while.”

“Revenge? For what? Didn’t we liberate them from feudalism?”

Yong peered out at her through lenses so thick you could see the greenish color of the glass.

“You’re very naive, Yuezhu. The Tibetans all hate us. We took their country from them, drove out their priests and destroyed their temples. Tibetans like Kesang Duoji, who work for our Chinese government, are considered traitors by the locals. They look on them the way we look on people who collaborated with the Japanese forty years ago. If they see a chance, they kill them, and consider they’ve done a patriotic act.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Hasn’t this always been a part of China?”

Yong laughed. “Ask the man who killed Kesang Duoji.”

The Dong Lo Temple, which was the particular object of Yong’s interest, was a forty-minute bus ride from the town. It was actually a monastery, one of the few left intact in Qinghai Province, kept up by the government as a tourist attraction. Margaret thought it a filthy, sinister place. The inner parts, which Yong seemed particularly keen to explore, were windowless. They were lit, dimly, by candles of yak butter. On the walls were paintings, hideous demons leering and capering through the flickering yellow gloom. The few surviving monks looked as ancient as the stones themselves, and were hardly more coherent. Motionless they growled their monotone chant, the death-song of their race. In the innermost room of all was a party of kneeling pilgrims, nomads from the south. They paid no heed to the intruders, except for one girl who looked up briefly at Margaret. Her eyes glittered from a face covered with black dirt. She turned to glance at Yong, then went back to her devotions, alternately rocking and prostrating herself according to some formula learned—how? Margaret could not imagine.

The odor in this room was well-nigh visible. Margaret felt herself suffocating, and motioned to Yong to leave. Yong seemed not to see her. The monks droned, the candles flickered, the demons leered, the pilgrims stank. Suddenly, astonishingly, there was a shrill, high-pitched voice just beyond the entrance passage—speaking English!

“… BASED ON NOTHING BUT SUPERSTITION. BEFORE LIBERATION THIS ROOM WAS FILLED ALL OVER WITH GOLDEN STATUES, THEIR EXPENSES TORN FROM THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF THE COMMON PEOPLE BY MANY VERY TERRIBLE TORTURES AND OPPRESSIONS. OVER HERE …”

It was a China Travel Service guide with a group of western tourists. The tourists were mostly old people. They wore pastel-colored slacks and tops and carried cameras and shoulder bags. One by one they tiptoed respectfully into the room where the pilgrims were offering their devotions.

“Strewth,” whispered the nearest tourist. “Godawful stink in here.”

When she had them lined up against the wall the guide started up again at the top of her voice.

“HERE CAN SEE SOME PEOPLE FROM THE REMOTE MOUNTAIN DISTRICT DOING THEIR RELIGIOUS. THEY PEOPLE VERY BACKWARD, STILL FOLLOW THESE OLD THINGS. YOU SEE THEY ARE VERY DIRTY, SMELL VERY BAD. THEY NEVER WASH AT ALL, THEY DO THE BOWEL MOVEMENT WHERE THEY ARE, NEVER MIND WHERE, EVEN IN THE TEMPLE.”

One or two of the tourists looked apprehensively down at their feet. The celebrants paid scant attention to the guide and her charges. They went on rocking and prostrating themselves while the monks droned. Yong’s mood, however, had been broken by the arrival of the tourists, and she led the way out.

“Were they Americans?” she asked Margaret when they reached a little open courtyard. Yong could neither speak nor understand English.

“Australians,” said Margaret, pleased with herself at having divined this from the labels on the shoulder bags. “Probably paid a lot of money. They pay money to come to Qinghai Province; you and I would pay any amount of money to get out of it.”

“We should all get out,” said Yong quite unexpectedly, with even some anger in her voice. “All we Chinese should get out. This is not China, it’s Tibet. It’s not our country, it’s theirs. We should apologize for what we’ve done to them, and then leave.”

“You sound like one of the splittist demons,” said Margaret, laughing to make light of it.

“Pei! How can you speak of splitting something that’s only held together by force?” Yong gestured back at the inner temple. “You see what they’re like. Devoted to their own ways, their language and religion. Do you know that every one of these Tibetans …” she nodded at an aged monk squatting by a wall muttering into his prayer-wheel, “… has a picture of the Dalai Lama on him? Hidden in a pocket somewhere, or stitched into the lining of his clothes? They all have one. If you get friendly with them, they’ll show you. The workers at the station, they all have them. They consider it their most sacred possession.”

Margaret reflected on this with sudden understanding, thinking of Norbu. But she did not want to think of Norbu.

“Old Bolmo, does he have one?”

“He has two. One in the lining of his jacket, one under the dashboard of his truck.”

Stunned and confused, Margaret could not speak. Then she could speak only at random.

“I myself would like to see Australia,” she said. “Heaven! I would love to. I don’t suppose I ever shall, though.”

Chapter 41

When the Lips Are Gone, the Teeth Are Cold

Signor Cinelli Honors the Privileges of Royalty

The week after the visit to Xining Margaret fell ill. At first it was just fatigue and dizziness. She went to the station clinic for some Chinese medicine. The medicine helped for a while, then the fatigue came back, and she began to have cramps in her belly. One morning she woke in a fever. There was no hospital at the station, nor at Nakri itself, so she was put on a pallet and carried in a truck back to Xining.

By the time they got to Xining Margaret had actually rallied a little. The doctor diagnosed colitis and prescribed a Western medicine which did no good at all, and Margaret fell into fever again. She lay in the hospital for four days, staring at the patterns of damp on the bare concrete ceiling. It was the height of Qinghai’s summer, and the hospital was full of flies. The flies crawled on her face, on her bare arms, and she exhausted herself brushing at them hour after hour.

Then it was discovered that the IV they had put in her arm had not been properly sterilized. Her arm came up red and furious to twice its size. The pain was very intense. Margaret fell into fits of uncontrollable screaming until the angry doctor, shouting back at her screams, filled her with painkillers. “Shut up and keep still. Do you think you’re the only patient in this fucking hospital?”

By the time she was fit to return to Nakri the middle school had begun summer vacation, and Margaret decided to go directly home to Beijing instead, there being nothing among her belongings at the station she could not manage without for the summer. Her arm in a sling, she rode the trains back across China. Mother was shocked at her appearance.

“So thin! Whatever happened to you?”

Margaret told her.

“That damn place! It’s bad food and bad air, that’s what it is. I’m going to speak to your father. You can’t possibly go on living out there!”

Margaret was irritated by her mother’s fussing. “Plenty of people live there,” she said, mildly astonished to hear herself rising to the defense of Nakri. “You know what Father will say, and he’ll be right: Our life here in the capital is a life of privilege, we have no divine entitlement to it.”

This was not what Father said, however. He had been away at a conference in the seaside town of Dalian. When he came home, Mother had persuaded Margaret to take to her bed, and was building her up with hot porridge and chicken broth with herbal medicine cooked in. Father shook his head to see her. He sat on the bed and put a hand on her brow.

“You in this generation are not as strong as we were,” he said. “No early training in hardship, that’s what it is.”

“Never mind that,” said Mother from the doorway. “You have a good position, you can get her out of there. Get her a transfer and a new Beijing residence permit. There must be some sort of assignment she can be given in the capital. Put her on your own staff, if necessary.”

“Easier said than done. This affair is still on people’s minds. It was only a year ago. Give it a few more months.”

“A few more months! The poor child’s choking up there in that thin air. All the Chinese people who go there get sick, I’ve heard it spoken of many times. You told me yourself, when you were in the far west, one in four of the soldiers had to be sent back because of altitude sickness.”

Father got up and stepped away, embarrassed. “All right, all right. I’ll see what I can do.”

Whether Father spoke to anyone about her case will never be known. Just three days after this, in the middle of the night, Margaret was woken by a crashing sound from the living room, a breaking of glass and Mother screaming. She jumped from her bed and went in. The electric light was on. Father was at the window. He had broken the glass of the window with his forearms. The sleeves of his pajama jacket were shredded where the broken glass had cut them, and Father’s front was covered with blood from cuts on his arms. Father was trying to lean out of the window. Mother was trying to pull him back.

“Help me!” screamed Mother. “Yuezhu, help get him away from the window!”

As she spoke, Father turned to Margaret. At once she saw what had happened. His face was a terrible gray, his lips blue. He couldn’t breathe, and had broken the window in a desperate effort to get near to fresh air.

The face Father turned to Margaret saw her for three or four seconds; then the eyes rolled up and he fell over backwards, knocking down Mother.

“Dingguo! Dingguo!” sobbed Mother, pulling herself out from under her stricken husband, calling him by his personal name.

“It’s a heart attack,” said Margaret. “That’s why he can’t breathe. We must get a doctor.”

There was a telephone in the apartment—one of the privileges of the military—but Margaret could not raise the operator, only a distant unknown voice saying irritably hello? hello? hello? Margaret ran down to the security desk on the first floor. The army man at the desk made several calls on his phone, but the problem seemed to be systemic, and he could not raise anyone either. Burning with frustration and desperation, Margaret ran out into the street. She ran along the street under the trees, through the hot Beijing night in her pajamas and slippers, the city all deserted. At last she saw a policeman riding a motorcycle-sidecar combination. The policeman had a radio. He called his station, then took Margaret home.

By the time they got back to the apartment Father was quite dead, lying on the floor next to the window where he had fallen. There was surprisingly little blood, though great gashes were visible on his arms. Margaret supposed his heart had stopped before much blood could flow. Mother was sitting in one of the armchairs with a blank expression on her face. She was holding a handkerchief, and presumably had been weeping; but now she was not weeping, just sitting quiet and still, watching over the body of her mate.

Margaret knelt by Father, a terrible emptiness beginning to open inside her. Father’s face was unnaturally white, but his lips were no longer blue, only waxy pale and yellowish. Bending over and placing her cheek next to his, she was astonished to find him already cold. “Father, Father, dear dear Father,” she whispered; and through the haze of grief the magnitude of her personal tragedy began to dawn on her.

*

“It means I have no way out of that place,” she said to Half Brother. “Father was going to get me a Beijing residence permit and some kind of job. Now I have no way out.”

She could not keep the beseeching note from her voice. What Father could no longer do, Margaret naturally hoped Half Brother might accomplish in his place. Immediately after Father’s death, when they were waiting for Half Brother to come home for the funeral, she had hardly dared to entertain this hope. She had not seen Half Brother since his wedding two years before. In particular, she had not seen him since the business with Mr Powell. She knew Half Brother had been investigated as a result of that matter, and thought she had gathered from something Father said that Half Brother’s career had suffered. It was therefore with some apprehension that she had gone to meet him at the railroad station.

Half Brother had come with his wife, leaving their infant son in the care of the wife’s mother. Margaret had met the wife only once, at the wedding, where she had found her pleasant and well-mannered, though somewhat reserved. At the station, when Half Brother had helped her down the steps from the train, she came forward at once and embraced Margaret, calling her “poor sister.” At once Margaret knew things were all right. She would not have been so forward if Half Brother had been bearing a grudge. In fact (Half Brother told her that evening, the evening before Father’s funeral) the investigation of him had been perfunctory and seemed to have had no negative consequences.

“I got the impression they were just going through the motions,” said Half Brother. “It was a strange business altogether. I doubt there was any actual espionage involved. In a music conservatory? Really!”

Margaret was of course pleased by his skepticism.

“But if there was no espionage, what was all that about secret papers in Mr Powell’s room?”

“Well, certainly such things as spies exist. The strategist Sunzi spoke of them at length, and gave instructions for employing them. But now, suppose your enemy has captured one of your spies and wants to exchange for one of his. And suppose you haven’t got one of his, or have one but don’t want to admit it, or …” he laughed, “… suppose you have one, but you have temporarily misplaced his head and internal organs. What can you offer the enemy in exchange?” He laughed again.

“Do such things really happen?”

“Certainly they do. Don’t worry, little sister. I doubt anyone at the important levels really feels you are guilty of anything.”

The funeral had gone off very well. More than a hundred people had come to the funeral parlor for the ceremony. Father’s chief, Marshal Hu Pinghui, had given the eulogy. He had had to give it from his wheelchair, being more than eighty years old and crippled with arthritis, but he was still a power in the land, one of Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s most trusted officials on the military side, and the family regarded it as a great honor. In fact, Marshal Ho had read a brief message from Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself as part of the eulogy, praising Father’s courage and dedication, and his contributions to the revolution. Hearing this—Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself praising her father’s memory!—Margaret’s spirits rose. Surely the daughter of this hero would not be allowed to waste out her life in the far west! Surely some way would be found! Perhaps she should write to Comrade Deng himself. But first she tackled Half Brother, when they were sitting round in Father’s apartment late that evening.

“There’s always a way out,” said Half Brother. “Let me see what I can do.”

Marriage had sobered and solidified Half Brother. He looked smarter than ever, in a well-cut and crisply-pressed uniform, with polished brown leather belt and shoes. His hair, though still a proper military crew-cut, now had enough length to show a simulated parting. He had taken up cigarette smoking, using a lighter, though with no evidence of excess. Altogether he looked very capable, very professional. Seeing him like that, and in the afterglow of hearing Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s words of praise for her father, Margaret thought Half Brother was surely right: impossible that there not be a way out!

Half Brother’s wife came out of the main bedroom. “I think your mother will sleep now,” she said. “Best not disturb her.”

“Poor Mother,” said Margaret. “Without Father, I wonder if she will be allowed to stay here in this apartment.”

“Oh, I don’t see why not,” said Half Brother, and made another little laugh. “I guess that’s another thing I’ll have to make representations about.”

Margaret felt embarrassed at the trouble she was putting him to. She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek—noting from the corner of her eye as she did so that Sister-in-Law did not look altogether pleased about it.

“Dear Half Brother,” she whispered. “I know you’ll help me again, as you helped me in the past.”

“Why not?” Half Brother looked at his wife as he spoke. “Blood is thicker than water.”

*

However things may stand as regards the relative viscosities of blood and water, Half Brother hit a dead end with the Beijing authorities. He was bewildered and frowning when he reported back to Margaret, the day before he and his wife were to go back to his unit in the northeast.

“Strange,” he said, “it is so strange. It’s a Foreign Ministry matter, they kept telling me, and the Foreign Ministry seems to take the whole thing very seriously. Perhaps there was some deception of the kind I spoke to you about, and the Ministry fears it becoming known. I don’t know. Not only were they not willing to reconsider what they call your ‘administrative punishment,’ they told me that if you stay in Beijing unlawfully you will be arrested and returned to your unit by force. As if there were some personal animosity towards you!”

“Can’t we speak to Father’s old chief, Marshal Hu?”

“I think that’s what we must do. I will try to get an appointment. I wish I had had the presence of mind to tackle him at the funeral, but I thought things could be done through the city authorities. The military has no direct jurisdiction in these matters, you know. It may take some time to get a result. You had better go back to your unit and wait. Don’t worry, I’m sure we can do something. It may take a few months, that’s all.”

A few months! Margaret thought of the dismal station, most especially of the station without Norbu, and wept herself to sleep, in the apartment without Father. Love, life, happiness, could be broken more easily than a blade of grass, it seemed.

As the time for departure approached, Margaret resolved that she would at least equip herself to maintain her voice training. Supposing, at the worst, she had to spend a whole year before coming back to the capital. Well, it should be a year well spent, cultivating her gift. She bought the cassette player she should have bought at Spring Festival, and such opera tapes as she could find in the Beijing stores. One of the tape sets was a complete Traviata featuring Mr Cinelli singing Alfredo, with the Australian soprano Barbara Bacon as Violetta.

As well as tapes to listen to, Margaret knew she should have some aids to voice training and sight reading. For this purpose she went to the music store in Haidian District, near the Conservatory, to get some vocal scores and tuning forks. She was browsing the very limited selection of scores for opera when Professor Shi came in.

Professor Shi recognized her at once, and called out to her.

“Han Yuezhu! You’ve come back to the capital! Wonderful, wonderful!” He grabbed her hand with his two and pumped it, bowing up and down from the waist like a Japanese and chuckling with pleasure.

“It’s only a visit,” said Margaret, and explained her position.

Professor Shi clicked his tongue and shook his head. “That foolish business! What nonsense! Mr Powell, a spy indeed! Nonsense!”

“You don’t believe Mr Powell was a spy?”

Professor Shi laughed his eccentric high-pitched laugh: “He he he he he! Who believes it? He he he he he!” Then: “I am glad to see you are not neglecting your studies. Who is your voice coach?”

“I haven’t got one. There are no voice coaches in Qinghai Province.”

Again Professor Shi laughed his ridiculous laugh. “No voice coaches in Qinghai Province! He he he!” Suddenly he stopped, and frowned. “But this is a tragedy. You have a most exceptional voice, Yuezhu. Even if you cannot sing, you should be vocalizing every day, keeping up your exercises.”

“It’s difficult. The air is very thin, it’s difficult to get the voice to do anything. Every vocal effect needs twice the effort. I have no pianist, never mind a voice coach. I don’t even know where the nearest piano is. A hundred miles away at least, I would guess.”

“Dreadful, dreadful.” Professor Shi was shaking his head, frowning.

“That’s why I came here. To get some vocal scores, so that I can sing from sight reading.”

“Ts! What use is that? You will only teach yourself bad habits, with no-one to correct you. Now listen, young lady. What is your address at that ridiculous place? Here …” from his shirt pocket Professor Shi produced a little diary with a pencil in the spine “… write it down for me. My address at the Conservatory you know very well. Do you have a tape player? Does it have a microphone? Get one, get a microphone, the best one you can afford. I will send you some piano accompaniment suitable for your voice. You will record your exercises and send them to me. Understand?”

“You are very kind, Professor Shi, but I can’t think of giving you so much trouble. Besides, I shall be spending all my money on tapes and postage, and batteries for my cassette player.”

“Is it a problem? I will send you tapes and batteries. I will send whatever you need.”

“Can I really make progress like that?”

Professor Shi laughed. “I doubt it. But ‘if you don’t row the boat it goes backward.’ At least we can try to prevent you going backward.”

*

Old Bolmo told her about Norbu a few days after her return.

“Five years reform,” he said. “They post it in Laptok.” [Meaning a public notice of recent criminal cases had been stuck up on the wall outside the police station in that town.] “He mother, I know her, she very upset. Missy you want see he mother?”

Norbu’s mother lived in Nakri, in a single lightless room in one of the old Tibetan houses in the town center. She was a small dark-skinned woman with oiled hair, wearing a heavy black dress with numerous strings of white beads at the throat. There was something anxious and fearful in her eyes, and Margaret got an impression of great wariness. She offered milky tea to Margaret, and bid her sit in the room’s only chair while she herself sat on the bed. Old Bolmo sat between them interpreting—Norbu’s mother had not a single word of Chinese.

“Can I write him a letter?” asked Margaret of the old woman.

“They won’t allow,” interpreted Old Bolmo. “Only the mother, they will allow.”

“All right. If I give her a letter to put in with hers, is that allowed?”

“No. They will open and find it. Anyway, she has no letter. Can’t write the characters. This lady can’t read, can’t write.”

“Will she go to visit him?”

“Yes. Is allowed. Three times every year, can go. She been once. Next time, twelfth month.”

“When she goes, I want her to tell him I am still waiting for him.”

“Do you think she will tell him?” Margaret asked Old Bolmo, riding back to the station in his truck.

Old Bolmo sighed. “Hard to say, Missy. Many the Tibet people, they don’t like Chinese people. Excuse me say that, I believe you can understand. Maybe she will say some bad thing about you. I try to explain to her, I don’t know if she will do it. Missy only like that one guy? You want Tibet-guy husband, I find for you, no problem.”

“Thanks, Old Bolmo. But I only like that one.”

After so many weeks in Beijing, the station looked even smaller, dirtier and lonelier than before. Margaret had never loved the place; but she thought that if nothing had happened she might, in a spirit of sheer fatalism, have gone on living indefinitely there as she had that first fall and winter. But having once been given a reason to be at the station, only to see that reason snatched away almost immediately, the squalor and boredom of the place were now almost more than she could bear.

A few months, a few months. Determined to err on the side of pessimism, Margaret decided it would be a year, and set herself to endure it as best she could. She asked for—and, with Branch Secretary Zhang’s intercession, got—permission to use the auditorium in the administration building for voice practice, and steeled herself to ignore the random workers and peasants who wandered in to stare as she worked through her scales and embellishments. Following Professor Shi’s suggestion she concentrated on vocalizing rather than actual songs; but still made a point of learning new pieces, sight-reading from the scores and making up whatever interpretation and coloring the words seemed to require. Until November, when the air became too cold, she climbed up to the old monastery on the ridge to sing free of onlookers, unleashing her voice in a way she could never quite do in the low, poky auditorium, the dirty gawping faces of the station’s inhabitants inescapable all around.

*

In December Old Bolmo reported back from Norbu’s mother.

“She go to Golog, that place, visit your friend. Your friend say he okay, you not think about him, you forget him.”

“Forget him? That’s what he said?”

“She tell me, he say, you forget him.”

A darkness opening up again, a void; as when she had knelt by Father’s still body.

“Do you think those are really his words, Old Bolmo? Or she just made that up?”

Old Bolmo shrugged his big shoulders and laughed nervously, deeper than he cared to be into someone else’s business.

“Seems to me, it’s true. She not a bad woman. Very religious, I can see. I don’t think she will cheat you.”

Margaret tried her best to bury Norbu, but could not. In her many hours of idleness, she nursed absurd fantasies. She would find the camp where he was incarcerated, free him somehow, flee with him to Sichuan, to Beijing, to the West. A part of her hated these ridiculous dreams, yet it seemed that some other part had a need for them. She even found herself making inquiries about the roads into Golog district, not quite understanding that Golog—a place so remote that even Tibetans consider it remote—is the size of an American state, and contains more than eighty labor camps, along with practically nothing else at all but the weathered bones of those who once called it their home.

*

All of China is in a single time zone; the clocks in the far west run on Beijing time. In the depth of winter in Qinghai Province daylight arrives only in mid-morning, not long before noon. Margaret rose, washed, took breakfast and taught her first classes in darkness.

It was on such a morning in January, by the light of an oil lamp—the station’s generator was having one of its tantrums—that she read a letter from Half Brother. Father’s old chief, Marshal Hu Pinghui, had suffered a stroke before having had a chance to consider her case, and was now incapable of considering anything at all. It was most probable that his posts would be filled by General Li Yi, who had hardly known Father. Things would be much more difficult now. She must be patient.

Picking out the characters by flickering lamplight, Margaret could feel the chill and darkness around her seeping into her soul. When the lips are gone the teeth are cold.

*

More depressing, in its own way, than either of these blows was the go-between.

Margaret had been aware since returning from Beijing in September that a certain Chinese boy from the factory’s administrative offices was mooning after her. He had put himself in her way, offering mumbled greetings to her; he had hung around the dormitory; he had stared at her across the refectory.

Just before Spring Festival the approach came. The go-between was a woman named Ba’er, who worked in the school administration, and with whom Margaret had had some brief dealings. She was a short, dark, ugly creature with a cast in one eye and grotesquely protruding teeth. She came from one of the southwestern minorities—the Zhuang perhaps—and from an area so poor that she regarded Nakri Agricultural Research Station as a very Sybaris of high living.

One day as Margaret came out of class she encountered Ba’er in the corridor. The woman launched into her sales pitch with no preliminaries at all. Margaret listened politely.

“… ’is dad’s just retired from de army. An orficer, he was! Firty years in de army! Now ’e’s bin given a position in de Bureau of Prisons in Xining! A wery good position! And de young gen’leman’ll be able ter transfer ter Xining ’imself soon, no doubt abaht it! Ter Xining!”

Margaret could not help but smile at the woman’s uncouth speech and manner, and at her implication that sordid Xining was a metropolis of glittering opportunity. She stepped away as soon as she decently could, shaking her head; but the woman followed her down the corridor, her voice rising in urgency.

“… ninety yuan a month! Ninety! An’ ’is own apartment in Xining, once ’e’s transferred! No need ter fear livin’ wid de fam’ly …”

Margaret actually ran back to the dormitory. Yong was in there reading Red Chamber Dream for the hundred thousandth time. Margaret could not have cared if Secretary Ma himself had been present. She threw herself on her bunk and wept long and loud.

*

Just at the time when Margaret was weeping for her fate, that very fate was being taken in hand by four people seated around an expiring coal fire in the large, cluttered sitting-room of an apartment in the St James district of London.

One of these four was Vincenzo Cinelli, the World’s Greatest Tenor. Another, seated on the opposite side of the fireplace, was the Heir to the Throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was his apartment—or to be precise, it belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster, which he held by ancient right. The other two persons present were Cinelli’s manager, Giovanni Rocco—the long-jawed lugubrious fellow who had been with him in Beijing—and Sir John Craddell, Bart., the Heir to the Throne’s private secretary. Sir John was of that school of royal servant by background and training so discreet as to be well-nigh invisible. If, in defiance of nature, one happened to notice him, he was found to be about fifty, short and dapper, with a head that seemed too small for his body, and generally armed with a pocket-size, leather-bound notebook.

Cinelli never felt at ease with the Heir to the Throne. That person had not the art of setting people at ease, in spite of having had a lifetime’s training. A matter of chemistry, Cinelli reflected, swirling his glass of Pimms. He did not care for Pimms, but thought it not right to ask the Heir to the Throne to open a bottle of decent wine on his account—if, indeed, any decent wine were to be found in this place.

Furthermore Cinelli was feeling somewhat less than pleased with life in general this evening. He had come directly from singing Calaf at Covent Garden. He felt quite satisfied with his own performance, but his Turandot—a Bulgarian dramatic soprano more accustomed to the German repertoire—had succumbed to the role’s strong temptation to go way over the top, and the orchestra, normally one of the more reliable, had chosen this evening to play the entire score with boxing gloves on. The Heir to the Throne had come round to Cinelli’s dressing room before he had had the chance to shower or wash properly, and he was aware of having patches of makeup still on his neck and hairline. Altogether a state of affairs not conducive to good humor. Still, Cinelli was a man by nature inclined to give rank its due, and he listened with an appreciative expression to the Heir’s commentary on the evening’s performance.

“… should always be conducted in the Toscanini style, with a pause at the point where the composer died. ‘Here the maestro lay down his pen …’ I should like to see that. Very moving, don’t you think so, Vinnie? Is it ever performed like that in the Italian houses?”

“Not to my knowledge, Sir.”

“Not, hm? Pity. We have all too few of these little traditions. We really ought to try to preserve them. Whatever happened to claques, for example?”

Cinelli laughed. “Oh, they are very well halive in Italy!”

“Are they indeed? Are they?” The Heir to the Throne was keenly interested. However, he had been feigning keen interest for so long in things that did not interest him at all—every ship launching, every receipt of an Ambassador, every opening of a hospital, every visit to a factory, a school, an officers’ mess—that his interest had an edge of artificiality even when genuine. Such a life! reflected Cinelli: always playing out one’s part, always agreeable, always feigning interest, concern, patriotism. He would not do it himself, no not for the world. He would rather sell insurance—the job he had been doing when his singing career finally took off.

“Have you yourself been the victim of a claque, Vinnie? I mean, actually hissed off stage by some rival singer’s partisans?”

“Oh, no, Sir. Our claques nowadays are benign only. They lead and support the happlause, that is all. I do not think we ’ave the ’ostile claques nowadays. Giovan, is it so?”

“Occasionally, perhaps,” said Rocco. “In the smaller houses. In the big houses, the loggionisti need no encouragement to make their feelings known.”

Rocco’s English was immaculate, much better than Cinelli’s—though Rocco suspected Cinelli of playing up the Italian accent because he knew the foreigners liked it. No trained singer could be so indifferent to phonetics as to move the English initial “h” randomly from words it belonged on to words it did not, unless striving for deliberate effect. There had been an incident in the late seventies: a pretty female American interviewer had suggested that it might be true, as someone had said much earlier in Cinelli’s career, that God had kissed his vocal chords. “Then ’e must ’ave kissed you hall hover,” had been Cinelli’s reply, quickly passed around the world by delighted fans, adding another coat of charm to the Cinelli legend.

“Fascinating, fascinating.” The Heir to the Throne gazed thoughtfully into the fire, sipping his Pimms. Cinelli wondered if he should pursue the topic with an anecdote about claques, of which he knew several; but he sensed that the Heir was pregnant with something of importance, and waited it out.

The Heir to the Throne came up in his chair, sitting forward on the edge of the chair to address Cinelli.

“The thing is, Vinnie, I’ve had an idea. I’d like you to tell me what you think.”

Cinelli nodded encouragingly.

The Heir to the Throne made a self-deprecating little chuckle. “I don’t know if you’ll think it practical. But if you do, I should very much like to bring you in on it.”

“I should be most interested to ’ear Your ’Ighness’s hidea,” said Cinelli.

“Well, it’s like this. Do tell me what you think. I want to form an opera company. Actually, I’m not sure I mean a company. Perhaps I mean a troupe. Anyway, it’s to be just singers, d’you see? No musicians or … what else d’you have in an opera company? … designers, that kind of thing. Well, none of that, we’ll just have singers. Perhaps two dozen singers. Young singers. And the thing is—I mean, this is my idea—do tell me what you think—the thing is, they are to come from all over the world. Or at any rate, from every place where they train people for opera. There must be so much talent out there, in countries where opera is hardly known. We could take the best from Asia, from Africa, from Europe and the Americas, and put them together in one company. One world—we’ll call it the Royal Youth International Company! What d’you think, Vinnie? Hm?”

Cinelli nodded thoughtfully. “Is a hinteresting hidea, Your ’Ighness. But ’ow shall you finance it?”

The Heir to the Throne waved away all financing problems. “Oh, one of the Duchies gets the ball rolling, starts a trust, you know. Like that National Architecture thingy I got up. The government coughs up some funds—Arts Council and so on. One leans gently on one’s friends in industry. After all, if the thing’s a success, it will eventually, one hopes, generate its own revenues.”

Cinelli took a sip of his Pimms. He thought it tasted very much like the cough medicine his mother had used to give him as a child in Modena. He considered the Heir to the Throne’s suggestion. An opera company that generated revenue! Where did such a thing exist? Like all people born into great wealth, the Heir to the Throne had no clue about financial matters. Nor, Cinelli thought uncharitably, about much in the way of worldly affairs of any sort. Cinelli was in a mood to have agreed with the opinion of Asan—whom of course he had never met—uttered two years before in Shanghai: if you haven’t grown up poor, life is nothing but a dream. Cinelli himself had been poor, or at any rate far from rich, until his thirties. His father had been a baker in a provincial town.

No sooner had these unkind reflections crossed his mind than Cinelli’s natural good nature re-asserted itself. The Heir to the Throne was a decent man, sincerely well-intentioned in his own way, of course. It was great good fortune for Cinelli’s profession that a person of such standing and influence should love opera, most especially Italian opera, and most particularly and especially the bel canto style, which was Cinelli’s own fach and lifetime love.

And the suggestion was not a bad one. Established singers, most of them in middle age, some even past their best, occupied far too much of the collective consciousness of opera-goers. It was very hard for worthy young singers to get noticed—who knew that better than himself? As a result, they sang themselves out in an effort to get attention; or, if they did get it, sang themselves out trying to exploit it before the caravan moved on, and then their voices were ruined before they reached the years of true mastery. Matters were doubly difficult for anyone born far from the centers of operatic appreciation. Cinelli himself took every opportunity to travel to remote places to encourage the enjoyment and understanding of his art. There was not one of these places where he had not heard young singers of great promise. That young baritone in Nairobi—so expressive! That rarest of all birds, a natural coloratura contralto, in Kuala Lumpur of all places! And that lovely angel who had sung “Vissi d’arte” for him in Beijing, with messa di voce to make a cardinal forsake his vows! Immature voices, of course, with much affectation and artificiality to be stripped away—but great promise, great promise.

“If, as you say, the funds can be found …” Cinelli shrugged, “… of course we should do what we can. Young singers need all the ’elp we can give them.”

The Heir to the Throne broke out his practiced, charmless smile. He came up out of his chair—the others instinctively rising as he did—stepped forward and shook Cinelli’s hand, holding it in both of his own. “Marvelous! I knew I could depend on you, Vinnie. You will lend your name to this, won’t you? The Royal Youth International Opera Company! Your support will make all the difference!”

Rocco cleared his throat. “Ah, Your Royal Highness. This, ah, Royal Youth International Company is certainly a most excellent notion. But, you know, I am duty bound to be concerned that Signor Cinelli may be over-extending himself. He has so many responsibilities already.”

“Oh, yes, yes! Forgive me!” The Heir to the Throne was now holding an invisible brick between his hands. “I’m so frightfully sorry, Vinnie. Of course I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you. Your schedule … I know, it’s fiendish. Very little of your time will be required, very very little.” (To illustrate how little, he squeezed the brick, bringing his palms together till they were no more than half an inch apart, hunching his shoulders to emphasize the smallness of the gap.) “It is only your name,” he added, “your name, and perhaps …” he shrugged suggestively, “… an appearance? Or two?”

Rocco started up again. “Your Royal Highness …”

“Is all right,” said Cinelli emphatically. The more he thought of the idea the more he liked it. His time was by no means as fully booked as Rocco liked to make out, and, while he did not want to get too deeply entangled in this new scheme, knowing the great carelessness of the rich, their habit of starting things then forgetting all about them, he thought that with very little effort he could get this new company moving in the right direction, from whence it could proceed under its own power.

“’Ighness, allow me to make the suggestion,” Cinelli continued. “In my travels these last few years I ’ave ’eard some quite hexceptional young voices. Some of those voices must still be singing, still be havailable. I can heasily find out. Those few, those few that ’ave made such a himpression on me, let us use them as, ’ow do you say? the quadro of our Royal Youth International Company. For the rest, we can invite winners of singing competitions and so on. Such competitions are ’eld heverywhere, all the time. We can put together a company very quickly.”

The Heir to the Throne was nodding, keenly intent on what Cinelli was saying. “Marvelous,” he murmured, “marvelous.” Then, to the secretary: “Are you getting this, Sir John? We must set up a trust right away.”

Rocco looked from one of them to the other. “Do I understand we are to begin our, eh, reclutamento? Our enlisting?”

“By all means.” The Heir to the Throne nodded vigorously. “Any expenses … just notify Sir John here. The trust, as soon as it exists, will reimburse.”

In the car going back to the hotel, Rocco said: “Signor Tenore, you are a weakling.”

“Why? You think I have allowed His Royal Highness to impose upon me?”

“Have you not? Who would say you have not? It is a commitment of your time and probably—if what I have heard about the financing of royal enterprises is correct—of your money. Generate its own revenues, indeed! Do you know any opera company in the world that generates its own revenues, without public or private subscription?”

Cinelli laughed, and patted his secretary on the knee. “Giovan, Giovan. You are too much the businessman. Has my profession not been kind to me? Is it not incumbent on me to put back in some of what I have taken out?”

“You do sufficient of good works already, Signor. You help finance four competitions, you give charity performances, you do all that can be expected in the way of encouraging young singers. Yes, I am the businessman. And you are who, exactly? St Francis of Assisi?”

Cinelli laughed again, looking out at the dark Thames, the lights along the Embankment. “Never mind, Giovan, never mind. Royalty has its privileges.”

Chapter 42

Some Speculations on the Diffusion of Culture

Moon Pearl Undergoes an Audition

So it happened that The World’s Greatest Tenor came to Nakri Agricultural Research Station in Qinghai Province.

Everyone at the station knew he was coming, of course. There are no secrets in China. The Bureau of Foreign Affairs in Beijing had directed inquiries to the Bureau of Culture, which had sent them to the authorities of Qinghai Province, who passed them to the county, who notified the station. Under normal circumstances it might have taken several years for the necessary documents to be transmitted and the responsible cadres alerted; but the Bureau of Culture was in the gift of a powerful general, who had arranged for his own niece to have the position of First Secretary, and the niece’s husband and the general both stood to make a very large personal profit from a complex trading deal being negotiated for some radar equipment manufactured by Marconi, a British firm, and it was known that Cinelli’s mission was under the patronage of the British royal family, and so matters were expedited.

When Secretary Ma got wind of it, he frowned.

“That slut we got from Beijing has more than one foreign friend, apparently.”

“Yes. She’s a trained singer.”

“Don’t I know it. You talked me into giving permission for her to use the auditorium in off hours. Her mother’s! What a racket. The first time she let loose, I thought they were slaughtering a pig in there. I was going to put a stop to it. Just as well I didn’t, perhaps.”

Secretary Ma was sitting with Branch Secretary Zhang in the latter’s office. Branch Secretary Zhang had just got all the notification papers from the county, and had called in Secretary Ma to discuss the matter. Of course, neither of them had ever heard of The World’s Greatest Tenor up to this point.

“It seems they want to audition her.”

“Do they now? Well, get her in here. Let’s find out what it’s all about.”

Branch Secretary Zhang got up and went outside, to send one of the workers to find Margaret. When he came back, Secretary Ma was sipping tea from a covered cup on the desk.

“She came to us from some kind of conservatory, didn’t she?” he said, while the other was getting back to his desk. “What is it, exactly? That stuff she sings?”

“Foreign-style opera. That’s what she was being trained in when she disgraced herself.”

“Foreign-style? I didn’t know the hairy devils had opera.”

“Well, it seems they do. Especially in Italy, apparently.”

Secretary Ma frowned, working on this. Then his face lit up.

“Italy! Of course! Marco Polo!”

“What?”

“Marco Polo, you know. He came to China in, what was it? The Yuan dynasty, I think. Took our national culture back to the West. Noodles, he gave them noodles. And porcelain. That was the beginning of their civilization, such as it is. He was Italian.”

“You think he took back opera, too?”

“Of course! How else would they get it? They got everything from us, you know. Paper, gunpowder, electricity, everything.”

“I suppose you’re right. And then they developed their own styles, like our local and provincial operas. Interesting.”

Secretary Ma was leaning back in the armchair, reflective.

“My grandfather was a great opera fan. Zhejiang style, of course. He could sing all the parts, sheng and dan,” [male and female both].

“And you yourself, Old Ma. Do you know any opera?”

Secretary Ma shook his head. “Never had the chance. Too busy making revolution. The Party frowned on it, anyway, until recently. You?”

“Not a word. I couldn’t tell Sichuan opera from Beijing style.” Branch Secretary Zhang pointed to his ear hole. “Tone deaf, I think. Never bothered with music at all. Though my father could play the erhu.” [Two-string fiddle.]

There was a knock on the door. It was Margaret. She flushed on seeing Secretary Ma, but came in and stood by the desk.

Branch Secretary Zhang tried to put her at ease. He indicated his bed. “Sit down, Comrade Han.”

“It’s all right.” Margaret remained standing. She had resolved, on seeing Secretary Ma, that she would not be intimidated or provoked by him. At the same time, she did not care to meet his cold eyes, and so fixed her attention on Branch Secretary Zhang.

“We shall be having a visitor,” said Secretary Ma. “A foreigner. From Italy. A certain … what’s his name, Old Zhang?”

“Oh, I don’t recall. These foreign names …” Branch Secretary Zhang turned over some papers on his desk. “Here. Feinachengzou Xineili. I shall never be able to remember it.”

Margaret was staring at him, her mouth open loose in amazement.

“You know this person?” asked Secretary Ma.

“Of course! Who doesn’t know him? He’s famous all over the world. He was in China three years ago. In Beijing and Shanghai. He sang in front of Comrade Deng Xiaoping at the Great Hall of the People.”

Secretary Ma thought he had a dim memory of the event, from some radio news program. “Of course,” he said, “we know all about that. But why does this person want to see you?”

Margaret stared at him. “He wants to see me?”

“Certainly. Wants to audition you. So it says here.” Branch Secretary Zhang flicked at the papers on his desk.

“Another one of your foreign friends, I guess,” said Secretary Ma with a sneer.

Branch Secretary Zhang addressed her. “Have you met Mr … Mr Fei? Did you meet him in Beijing?”

“Yes. He came to our institute. Several of us sang for him. Just short pieces … to show off the work of the institute.”

“Hm. I guess you made a big impression on him,” said Branch Secretary Zhang.

“I suppose so,” murmured Margaret. She thought the way Branch Secretary Zhang had expressed himself had left an obvious opening for Secretary Ma to say something demeaning or insulting, and braced herself for it. However, he passed up the opportunity, apparently deep in thought.

“All right,” said Secretary Ma at last. “You’ve been around foreigners, you know how to act. At least in principle.” He gave her a withering look. “Bu kang bu bei [neither arrogant nor humble], that’s the rule. Just be polite and stand up for our socialist spiritual civilization. You understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Teach it to the kids in your classes. Make sure they know, in case they meet him. This guy is obviously a big watermelon and we don’t want to fuck up with him.”

“All right.”

“So far as this audition is concerned, there’ll be an interpreter with you at all times, so you won’t be getting up to anything. Don’t even think about it! The interpreter will be reporting to me afterwards. Does the foreigner speak Chinese?”

“I don’t think so. No, I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Can you speak Italian?”

“Not really. Only to sing it.”

“Good. Communicate through the interpreter. I shall want a written report from you too after he’s gone.”

“All right.”

“That’s all. Go back to your duties.”

Margaret left. “Well,” said Secretary Ma. “We’d better lay on some kind of reception for this devil. If he wants to audition Comrade Han, I suppose he’s going to take her away with him. That’s no loss, anyway.”

“She’s a good teacher,” said Branch Secretary Zhang.

“That’s as may be. She’s a loose woman, and a bad example to our youngsters. We all know why she was sent here. And no sooner got settled than she was opening her cunt for that Tibetan troublemaker, fuck his mother. The one Public Security let off the hook.”

“He got re-education,” pointed out Branch Secretary Zhang. “Five years.”

“Five minutes, I would have given him. Round the back, up against the wall, a bullet through the pan. You can’t be soft with these splittists. We’re a unified country now, stable and secure. You start letting people like that run wild, we’ll be back to the twenties—warlords and bandits.”

“All right. But this visitor, now. Where on earth shall we get an Italian interpreter?”

“That’s for Province to arrange. We can’t be expected to provide that. We have enough language problems here, trying to get these Tibetan sheepfuckers to speak Chinese.”

“We’ll give him a banquet, of course.”

“Hm. Better get that chef up from Xining. The one the Japs liked so much. Shit! How are we supposed to pay for all this?”

“Shall I ask Province to make an allocation?”

“Yes. And ask them what’s in it for us. Other than, we get rid of a whore. First Secretary in Culture is Old Yang’s niece. If everything goes well we’re entitled to some recognition. Some decent transport, at least, and a generator or two. Who knows? Maybe a factory. We should make the most of it, anyway. It’s not often we get the attention of Beijing.”

*

And so when Cinelli arrived, there was a big reception. He came in a car from the pool at Provincial Bureau of Education (Qinghai Province had no Bureau of Culture, only a Minorities Bureau). The car was a big black Polish model, covered with dust from the journey. It pulled up in the courtyard in front of the administration building. Standing there in a line to meet it were Secretary Ma, all four Branch Secretaries, the principal of the school, the director of the metal stampings factory, the Minority Representative to the unit’s Party Committee and the C.O. of the nearby army base with his aide-de-camp.

First out of the car was an official from Province, followed by a stooped, scholarly-looking Chinese of at least seventy, with silver hair and thick glasses. Province opened the back door for the visitor, who bent double to get out. When he was on the ground and straightened up they saw the size of him.

“Wa!” Murmured Branch Secretary Jia. “What a giant!”

The visitor spread his arms wide in a gesture of greeting, making himself look even larger, and favored them with a huge white smile, seeming huger and whiter for being surrounded by his black beard. He said something in his own language in a strong clear voice, wearing a sincere expression, then turned to the scholarly old fellow.

“Mr Xineili thanks you for your kind welcome. He apologizes for putting you to so much trouble.”

This made everybody feel good. Such courtesy! None of them had ever seen a European before. There had been some Japanese businessmen in the county the previous year asking about raw materials, but never Europeans. Everyone had a vague idea that Europeans were big, ugly, cruel and arrogant. That was how they were always shown in historical movies. Well, this one was certainly big, but none of the other adjectives fitted. Clearly he was a Friend of the Chinese People!

Secretary Ma stepped forward to shake the foreigner’s hand.

“Welcome to our unit,” he said. “We warmly welcome you!”

“Welcome! Welcome! Warmly welcome!” murmured the reception committee.

Another foreigner had got out of the car after Cinelli. Now the big man turned to him and said something in their language. The interpreter craned forward, but either did not catch what was said, or did not think it worth translating. This other foreigner had a long, gloomy face on a bald head, and did not look very well.

“If the guests will follow us, we will offer them some refreshments,” said Secretary Ma.

This was translated. A careful observer might have noticed an expression of weariness and resignation pass briefly across the face of Cinelli’s companion at hearing the word refreshments, but Cinelli himself grinned again, obviously delighted.

“He says it is wonderful to be in a country where people understand the importance of good food.”

Everybody laughed at this, and they all went inside. They did not proceed direct to the dining-room but allowed the guests to rest from their journey first, as was proper. The resting took place in the administrative building’s reception room, where two rows of armchairs had been set up facing each other. The foreign guests sat in the center of one row, Secretary Ma facing them, with the rest of the reception committee ranged on each side of both rows, in order by rank. There was some small talk about China, Italy, travel. Then Cinelli, in that direct way foreigners have, asked right out to see Margaret.

“He says that his main purpose here is to see Mistress Han,” said the interpreter. Instead of saying “Comrade Han” he used a very old-fashioned form of address, and kept his eyes on Secretary Ma when he had finished speaking, as if daring him to correct the archaism. Secretary Ma stared right back at him. An old intellectual, obviously. Sent away in the Anti-Rightist Campaign, struggled in the Cultural Revolution, probably hated the Party in his secret heart. Secure in his insolence here, clinging to these foreigners for protection. Fuck all intellectuals! Bumsuckers of the foreign devils! And no chance of getting a report out of the bastard, of course. Secretary Ma smiled across affably at the foreign giant.

“Comrade Han is one of our best teachers. She is utterly devoted to her duties. Right now she is teaching a class. When the class is finished we will send for her.”

Cinelli looked a little puzzled when this was translated for him. He turned to his companion and made a small shrugging movement, then quickly smiled back at Secretary Ma.

“Mr Xineili has many important commitments. He must get back to Xining tomorrow. If the audition can be arranged this afternoon …” (It was now two o’clock.)

“We shall take care of everything,” said Secretary Ma. “In the meantime, perhaps the guests would take a light snack, and then an hour or two’s sleep. Obviously they had no opportunity for a mid-day nap while traveling. After the nap they will be shown the work of the station. Then there will be a banquet in their honor, in the evening. After the banquet Comrade Han will sing for them. Everything has been arranged …”

The two foreigners went into a long conversation in their own language. Cinelli, to judge from the hand gestures, was somewhat impatient, the other was soothing him. At last the interpreter spoke up.

“Mr Xineili says he does not have this habit of a mid-day nap. He would prefer to take a snack, then see Mistress Han directly, so long as it does not interfere with her duties. After that he will look around the station. He hopes this will not be too inconvenient for you.”

Secretary Ma fumed. What kind of people were these, who didn’t take a midday nap? Stupid foreigners! They were guests, they should submit to the host’s arrangements! It seemed they really were arrogant, after all.

Smiling, he nodded to Cinelli. “Everything will be just as you wish. What an honor for our unit! Such a famous guest!”

So it was that at three p.m. Cinelli and Rocco, with the entire reception party, entered the auditorium. Margaret was sitting on a chair on the stage. She stood up as soon as she saw them coming in and watched their progress down the aisle and up onto the stage.

“Signorina.” Cinelli made a deep swooping bow. Then he stepped forward, took her hand, lifted it and kissed it. How pale she looks! he thought.

“Bienvenuto,” said Margaret in a small voice.

Cinelli shouted with laughter. “Brava! Your Italian is excellent! Let’s speak Italian. It’s very tiresome to use an interpreter.”

The girl put her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. “No, no. I … really can’t speak well … only the librettos.”

“’Ow is your Henglish?” asked Cinelli, switching into that language.

“So-so. But I can understand you.”

“Hexcellent. And these gentlemen?” He indicated the reception party, who were standing around grinning with simulated pleasure.

“The ones from this unit, no. Not a word. The others, I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry. The hinterpreter knows only French and Italian, and Romanian for some reason. Splendid! We can converse without being hunderstood. But Signorina, you do not look well.”

“I have been ill. But much better now.”

“Are you well enough to sing for me?”

“Oh, yes!”

“You sang for me before, do you remember?” His eyes were on her, and his smile, not the overpowering smile she remembered but a peculiar half-smile, all tenderness and warmth. “You sang ‘Vissi d’arte.’ I ’ave never forgotten. A ’eavy piece for such a young singer, but you carried it very well.”

“I remember.”

“Well, that is why we are ’ere. We are forming a company. Young singers, from hall nations. To sing in Hengland, under the patronage of the royal prince. Capisce?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you will sing ‘Vissi d’arte’ for me again, yes?”

“I’m not sure I can remember all the words. I don’t have a libretto for Tosca.”

“I ’ave a vocal score.” Cinelli nodded at Rocco, who was carrying an aged brown leather briefcase. “We are fully hequipped.” He indicated a large cassette player the interpreter had brought in from the car.

“But the tempo? How can I keep time?”

“I will be your conductor. Just watch my ’and.”

“I … really. I have had no time to rehearse.”

“I shall make hallowance. Do you still do your exercises?”

“Yes. They let me practice here. Sometimes, if the weather is good, I go up into the hills and practice. The air is dry, but much cleaner than Beijing.”

Cinelli nodded, beaming, turning to Rocco to share it. “A real singer! Even in such a place!”

“But …” Margaret looked around at the officials and secretaries. “Must I sing in front of these people? They all despise me.”

Cinelli turned to the interpreter, addressing him in Italian. “Do these people know we are talking English?”

“I doubt it.”

“Please don’t tell them. Explain that in our tradition an opera audition is a very private thing. As few people as possible should be present. Myself and my secretary, yourself if they insist, and Signorina Han. Tell them politely, but make it clear that I insist. I will tour their accursed pigsties and foundries, I will play the guest perfectly, I will be interested and interesting. I will eat as much of their food as they care to place in front of me. I will even sing for them, God help me. But on this I must insist. Can you phrase that in an acceptable way?”

The interpreter’s face twitched in the effort not to smile. “I can. Don’t worry.”

When the others had all gone, the interpreter left the stage and took a seat at front center of the auditorium. Rocco had set the cassette player on the chair. It was a Chinese model, brand new, that Cinelli had bought in Beijing just for this purpose.

“Now, Signorina. I want you to stand ’ere. Give ’er the score, Giovan. I shall conduct from down there …” He indicated the aisle where the interpreter was sitting. “When you are ready, just tell this gentleman and ’e will start the tape.”

Margaret was in a state of acute nervous tension. She had no confidence in her voice at all, and wondered what Cinelli would say when he had heard her, how he would frame his disappointment. She knew she sounded harsh at the best of times in this thin Tibetan air, and that this was not even the best of times, for she had been tormented for some days past by her colitis and the old back problem both. Yes, she had kept up her exercises as best she could; and had diligently sent tapes to Professor Shi, who had responded with criticism and advice; but solitary training is a poor substitute for companionship and direct guidance. Yet after all (she reflected) whatever happened she would be no worse off. Her fate was whatever it was, and she could only live it out to the end without complaint. What a foolish thing was hope! These reflections calmed her. She sank back gratefully into the passive fatalism which (it seemed to her now) was the solvent of all pain. Thus she sang, without artifice, without any expectation, her mind still and her heart empty. Which, under the circumstances, was the best thing she could have done.

She nodded to Rocco. He sounded a small pitch pipe two or three times, then pressed a button on the cassette player. The music began at once. Feeling the music, allowing it to enter her, Margaret closed her eyes and composed her features into the expression of a woman in mental anguish, seeking out the words to make a questioning complaint to Heaven. It was one of Professor Shi’s axioms that the voice should follow the face and body, bringing to words what expression and posture had first suggested.

After a slight breath problem in the first phrases, Margaret got through the whole piece without vocal difficulty. The music continued for a few bars beyond the end of the aria. Cinelli waited it out, his eyes still fixed on her. When the last note had sounded he nodded sharply to Rocco, who pressed the stop button on the tape machine.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

Margaret thought he might say something else, but he just stood there, apparently quite at ease, regarding her with that odd half-smile.

“Is it …” Margaret struggled to get back into English. “Am I …” Overcome with nerves, she covered her face with her hands. “Oh! I am terrible! My voice … I am no good, I know!”

With remarkable speed for one of his size Cinelli had come up on to the stage, right up to her. He pulled her hands away from her face. For all his bulk, he was surprisingly gentle. His face, when she looked up, was full of concern.

“You are a perfect Tosca.”

He spoke softly but very clearly. Lifting both her hands to his lips, he kissed them lightly. Somehow there was nothing salacious about this at all. His own hands were plump, smooth and soft. Margaret could smell him—an exquisite perfume, which somehow suited him exactly, softening and civilizing his massive presence.

“Will you come to Hengland to sing for me, Signorina?”

“Yes, yes.” She spoke without thinking. How could she refuse him? “But is it really possible?”

Now he smiled: the wide sunny smile that had made such an impression on her in Beijing two years before, now lighting up the dingy hall, dispelling all doubt and fear.

“Possible? Possibilissima! My dear … Eh, scusi, these Chinese names! I ’ave forgotten … You are …?”

“My name is Yuezhu. It means ‘moon pearl.’ In English I am called Margaret.”

Cinelli nodded. “Good, good. Well, my Margherita, my little pearl. Soon you will be singing for the next King of Hengland.”

He let her hands go and stepped back, his eyes still on her, still smiling. For the first time in all those months, Margaret felt the cloud of hopelessness lift a little. It was possible! How could you doubt this man?

“Go back to your duties. We will arrange heverything.”

*

When she had gone, Rocco burst out laughing. “Signor Tenore, for this we traveled to the end of the world, to the last place God made?”

Cinelli beamed at him, quite unperturbed. “You do not like her voice, our little pearl, our Perlinetta?”

“It is not for me to judge, Signor. But she has many faults.”

“What, exactly? What are her faults, my critical friend?”

“How many do you want?” Rocco spread out his fingers to count them off. “She attempted the first three phrases in a single breath.”

“And was only defeated by this thin mountain air. At sea level she can accomplish it beautifully, I assure you.”

“She attacked that last A flat like a brigade of cavalry.”

“The exuberance of youth. Better a spirited voice that can be tamed than a dull voice into which no life can be breathed. What else?”

“Her rubato is absurd.”

Cinelli laughed, waving this away with his hand. “You speak of rubato under these circumstances? Fault of the conductor!”

“Her pronunciation. ‘Feee seee dayaaa taaay …’ Ecccha!”

Another wave. “No worse than a German’s. We shall send her to the Jew to learn phonetics. Then what?”

Rocco abandoned his counting, and spread his hands in protest.

“Signor Tenore, do you really believe her to be world standard? The strength of voice is there, I grant you, and the range, at any rate in potential. But control? Legato? That last allargando …”

Cinelli was waving now with both hands. “Giovan, Giovan, listen. How long does it take to make an opera singer?”

“How long? Why, ten, fifteen years.”

“Yes. Ten years, at least. Ten years of daily practice. Of singing and listening. Of criticism, listening patiently to criticism. Absorbing it, coming to terms with it, weighing it, judging it, learning from it or discarding it. Ten years! Of memorization, of building a repertoire, cultivating an audience, getting to know the agents, the managers, the producers, the singers. Ten years flying coach to sing Puccini in damp half-empty houses in Birmingham, Stuttgart, Columbus-Ohio. Now …” Cinelli leaned forward, jabbing with a finger to make his point. “Now, my friend, let us conduct an experiment in thought. Let us take a fellow from the street, a perfectly ordinary fellow. As it might be, you. Let us take you, paesan’, and put you through that ten years’ training. What will be the final result, in your case?”

“In my case?” Rocco laughed. “Why, you would end up with a third-rate baritone.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You would be no better than fifth-rate. Why?” Cinelli thumped his chest. “Because you have not the soul of a singer. It is just not in you.”

“I freely admit it, Signor Tenore. And now you want to tell me that this poor girl does have the soul of a singer.”

“Beyond any doubt. I will be even more precise: she has the soul of a bel canto coloratura soprano.”

“Coloratura? Oh, really! With that technique? The legato …”

“Legato, rubato—any fool can learn these things! She will perfect them in a year. Sufficiently, at any rate, to command a couple of roles and to sing on stage. In five years she will have the beginnings of a repertoire, and will have sung at three or four big houses. In ten years she will be a bright new star with forty roles, and everyone will be talking about her. After that …” He lifted up his arms, and turned his face to heaven. “… a diva! A coloratura of the first rank!”

“Eh, eh, Signor Tenore, I must protest! Her voice, my friend, her voice! She screeches!”

“That is their tradition. They are taught to screech. Have you never heard Chinese opera? Fascinating, fascinating—a lifetime’s study in itself. But yes, they screech. Never mind. We will train it out of her. Or better yet, we will almost train it out of her! Leave her with a little screech. Yes! You know, the world is full of good sopranos. To capture an audience you need a little … what’s that English word? Ghimacchi?”

“Gimmick, Signor, gimmick.”

“Yes, yes, a gimmick. We will leave a trace, an occasional trace of that screech. She will be the soprano who screeches. Her audience will anticipate it, rejoice in it, treasure it! It will be like Maria’s wobble.”

Rocco sighed. “I see it is no use arguing with you.”

“None at all! I have found a perfect little pearl in this dungheap. Do whatever must be done, Giovan. Visas, travel documents, whatever she needs. Let us get the poor girl out of this godforsaken place. If nothing else comes of it, we shall at least have done that.”

“Aha! So you admit this girl may not succeed!”

The big man spread his arms in a grand Italian shrug. “Who can see the future? Who can predict success? I know her voice. I do not know her spirit, her courage, or her luck. These things, time will tell. But, Giovan, whatever her future may be, this girl is one of us, one of our fellowship, a sister. She belongs to our art. Singing, singing, doing her exercises here, in this place! Climbing these stony mountains to sing unrestrained! She is a singer in her deepest soul. We must do what we can for her, no? The rest is up to her, and her destiny. Here this afternoon we have seen a lark, a poor starved beaten lark, singing in an iron cage. We shall open the cage, Giovan. We shall set her free!”

Chapter 43

A Suitably Poetic Welcome to Shakespeare’s Island

Diplomatic Skills on Display at a Royal Palace

The Royal Youth International Opera Company was headquartered at a place named Ealing, in the west part of London. The principals of the company numbered twenty-two. By design, they were from twenty-two different countries. This was not really enough to be properly described as a company. Not even enough for a proper chorus—most operas need a chorus—as Poppy, the director of the company, pointed out at their first assembly.

“And that” (she went on) “is not to mention such matters as wardrobe, stage design, lighting, makeup, … And, of course, we have no orchestra of our own. We must consider ourselves merely a troupe of traveling singers, dependent on the hospitality of those houses that engage us. I don’t think we shall be wanting for anything. There are more orchestras in London—and choruses, too—than London knows what to do with.”

Poppy was one of those sixtyish women who keep the performing arts on their feet. She had had a career of her own at some time in the past, had indeed been considered by many to be one of the finest female interpreters of Schumann’s lieder in her generation. Her recording of Gluck’s “Che farò senza Euridice” had for some months been “most requested classical recording” on a popular British radio program of the 1950s. In appearance she was small and birdlike, with a rather large, bony nose. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun. She almost always wore slacks and loose sweaters. Margaret’s first impression was of another musical bohemian, like Professor Shi. However, Poppy soon showed steel as a disciplinarian. Twice in the first week of their meetings a company member was late arriving at the rehearsal rooms. On the first occasion Poppy gave them all a stern lecture. When the offender—a black girl from the West Indies with a rich mezzo voice—protested that she had never been in London before and had difficulty finding her way around, Poppy slapped her down briskly.

“When you go traveling you will often find yourself in strange cities, usually with a plane to catch. Will you miss the plane? Of course not. Nobody ever misses a plane. Planes are important, so we make sure we don’t miss them. Nobody misses a plane, nobody drops a baby. Those things are too important. Well, this is important. As important as catching a plane, as important as holding a baby.”

The second time Margaret herself was late. It was necessary to catch a bus to get to the rehearsal rooms. Margaret went to the bus stop at the time recommended by her landlady, but no bus arrived. More people came and stood waiting, but still there was no bus. Margaret carefully read the notice trapped beneath a perspex panel affixed to the bus stop post. Every 10-12 minutes, said the panel. After forty-five minutes the bus arrived, with two other identical buses a few yards behind. The first bus was completely full, the second half-full, the third empty.

“It’s always like that,” grumbled a fellow-passenger, an old lady in a knitted woolen hat. “Buggers’ll keep you waitin’ all day. They don’t care.”

When Margaret got to the rehearsal rooms at last Poppy turned on her at once.

“If you’re not going to take this seriously, you had better leave the company at once. I have no room here for slackers.”

Margaret tried to explain about the bus, but Poppy talked right over her. “You are athletes,” she said, “athletes of the voice. You will train like athletes, suffer like athletes, groan and sweat like athletes. I am speaking about DISCIPLINE. If you can’t endure that, get out.” (Turning back to Margaret.) “Would you like to leave right now?”

“No,” sobbed Margaret. “No, no.”

“Then pull your socks up!”

Margaret had never encountered this idiom before. Such was the force of Poppy’s personality that for the whole of the rest of their acquaintance Margaret could not come into Poppy’s presence without having to suppress an impulse to bend down and tug at her socks, whether she was actually wearing any or not.

Poppy introduced herself to the company at their first assembly as their musical director, stage director, wardrobe manager, travel secretary, booking manager, agent, voice trainer, chorus master, répétiteuse and personal counselor. Also translator and interpreter: The company’s level of spoken English varied from native fluency (Canada, New Zealand, England herself) through various kinds of dialect and patois (West Indian, Kenyan, Tongan) to studiously correct (Mehmet the Turk, a Malay, a German and two Scandinavians, Margaret), down to adequate (one Russian, two South Americans), passable (a Greek, a Romanian), atrocious (a French boy, a Bulgarian girl) to null and void (the lone Italian, oddly enough, and a youth from one of the Francophone African countries with skin so black it looked blue, and a short Japanese girl with a fine-as-silk, ethereal soprano voice). Poppy was fluent in French and Italian; the Bulgarian worked through her Russian colleague; and so the only member at a loss was the Japanese girl who, the whole time Margaret knew her, existed in a state of utter bewilderment at all that was going on. Margaret made some attempts with her, writing down things in Chinese characters (which educated Japanese can understand, more or less) but never really felt she had pierced the poor girl’s veil of confusion.

The company’s only premises were some rehearsal rooms at a college in this place named Ealing. As a courtesy from the college to the company’s august patron, members of the company were allowed to use the college facilities—restaurant, library, bar—and to conduct full stage rehearsals in the auditorium, subject to advance scheduling.

As a further courtesy the college held a party for the company when everyone had arrived. Since none of the company knew each other at this point, other than the Tongan boy and the New Zealand girl, who had struck up a friendship on the long flight from the Antipodes and appeared from the very first holding hands and exchanging urgent whispered privacies, the party was a spiritless affair, in spite of the best efforts of the student committee that had organized it. The Principal of the college, a very short man with a face much too young for his gray hair and beard, read and then presented on parchment a poem of his own composition to Poppy. The poem went:

One World, One Song

New voices for peace resound

Dimming the throb of war,

The shrill screech of greed.

From forest and savannah,

From sand-fringed isle and mountain perch,

All races, all colors, coruscating—

A community of voices.

The kaleidoscope swirls.

Strange new patterns appear.

New voices for a new world of hope—

Voices raised for peace

In multicultural harmony.

Margaret could not understand it at all. She thought at first that this must be due to some deficiency in her English; but glancing at the furrowed brows of the native English-speakers, it seemed they were having the same difficulty as herself. Poppy’s face was a study in self-control.

Nor did the admirable sentiments implied (so far as could be made out) by the Principal’s verses have any very elevating effect on the members of the company, to judge by later events at the party. The two South Americans, a bass and a tenor, discovered some point of difference in their countries’ politics and got into a frenzied screaming match in Spanish; and the Russian soprano, who turned out to be in fact Armenian, had to be restrained by force from assaulting genial, mild-mannered Mehmet the Turk because of something she said his people had done to her people at some past time.

Since the company had no program and no bookings that anybody knew of at this point, and neither Mr Cinelli nor the Heir to the Throne had been able to attend, the party dissolved early—yet still not early enough, in everyone’s silent opinion—in disappointment and rancor, and the members of the company scattered to their lodgings.

*

The college had arranged accommodation for everyone. Colleges in England apparently had no dormitories. The students just went into rented rooms with families in the neighborhood who had registered with the college for this purpose. Margaret roomed with one Mrs Trott, who lived in a red-brick row house in one of the leafy quiet streets that stretched away endlessly in all directions around the college.

Mrs Trott had misplaced her husband some three or four years before but held on to the family home and to her daughter Trevora, aged eight. Trevora, while (according to her mother) bright and sociable, possessed a pair of unnaturally large dark eyes behind which there seemed to be nothing at all, and was generally silent around the house except that once or twice a month she would indulge herself in a fit of uncontrollable screaming. Mrs Trott coped with these episodes by dragging her daughter to the bathroom and holding her head under the cold-water faucet.

There was another lodger in the house, an amiable big-boned gangling boy from Northern Ireland, a student in the college’s Business department, of whose spoken English Margaret could understand not a single syllable. This boy lived in a tiny room behind the garage, on the first floor, which people in England apparently called “the ground floor.” On the second floor, called “the first floor,” were the kitchen, living and dining rooms, and on the third/second Margaret’s room, bedrooms for Trott mère and fille, and the main bathroom. Paul, the Irish boy, had a closet-sized bathroom of his own next to his room.

Mrs Trott worked at an office in the West End. She divided her spare time equitably between two men, both from the company she worked for. One was named Graham, and was the very model of an English gentleman, as Margaret had imagined it. He was tall and slim, with white hair and a white mustache, perfect manners, and a voice like those she had heard sometimes on BBC World Service in China. Graham was Company Secretary, which apparently was a very important position. However, Margaret could not help but think he was somewhat old for Mrs Trott, whom she estimated at no more than thirty-five.

The other man was younger and distinctly coarser. He was named Steve and spoke with the flat, glottal sounds Margaret was beginning to notice all around her in London. Steve was stocky and swarthy and his manners were perfunctory. In fact Margaret at first thought him rude. He had an odd sense of humor.

“From Red China, are you?” Steve remarked at their first introduction. “Not a mole, is she?” (inquiring this of Mrs Trott).

Margaret didn’t understand this at all. She thought she knew that a mole was a small burrowing animal. Back in her room, checking with the English-Chinese dictionary, she confirmed this meaning and found another: a dark raised blemish on the skin. Margaret’s skin was perfectly clear—she was somewhat vain on this point—and while it was indeed the case, according to Chinese folklore, that everyone resembled some particular animal, usually the one associated with one’s birth sign, Margaret could not see any respect in which she might be thought talpine. Whatever the point of his joke, Steve seemed to like it. “Here comes our mole,” he would say, sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper when she came in for breakfast.

Mrs Trott’s arrangements with Graham and Steve were shocking to Margaret at first, though she knew from common talk in China that people in the West had loose morals. Most surprising to her was that Graham and Steve seemed to know about each other, were indeed occasionally present in the house together, yet were on friendly terms. Western people really seemed incapable of embarrassment under any circumstances.

Mrs Trott did not even take any pains to conceal her financial circumstances. Alone in the kitchen one evening, Margaret saw that day’s mail all opened and scattered about on the table. The top sheet, in plain view, was a statement from a credit card company showing Mrs Trott as owing three thousand pounds. Margaret—once she had figured out the meaning of the statement—was embarrassed to have seen it. Three thousand pounds! Her entire allowance from the Royal Youth International Company was only three hundred a month. Yet the statement was still there two days later, undisturbed, though Mrs Trott must have sat at the table many times in the interim.

Margaret felt a little sorry for Mrs Trott. Her daughter was a trial to her, it was clear. Also her job, which kept her out of the house from eight in the morning to six at night. But Mrs Trott was always good-humored and even-tempered, and was unflaggingly helpful at filling in Margaret’s many areas of ignorance. Until coming to England Margaret had never written a check or been to a hairdresser, had never seen a vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, a blender. Mrs Trott fielded it all with an amused tolerance.

“She’s a poor lost soul,” Mrs Trott said to Steve in private. “I don’t know what they do with themselves all day long in China. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Needs a good poke if you ask me,” replied Steve from the depths of his Sporting Life. “A poke from a bloke. The old beef injection, the old tube steak, the old vitamin P. Straighten her right out, that would.”

Margaret liked Ealing very much. It even sounded nice: Yiling in Chinese, with connotations of benevolence and liveliness. In her spare time she often went walking at random through the streets, looking at the grand, solid brick houses and neat gardens. All so clean, so tidy, so spacious! There was a park nearby where you could walk freely, without paying any entrance fee. The park had a fine big church in it, and cultivated gardens with flowers the people somehow refrained from picking, and an aviary with scores of brilliant tiny birds in wire-mesh cages, and a peacock who would spread his tail if you waited very quietly for long enough.

There were tennis courts, too; and from the time of Margaret’s discovering the place all the way through into late October people played tennis there, batting away at smart yellow balls. Margaret found it very soothing to sit by the walkway opposite the tennis courts, in sound of the chattering budgerigars and cockatoos, listening to the tennis balls go pock pock back and forth under the dull English sky.

*

Poppy was hard at work on their behalf. The company’s first engagement was announced: four performances of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to be given here in London in November. There were just enough of them in the company to cover principals and chorus, an orchestra had been engaged, and the theater where they were to perform would be available for rehearsals at certain stated dates and times. Everyone in the company was assigned a principal role, with multiple understudying. Actual performance roles would be selected only at the last minute, and would be rotated between performances as far as possible, so that everyone might have a chance to sing as a principal. Mr Cinelli himself would appear in a comprimario role in all performances, for the sake of publicity.

Everyone was pleased. It was an opera they all knew. Margaret’s class at the Conservatory had actually performed it, though without costumes, in their second year. She had sung the Countess, and made this known to Poppy.

“Well, we must wait and see, my dear,” said Poppy, who had not yet heard everybody sing. “I cannot make decisions at this point.”

When rehearsals had already been under way for two weeks, Poppy brought sensational news. The Heir to the Throne, who was patron of the company, would attend the first performance; and there would be a banquet for them all the evening before, at Buckingham Palace.

“As a diplomatic courtesy your embassies will be notified, and invited to send along their cultural attachés, or the equivalent,” added Poppy.

The members of the company were all thrilled—all except, oddly, the English girl, who declared royalty to be “parasites” and the banquet “a waste of time.” Everyone else assumed they would be meeting the Princess of Wales, whose gracious image had at various times adorned all their home newspapers, from Winnipeg to Ouagadougou. Margaret explained about the banquet to the Japanese girl, writing in Chinese characters on the back of some sheet music, and the girl made lovely cooing sounds of delight and surprise, and clapped her pale tiny hands.

For Margaret the main effect of the news was to induce an attack of sartorial anxiety. The loose slacks and blouses she had brought from China were adequate for voice rehearsal and the little minor socializing the members of the company had so far engaged in, but would not do for Buckingham Palace. In an embarrassing expedition along Ealing High Street with Mrs Trott, she discovered that she couldn’t afford to buy any kind of decent outfit. Seeing her distress, Mrs Trott took over, and they spent the weekend taking in one of that lady’s dresses. Mrs Trott was the same height as Margaret, but considerably plumper—indeed, when Margaret saw how much they were taking in, she marveled at her landlady’s skill in presentation, never having thought her more than slightly overweight.

“Bought this for the office party last year,” explained Mrs Trott, wielding her scissors. “Never thought it would get presented to Princess Di. Blimey, me clothes are going up in the world if I’m not.”

On the appointed day the whole company mustered at the Palace, where an equerry in a disappointing charcoal-gray lounge suit—they had all been expecting livery—led them across acres of bare asphalt to a small side door, thence through long high corridors to a reception room.

“The diplomatic persons are to be received separately,” murmured the equerry. “His Royal Highness particularly wanted to greet you each personally.”

“What about Princess Di?” asked irrepressible Mehmet the Turk. “She’ll be coming too, won’t she?”

“Her Royal Highness will not be joining us today,” said the equerry. Then he looked at his watch. “Excuse me.” He went out.

Everyone was disappointed. “Wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known,” said the Canadian boy. “Trouble in Paradise,” said the New Zealand girl.

The equerry returned, clearing his throat to get their attention. “His Royal Highness will be with us in just a moment,” he said. “The first time you speak to His Royal Highness, you must use ‘Your Royal Highness’ as the form of address. On second and subsequent occasions you should use ‘Sir.’ Please try to remember this. ‘Your Royal Highness’ only on first address. Subsequently, ‘Sir.’”

“I wonder if we have to kneel down and bang our heads on the floor,” whispered Mehmet the Turk, standing next to Margaret. Mehmet was the Company’s lead tenor, and had also established himself as their resident comedian. Margaret smiled, putting a hand over her mouth to hide the smile.

“The ladies will make a small curtsey, like this.” The equerry did a quick bobbing motion, bending his knee and lowering his head all at once. “I suggest you try it beforehand.”

With some self-consciousness and a certain amount of tittering, the girls genuflected, the equerry sweeping his practiced eye along their line to see that it was done properly.

“Yes,” he said, when the bobbing and tittering had ceased. “Just keep the hands straight down by the side, that’s all right. Now the gentlemen, just bow slightly from the waist, so.”

While the gentlemen bowed, Margaret looked round the reception room. It was huge—all the rooms in Buckingham Palace seemed to be huge—and looked bigger for being bare. There were only a few very tall, straight-backed old chairs set along the walls, and a little table beside the door the equerry had entered through. No other furniture, no pictures on the walls, a single large window looking out over an interior courtyard in which two men were waxing an enormous limousine. The light was failing outside under a glum November sky, and the room’s large glass chandelier was lit. The glass elements of the chandelier looked rather dusty, Margaret thought. As if her vision had been sharpened by noticing this, she at once perceived that the peach-colored paint on the walls was cracked and peeling high up in one corner, that the carpet was quite distinctly worn, and that there was the dark shadow of a cobweb half-way along where the far wall met the ceiling.

“If anyone has any questions you may ask me now,” the equerry was saying.

“What’s for dinner?” asked the English girl. Everybody laughed. The equerry waited out the laughter, then calmly read off the evening’s menu from memory. This display of professionalism hushed them all; then the double doors were opened from outside and the Heir to the Throne came in, accompanied by Vinnie Cinelli and Poppy.

The Heir to the Throne was taller and handsomer than Margaret had expected. He was much more at ease, too, than her race memory of China’s twenty-four Imperial dynasties had prepared her for, strolling down the line with one hand in the side pocket of his jacket, smiling all the time and cracking small jokes. Poppy interpreted for the Italian boy, the Heir himself spoke French with Toubé, the West African, and only Chi-e, the Japanese soprano, was quite at a loss as usual, fluttering her hands before her face in panic and striking everyone simultaneously with dread that she was about to swoon, before the Heir tactfully executed a fine Japanese bow and passed on to Margaret. He told her his parents were to visit China the next year, which was news to Margaret, and asked intelligent questions about her home province. In his look and manner was something Margaret recognized, something men very often showed to her, but in this case oddly attenuated and ultimately indifferent. Only after he had passed on did she realize she had quite forgotten to curtsey.

They all went in to dinner. The diplomats were brought in from another door, and two equerries bustled around seating everyone. The Heir to the Throne sat at the center of the table on one side, flanked by Cinelli and a dapper spinsterish man Poppy described as the government official in charge of culture. Beyond that the seating seemed to be random, Poppy herself sitting among her charges, with Margaret on one side of her and the Romanian girl on the other. She began speaking to the Romanian girl in French as the soup was served. Diagonally across from Margaret was her own embassy’s cultural attaché, who introduced himself as Dong Shu. Cultural Attaché Dong looked like every other cultural attaché in the world, which is to say like a disappointed schoolmaster. He asked about her home province, her family, her education, then lapsed into silence to tackle his main course, and the wine that was served with it.

It soon became clear that Cultural Attaché Dong shared with Margaret and some tens of millions of their countrymen that unfortunate peculiarity of constitution that reacts to alcohol with fierce blushing. He had just begun to display the symptoms of this condition when he leaned across the table to Margaret and said, in their own language: “What pig swill this is! How can we bear to eat this filth? It’s really not suitable for us Chinese.”

“It’s not bad,” said Margaret. “And I think, to be polite, we should speak English.”

“Right.” Then, in English, to Poppy: “I am sure our Miss Han will be the star of your company.”

“There will be no stars in the company,” said Poppy, rather sharply. “We shall all work together on our productions.”

“Ah. Of course. Esprit de corps. All equal together. Ha ha ha! So different from the past, when we Chinese were slaves.”

Poppy seemed to feel this did not call for an answer. She turned back to the Romanian girl and resumed speaking French.

Ten minutes later, glowing like a lighthouse now, Attaché Dong addressed himself to Margaret in loud English.

“You must uphold the honor of our country, ha ha ha. We are not slaves now, as we once were. ‘No dogs or Chinese,’ that’s how they used to exclude us from our own parks and beaches. Ha ha ha ha ha!”

“I have always thought that story was nonsense,” said Poppy. “I should like to see some hard evidence for it.”

“Oh, but it is true!” said Margaret. “There really was such a sign, at the entrance to the waterfront park in Shanghai.”

“Did you see this sign with your own eyes?”

“No, of course not. Everybody knows.”

“Ah, ‘everybody knows.’ Just as everybody once knew the earth was flat.”

“Miss Han is right,” glowed Attaché Dong. “At that time, we were the slaves of you British. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Why, how did that happen?” Poppy had her chin up, combative, talking right across the table at Attaché Dong. “We are a tiny country with few natural resources. China is a vast self-sufficient empire with five thousand years of history. How could it be that we were able to enslave you?”

“You attacked us when we were weak. At that time the Chinese people were ruled by the Manchus. The Manchus were very corrupt and stupid.”

“I see. So the reason you were enslaved by a few wooden ships sent from a tiny, distant island covered in fog is that you had been previously enslaved by a tribe of illiterate Siberian aborigines shooting arrows from horseback. Apparently it is rather easy to make slaves of you Chinese. Seems that anyone can do it.”

Attaché Dong was shocked, but not angry. No Chinese person ever really cares what a foreigner thinks or says about his country’s affairs. How could it possibly be important? Foreigners understand nothing about China. But he felt it his duty to enlighten this particular barbarian. With an air of infinite patience, his face incandescent beneath a sheen of sweat, he proceeded.

“You weakened our people by forcing opium on them. Surely you have heard of the Opium Wars?”

“Indeed I have. One of my maternal great-grandfathers was a midshipman on the Andromache. He could tell you, anybody who has read a little history could tell you, the Opium Wars were fought to open China to normal commerce. The traders all knew the opium game was up. Parliament had reformed the poor laws, passed the Factory Acts, abolished slavery. It was only a matter of time before the reformers went for the opium trade, and the traders knew it. They wanted to bring in textiles and manufactured goods; but that your government would not allow. A filthy lawless drug trade was quite acceptable—it proved the inferiority of the foreigners that they would deal in such stuff. But to open China to the products of European technology—that would be a disaster for the imperial system, as indeed it eventually was. As for forcing opium on your people—that is rubbish. The supply could never match the demand. Opium was freely available in England, too, but it did not destroy us.”

Listening to this exchange, Margaret was astonished and confused. She had not heard such heresies since Norbu’s tall tales about the liberation of Tibet. Now, as then, it was disturbing to her to hear them. Not having much interest in history or current affairs, she had always accepted without question the accounts given by her teachers and their texts, or by Half Brother in the long idle days of confinement in Seven Kill Stele, while the closing phases of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were being enacted beyond the barracks’ perimeter wall. Even if, like Mustache, she had been of a temper to reject official explanations instinctively, there were no others available. Under a despotic government the choice is always between conformity and nihilism. Now her instinctual reaction was the same as Attaché Dong’s: she sought to soothe and enlighten the barbarian.

“No, Poppy, you don’t understand. Foreigners don’t know these things, but we Chinese all know them. Your people were very cruel to us in the past. You burned our emperor’s Summer Palace, you know. And …”

“The Summer Palace was burned for the reason we gave at the time: to punish the court, not the people. If Lord Elgin had been a Chinese commander leading a Chinese army, they would have burned Peking, and everyone in it.”

Attaché Dong was losing patience with this intractable savage. Stern now, his complexion radiating in heretofore unknown wavelengths, he wagged a finger across the table at Poppy.

“Your people had no business in China! It is our country, not yours! You should apologize for the wrongs you committed against our people!”

“I shall do nothing of the sort. Don’t take me for one of your guilt-addled puling liberals. I’m British, and proud of it. Our empire was the greatest civilizing force of its age. You cannot name a place that we left worse off than we found it. Or less healthy, less well educated, less ready for the twentieth century. The authorities in Hong Kong have had to build a fence across the border with China to stop your countrymen flooding into our colony. And you call us slave masters? What, do people risk their lives to run from freedom into slavery? If not, why did we have to build that fence?”

At this point all three of them became aware that everyone else was looking at them, and that their conversation was the only one going on. Even the Heir to the Throne was looking, wearing the slightly amused expression of one long practiced at coping with this kind of minor unpleasantness.

“If you are really intent on re-enacting the Opium Wars, I suppose I could get the navy to lend you a couple of frigates,” he observed. Everybody laughed. When they had stopped laughing, Poppy said very clearly and firmly: “I beg your pardon, Sir.” She said nothing further to Attaché Dong, however, and occupied herself with the Romanian girl for the rest of the meal.

Margaret was never completely sure whether this incident was the cause of it, or whether the problem stemmed from some original prejudice on Poppy’s part; but it was from this point that she began to feel at a disadvantage with Poppy.

Chapter 44

Mr Lubetsky Psychoanalyses a Voice

A Visit to the Land of Saints and Scholars is Mooted

Figaro was well received. Margaret sang the part of Cherubino for the second performance, and was in the chorus the other three nights. The choice role of the Countess, which she knew perfectly well, and which she also knew her voice was suited to, was rotated between the Armenian, the girl from New Zealand (the only one of the sopranos, according to Poppy, with a really well-developed top), the Bulgarian and one of the Scandinavians. The Armenian had a fine strong voice, though without much character, and coped decently well. The New Zealander got good applause while Margaret, watching from the wings, ticked off more than twenty clear faults. The Bulgarian was miscast, couldn’t handle the tessitura and was croaking by the last act. Only the Scandinavian gave what Margaret judged to be a good account of the role. Yet still she knew she could have done better. She had reminded Poppy three or four times that she had sung the Countess in college, only to be brushed away with: “Everyone must wait his turn.” Or: “I will take care of the casting, thank you, Margaret.” That damn fool Dong! Margaret felt sure his absurd antics had poisoned Poppy’s mind against her.

Poppy seemed, in fact, to have it fixed in her head that Margaret was a mezzo, which was news to Margaret. Her teachers at the Conservatory had never thought so, and neither had she herself. It was true that her voice had an unusual color, of the kind generally called “dark” and associated with the mezzo range; but Margaret believed her top notes were quite serviceable enough for soprano roles, and resented being relegated to a voice category for which there were very few roles of real prominence—other than Carmen, for which she knew she was anyway unsuited by appearance and dramatic skills.

Vinnie Cinelli appeared in all four performances as the gardener, to much laughter and applause. He transposed the role into his own registers (it is normally sung bass) and made little impromptu ariosos out of the recitative. It was too tiny a role to steal the show, although Margaret thought he came close. Between entrances he waited with the others backstage or in the wings, joking with them, encouraging them. The Japanese girl, singing Barbarina in the first performance, had a bad attack of stage nerves and Vinnie spent most of his time with her, patting her hand, adjusting her makeup, soothing her in libretto-Italian in the hope she might understand some few words.

Vinnie always arrived early, and before costuming walked around the stage looking for bent nails. This was a superstition of his. The ancient Romans ran out of iron and had not enough to make weapons to defend the city against her enemies. Since that time the Italians have considered iron to be lucky. Thus Poppy’s explanation; though why the nails had to be bent, she did not know. In any case, the producers and stagehands all knew of Vinnie’s odd compulsion, and made sure he would find a bent nail somewhere.

After the first two performances Vinnie gave the whole company a debriefing, correcting the most egregious faults, pointing out aspects of the score they had not noticed, offering individual advice to every singer he had heard.

To Margaret he said: “Your voice is very beautiful, my little pearl, and capable of much more than the lyric roles. But you must himprove your diction. It will not do for a professional performance.”

He gave her the business card of a voice coach in the West End, a specialist in diction.

“Go to see this Lubetsky,” he said. “Visit with ’im every chance you can find, and pay careful attention to heverything ’e tells you. The company will pay the fees, don’t worry, I will speak with ’im. Lubetsky is an old friend of mine. ’E will find time for you, whenever you wish to go. Only …” he laughed, “… do not be afraid ’is manner. ’E is rather fierce with young singers.”

Back at Ealing, Poppy showed them press cuttings. They were from ordinary London newspapers, not the trade press, and most were very short. One asserted that Vinnie had indeed stolen the show, and scolded him on that account. Two praised the New Zealand girl, who yelped with pleasure and clapped her hands when Poppy read out these passages. None thought as highly of the Scandinavian girl as Margaret had. Only one mentioned Margaret’s Cherubino.

“The pants role was sung this evening by Miss Margaret Hon of Peking, a large cold mezzo voice which will show much promise when it has mastered the difference between vowels and consonants.”

“So cruel!” gasped Margaret in dismay. “Are they really allowed to write such things?”

“Never mind that,” said Poppy. “You will read worse if you have a career in this business. The really bad thing is, they have misspelled your name.”

Still Margaret was mortified. That very morning she called the number on the business card Vinnie had given her, and two days later presented herself at the studio of Mr Max Lubetsky, voice coach.

The studio was also, quite obviously, Lubetsky’s home. It was on the fourth floor of a building in Soho, above a Greek restaurant. Though tiny the place somehow managed to be labyrinthine, the rooms on different levels connected by short flights of steps, everything dark, cluttered and smelling of food and dust. In the studio proper was an upright piano, an open-fronted bookcase, and a table, every horizontal surface covered with piles of books or sheets of paper. Among the papers on the table was a plate holding the remains of a taramasalata, and an opened can of beer.

Lubetsky himself was sixty at least, wearing an old V-necked jumper over a blue flannel shirt and ill-knotted tie. His manner was gruff and impatient, his natural expression a scowl. He held Margaret with his eyes, head on one side, as she made answers to his brief interrogation.

“You’re the one Vinnie was raving about, hah? Voice of the century, but you can’t enunciate, hah? Is that it?”

“Mr Cinelli thinks I should improve my diction.”

“Does he? Does he? Yet you speak very well. English almost flawless. Parla con me in Italiano. Come si chiama? Quanti anni hai? Di dove sei?”

“Mi chiamo Margherita Han. Io ho, um, venticinque anni. Sono Cinese. Or should it be ‘Cinesa’? I’m sorry, my …”

“Auf Deutsch. Noch einmal: Ihre name, wie alt, von wo kommen.”

“Meine name … Oh, I’m sorry, I really can’t speak German at all. I just memorize the words and sing them.”

“Hm. French?”

“Same as German. Worse, I think.”

“You have studied phonetics before?”

“My first teacher of English used a phonetic approach.”

“Yes. Your spoken diction is excellent. So it must be that only the singing voice is a problem. You have been thinking too much about your diaphragm, your posture, your intercostals, your throat. Not enough about”—Lubetsky tapped his cheek—“the speech apparatus. Lips, teeth, tongue, palate. Without them you are merely an organ pipe. Poppy, I know her of old. An excellent person. Certainly a good voice coach, for the right voice. Not for yours, I think.”

“She’s convinced I’m a mezzo. She’ll only give me mezzo parts. But I have a good top—a strong C.”

The old man chuckled. “And I could lift this table over my head without much difficulty.” (He rapped it with the knuckle of his forefinger.) “Still I should not care to carry it around on stage for two hours. Poppy may be wiser than you. We shall see. Or possibly your voice is in transition from soprano to mezzo, as often happens. People make too much of these ironclad categories, in my opinion. There was no such thing as a mezzo before 1830—Malibran was the first. If Mozart and Rossini coped without this word, perhaps we should not give it too much weight. Let us see, without prejudice, what things your voice can do, and see if we can help it do those things better. Shall we begin? My studio is small, but …” he waved a hand around at the cheap pegboard with which his walls were covered, “… acoustically acceptable.”

“Don’t the people in the restaurant mind?”

Lubetsky chuckled again. “They like to hear my singers. It gives them some bohemian atmosphere. And when it is a soprano, I tell the management I am training the next Callas, and they forgive me everything.” [Maria Callas was Greek-American.] “They even feed me.” He indicated the taramasalata debris.

Lubetsky’s method was simple but grueling. He had listed every possible syllable in each language required to be taught: every possible combination of consonant plus vowel, vowel plus consonant, consonant plus vowel plus consonant. He had Margaret sing each syllable in scales across her entire working range, omitting only the top and bottom notes. (In common with many voice professionals of the older generation, Lubetsky clove to the superstition that each singer is foreordained to perform only a fixed number of difficult notes, and that these notes must therefore be husbanded with care.) When satisfied with the simpler syllables, he advanced to more complex ones: diphthongs, clusters of consonants, at last complete words.

Margaret had been cut deep by that offhand review (whose author had, of course, already forgotten what he wrote) and threw herself into this new training with a dogged application Max Lubetsky had rarely seen. He responded by clearing the decks for her, canceling other pupils at short notice, rousing himself early, shifting his mealtimes. Even so, it was not easy to accommodate her. The Royal Youth International was well booked that winter and spring, taking their Figaro on the road, working up a Magic Flute and a Pelléas and Mélisande, and of course with their own schedule of rehearsals and voice training.

Still, weeks later, that first review still rankled. The hard work Margaret was now putting into diction was clearing the last clause from her mind slowly, and she found herself dwelling on what had gone before. She raised the matter with Lubetsky.

“Max, why would someone describe my voice as cold?”

“Has someone so described it?”

“Yes. ‘A large cold mezzo voice.’ It was a reviewer in one of the newspapers.”

Lubetsky laughed. “Have you got any idea how badly it is paid, doing opera reviews for the newspapers? It was probably a moonlighting student of thermodynamics. Pay no attention.”

“But is it a cold voice? The reviewer was right about my diction.”

Lubetsky considered. He was sitting at the piano in his studio. He fingered some piano keys thoughtfully.

“It is not a good description,” he said at last. “However, I understand his meaning. Your voice is very beautiful, but it is an abstract beauty, like the beauty of a mathematical theorem. There are few points of contact with the world of humanity. Are you a virgin?”

The question shocked her, coming so unexpectedly in the midst of what she had intended to be—believed to be—a technical discussion. Margaret blushed furiously. “Yes,” she said, when she had gathered herself. “Yes, I am. In China we have not had this … this sexual revolution. We consider these things very private, suitable only for married couples.”

Lubetsky nodded, his customary scowl softened by a thin smile. “Yes, yes. Notions we in the West have discarded, for better or worse. As an old fogey, naturally I believe for worse. But history will determine. These things must run their course. Matters of brute carnality aside, have you ever experienced the tender passion?”

“You mean love?”

“Of course.”

“I … yes, I … Yes. Once. Briefly.”

“Unhappily, I perceive. Still, I do not think this is the problem. I am not a psychologist, Margaret, and as a matter of fact I am deeply suspicious of all mechanical theories about our human nature. ‘This knotted wood, from which nothing straight will ever be made’—the sage of Königsberg, was it not? However, I will say this. There is something in you that is restraining your voice. No, not restraining—only leaving your voice in some sense empty. Some kind of unfinished business. I have no idea what it might be. This love affair, perhaps—but I do not think so. I believe it is older, deeper. Your family circumstances—as a child, I mean. Were they happy?”

“Yes. Very happy.”

“Hm. Well, as I said, I am not a psychologist. I suggest only this: that you give some time to reflecting on your personal history. Your early life. Not too much, of course—I should not want you to become like an American, endlessly obsessed with your own misfortunes, blaming every ache and pimple on the misjudgments of your ancestors or the malice of your neighbors. Just a little time, when you are quiet, preferably near to the sound of moving water. That is most conducive to calm reflection. If there is something grave that you have left undone, do what you can to resolve it. That is all.”

Lubetsky straightened and turned back to the piano with an abruptness that seemed already to regret his brief foray into the springs of human motivation. “Now, the consonant cluster ‘s-v’ …”

At the time, and in the following days and weeks, Margaret thought very little of what Lubetsky had said. It was only later, months and years later, that she began to understand it.

*

In the summer of that year the Royal Youth International went on a European tour. They took their Figaro, their Magic Flute and their Pelléas and Mélisande to small houses in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, France. Travel was by bus at what seemed to Margaret at first and last—she never got used to it—breakneck speed on autoroutes, autostrada and Autobahnen, often singing through their parts as they barreled along the highways, a practice Poppy encouraged. The venues were small and often not well-attended, with battered props and rickety scenery. In Karlsruhe the monster provided for their Magic Flute stank of mildew, and was in fact so far gone in dilapidation its head fell off before Mehmet the Turk could slay it. Mehmet fell into his scheduled swoon with his features barely under control, and Chi-e the Japanese girl, who with Margaret and the Armenian formed the party of Queen’s ladies who found him, while bending over him caught a fit of giggles which she transmitted to the other two, and thence to the whole company for the whole of the first act.

The inevitable pairings-off became more obvious on the road. The boy from Tonga and the girl from New Zealand had by this time fused into a single biological entity, and nobody was surprised when they announced that they were to marry on returning to London. The English mezzo had taken up with Mehmet. The Italian boy and Chi-e, united spiritually perhaps by their utter failure to learn more than a hundred words of English between them, retreated into each other, communicating no-one knew how. The West African boy seduced plump, blowsy Ionia from Romania with no difficulty at all that anyone could make out. The French bass with the Malaysian contralto, Canada with Armenia, the Scandinavians with each other (relative to the other couplings, this seemed practically incestuous to the rest of the company) and the South Americans in turn, and then jointly, with Dulcinia the West Indian mezzo. “Coruscating” was their joke word for all this among themselves, lifted of course from the college principal’s absurd poem; and when any of the corresponding parties took advantage of the rough-and-ready sleeping arrangements—in vacant college dormitories, mostly—to give physical expression to the spirit of international friendship, lateness to breakfast or signs of excessive fatigue would be greeted with good-natured taunts of “Too much coruscating!”

Margaret kept herself at a distance from all this, not always without difficulty. Mehmet had made one clear and deliberate pass at her when they were rehearsing Figaro in the fall, shrugging away the rebuff good-naturedly and turning to the English girl. Both the South American boys had tried their luck, so had the Canadian and the male Scandinavian before settling down with more accessible spirits.

She thought often of the natural instinct she seemed once to have possessed for passionless friendship with men—Mustache, Johnny Liu, Mr Powell. Now that instinct seemed to have left her; or perhaps such things just were not possible in the freer atmosphere of the West. Margaret thought often of Norbu, and fretted with schemes to get in touch with him, but pursued none of them. It seemed so hopeless, all so hopeless. Her fate was to sing, that was all. With such a gift, what right had she to expect anything more from life? So she reasoned to herself.

The great disappointment of the European trip for Margaret was that she was unable to go to France. She never found out the reason for this and in dark moments, on no evidence at all, at first suspected spite by Poppy.

The French (Poppy explained) more than any other nation preferred to hear opera in their own language, so the company had prepared Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande, Carmen (said Poppy) being too predictable and an opera notoriously difficult to cast and for which the company lacked a suitable lead. France was the last country on their tour; but somehow Margaret’s Chinese passport, or British visa, or both, were unacceptable to the French authorities, and the tangle could not be untied in time, and the company went to Paris without her. Before leaving China Margaret’s sole visual impression of continental Europe had been the Eiffel Tower, and it was a bitter blow to her not to be able to see it in actuality.

She went back to London and occupied her time with Mr Lubetsky, working up and down his syllable lists. When the company returned to London in August Poppy announced that the Royal Ballet had yielded up Covent Garden to them for a single out-of-season performance, and they did their Pelléas and Mélisande with house costumes and equipment, and Poppy, perhaps from sympathy for the visa muddle in France, cast Margaret as Mélisande herself, the only time in that whole year she had sung prima donna.

*

It was September, and back in London, when Margaret saw Vinnie Cinelli again. There was a slack period in late summer when the company had no bookings. Poppy had gone to her house in France for a vacation and several other members of the company had taken the opportunity to go sightseeing or home to visit their families. Having no money, Margaret could afford neither option. The company’s next engagement was a Fidelio at a town in the north of England in October, and Margaret thought she should put in some work on her German, so far tested on stage only in the Magic Flute. She accordingly resumed lessons with Lubetsky, who seemed never to take vacations. And there one day, when she walked in to the cluttered little studio, was Cinelli. He beamed to see her, and rose from his chair and embraced her.

“My little pearl, my Perlinetta! My friend Max ’as been telling me about you. Such a good student!”

Lubetsky smiled a greeting, nodding in acknowledgment.

“I’m afraid I haven’t had much opportunity for lessons,” said Margaret. “We have been traveling a lot.”

“Yes, yes. You were very well received in Vienna. A difficult city for singers, even for German singers. They take their music so seriously. So ’ow is the Royal Youth Hinternational company? Is our friend Poppy taking good care of you? Eh?”

“I wish I could say so,” sighed Margaret. “I really feel she won’t give me the opportunities I need.”

Cinelli raised his eyebrows. “So? You are dissatisfied?”

At once Margaret was ashamed, fearful that Cinelli might feel slighted in some way.

“Oh, Mr Cinelli, I didn’t mean to be critical. Of course, it’s been a marvelous opening for me, to sing with Royal Youth International. It’s just that … oh, I sometimes feel Poppy doesn’t like me.”

Cinelli pursed his lips and frowned. “Eh, women with women. There never can be peace.” He turned to Lubetsky. “Now, what do you say, old friend? Is our Perlina ’ere ready to take on a full repertoire—Italian, German, French?”

Lubetsky scowled and shook his head. “Italian, possibly. German, needs more work. French I would not recommend. She sang Mélisande at the Garden, against my strong advice.” He shook his head, as if the result had been a disaster—in fact, Margaret’s Mélisande had been well received, the word “promising” appearing in every notice of her performance.

Cinelli laughed. “This is ’igh praise I am ’earing! ’E is rarely so henthusiastic. Perlina, come to see me. Come to my ’otel this evening—ah, seven o’clock. We shall dine together. The Savoy in the Strand, do you know? And we shall discuss your future. Max, I leave ’er in your ’ands! Take care with ’er—she ’as a priceless voice.”

When he had gone, Lubetsky said: “You are a very lucky young lady. For such a great man to take an interest in you.”

“He has helped me a lot,” agreed Margaret. “But every piece of good luck in my life seems to come with a lump of stone attached.”

The Savoy was a grand place, the entrance hidden away in a little street behind the Strand. Cinelli came down a few minutes late, wearing slacks and a loose English sweater. “We shall eat Henglish,” he announced, placing her arm on his and heading for the street door.

“English” was a restaurant named Simpson’s, a short distance along the Strand. People turned to look at them as they walked in the street, and a young man on the other side called out: “Vinnie! Vinnie!” and clapped his hands, raising them over his head. Cinelli waved back.

“Wonderful people, the Henglish,” said Cinelli. “They stare un poco, but they do not impose themselves. In America, they will not let you breathe. And in Italy—ah! I should ’ave been kidnapped by now.”

I am walking along the Strand in London (Margaret was thinking), arm in arm with Vincenzo Cinelli. She thought life might have very little more to offer.

Simpson’s was a dim, old-fashioned place serving heavy English food very much like Mrs Trott’s. Margaret thought it odd that Cinelli would deliberately choose this kind of food, when there must surely have been fine Italian restaurants nearby. Not to mention the lovely dining room of the Savoy itself, which she had glimpsed while waiting for him, its big picture windows looking out on the river.

“I am a Hanglophile.” Cinelli explained, tucking into his roast potatoes and cabbage. “Is my favorite country. The food …” he pointed at it with his fork, “… properly done, is nourishing and ’ealthful.”

“But not much taste,” objected Margaret.

Cinelli laughed. “Every nation takes its pleasures in a different way. We should not be too critical. For my people and yours, the pleasures of the table are at the top of the list. For the Henglish, not so. They cherish their language—talk, books, plays. And then their games and ’obbies. Do you know, every Henglishman ’as an ’obby? This one breeds pigeons, that one collects stamps, the third one makes catedrali from matchsticks. And their games—do you know that every sport in the world was hinvented by these Henglish? Football, tennis, bigliardo, every one. No, each nation has its special genius.”

“For Italians, I suppose it is singing.”

Cinelli shrugged. “What is all your training? It is only to learn ’ow to sing like an Italian.” He laughed. “Even when you sing in German.”

“Poppy won’t be pleased to hear you say that. She thinks the German music is superior.”

“And she is quite right. They are the musicians of the world. But their language does not lend itself to singing so well as ours. Mozart was at ’is best writing for the Italian voice. ’Oo will deny it? But tell me of your troubles with Miss Poppy.”

“Oh, I just feel she is prejudiced against me.”

Margaret told the story of Attaché Dong. Cinelli laughed.

“Such a diplomat! If your country ’as many more like ’im, there is a hend of world peace.”

“I wish I had just kept my mouth shut. I didn’t think she would be so touchy.”

“Hm. Our Miss Poppy is, what? sixty years and something. This means ’er thinking was developed before the war, when the Henglish still ’ad their hempire. For such a one, it is natural to be on the defense a little.”

“It’s not only that. She just won’t consider me for the bigger roles. She casts by physical type. The big girls sing the big roles. Because I’m rather small, she thinks I can only do lyric parts. And she’s got it fixed in her mind that I can only sing mezzo. When we did our Figaro with you last year, do you remember? My only appearance was as Cherubino. I told her I could sing the Countess, I’d sung it in college. I love to sing coloratura. She might have let me sing it for one performance. You know my voice, Mr Cinelli. It’s big enough for the Countess, isn’t it? Even Susanna, I wouldn’t have minded. But Cherubino! It’s been like that the whole year. When I got a leading role at last, it was in French, which she knows is my worst language …”

Cinelli was listening attentively, taking his eyes off her only to raise his tankard of dark English beer. When Margaret was done, he reached across the table and patted her hand.

“First, Perlinetta, you should call me Vinnie, as all the others do. Don’t be so formal. In the world of opera, we are a family. We shall use your last name only when you are dead. Second, let me remind you of your good fortune.”

“Oh, Mr Cinelli … Vinnie. I know, I know. I’m lucky to have had the opportunities I’ve had. Don’t think I’m ungrateful. Without Royal Youth International I’d still be in Tibet. But I started my career late, and wasted two years in that place …”

She began to weep, and covered her face with her hands. This was only partly by calculation; quite unaccountably, Norbu had come into her thoughts—all of him, complete with cocky swagger and insolent white grin.

“I’m sorry … Vinnie. Sorry.”

Cinelli got up and came round the table to her. He put his arm round her shoulder and offered a vast white handkerchief.

“All right, Perlina, I understand. Do you want me to speak to Miss Poppy?”

“No. No, I don’t think … Perhaps it would make her worse.” Margaret dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, feeling a little guilty for the element of calculation. “I’m all right,” she said. “Thank you, Vinnie.” She turned to look up at him, and smiled. He patted her shoulder and went back to his chair.

For a few moments they ate in silence. Margaret wondered if she had offended him by seeming so ungrateful. She knew his own early years as a singer had been more difficult than hers, with more discouragements. Still she could think of nothing to say. It was Cinelli who broke the silence at last.

“If I say ‘Barbara,’ do you know of ’om it is that I am speaking?”

“Of course. Barbara Bacon. Who doesn’t know her?”

Even in China Margaret had known of the great Australian soprano Barbara Bacon. Her name and Cinelli’s were the first she had heard in the world of opera, and their many collaborations in the performance of nineteenth-century Italian operas had been among the earliest tapes the Conservatory had acquired when building up its library of opera recordings.

“In precise, should be Dame Barbara Bacon. That is ’er full title.”

“What does ‘Dame’ mean?”

“Is like ‘Sir,’ only for a woman. The Queen of England ’as ’onored ’er, ’as knighted ’er. Knight a gentleman, ’e becomes a Sir; knight a lady, she becomes a Dame. This is their custom. Would you like to sing with ’er?”

He said it very casually, lifting his eyes from the plate to look at her, just a faint smile to spring the surprise with, then back to his food.

Margaret put a hand over her mouth. “Oh! I couldn’t dream of it!”

Cinelli nodded. “You can. ’Ave you ’eard of the Wexford festival?” (Margaret had not.) “It takes place in Hireland every autumn. Just a few days, and a small theater …” he shrugged, “… but wonderful hatmosphere, just such as must ’ave been in the primo ottocènto, in the small towns of Italy. Their tradition is to do works unfamiliar. Not modern, all hold masters, but works not well known. Barbara and I are to sing there this year, next month. Bellini.” He nodded, smiling at her. “You should sing Bellini, little pearl. You ’ave a Bellini voice.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. But aren’t the singers all engaged already?”

Cinelli shrugged. “Not definitely. I ’ad the idea to leave hopen a role for one of my youngsters.” He laughed. “No trouble to fill such a position.”

“To sing with you and Miss … with Barbara? Dame Barbara? I should think not! Do you really think I can do it? Oh, Mr Cinelli! I would love to do it, of course! But is it really possible? What about the role? Do you really think I’m suitable? Oh! I don’t know what to say! And I’m supposed to be doing Fidelio … when? I forget. Oh, Mr … I mean, Vinnie …”

Cinelli was beaming at her now, pleased with the reception his offer had got. He reached across the table and patted her hand.

“Don’t worry about Fidelio. Royal Youth International will manage without you if necessary. In any case, it is a hopera nobody loves. We do it from respect to the composer. As for Wexford: it is not a big role, but is not comprimario, either. You ’ave one lovely aria to sing, and then a lot of weeping. I would describe it as lyrico mezzo with a strong dramatic color. But if you ’ave any hideas about the role we will incorporate them. We are all very informal at Wexford. That is the joy of these small festivals. We ’ave fun. It is not a seminario in hindustrial relations, like singing La Scala, nor a test of wills with the conductor, like a Hamerican engagement. It is fun.”

Still Margaret could not believe it. She had heard these small festivals spoken of in opera circles. Small they might be, and in out-of-the-way places; but they drew real opera lovers—wealthy people who traveled the world to hear the best opera, fanatical loggionisti who skimped on food and clothing to go where the finest singers were, critics, agents, directors of big houses. To sing with Cinelli and Dame Barbara Bacon! And a real role, not mere comprimario! It was the break of a lifetime, and she knew it.

At once caution asserted itself. She looked across the table at Mr Cinelli, at Vinnie. He was sipping at his beer, looking at her over the tankard. Seeing only his eyes like that, she noticed how deep and clear the eyes were, and how they seemed, all by themselves, to be laughing mischievously all the time. “It is fun.” This man, this elephantine imp—could it be that he was really her old companion, the demon Hope, in disguise? This wonderful thing he had offered—would it disappear in a puff of smoke as soon as she had embraced it? Like her dancing career, like her graduation ceremony, like Father, like Marshal Hu, like Norbu? What could go wrong? The visa, of course.

“Ireland is another country, isn’t it? Won’t I need a visa? Shall I have the problem I had with France?”

Cinelli reached over and took her hand again, this time covering it with his. “Don’t worry about hanything, little Perlinetta. We shall get you to Wexford.”

Chapter 45

Fate Fulfills a Rash Vow

An Experience Too Strange for Words

Un grido io sento, suonar per l’onda,

Egli è un lamento di lui che muor.

Ciascun si taccia, nessun risponda—

Ei mi rinFAACIAAAAaaaaaaa can’t get that fucking note, Bruce.

Dame Barbara slammed her score on to the lid of the piano, turned to one side, and threw back her large square head, looking straight up into the flies for inspiration. When she looked back down her eyes met Margaret’s.

“Hello, ducky. You’re the mezzo are you?”

“M, yes. I guess.”

For once Margaret did not mind being thought of as a mezzo. To sing with Dame Barbara! And Cinelli himself! For them—the two greatest bel canto practitioners alive—she would be a mezzo.

“Mr Cinelli said I should introduce myself,” she added.

“Did he? And where is the fat wop?”

“A? Oh … he’ll be here … soon. I guess. He told me two o’clock. Said he’d be here.”

“Oh, Vinnie’ll be late for his own funeral. Step over here, lovey, let me take a look at you.”

They had let Margaret in at the back of the stage and she had been waiting in the wings, wondering how to introduce herself to Dame Barbara, who was doing piano rehearsal out in center stage. Now she stepped forward diffidently. It was not far—the stage here at Wexford was tiny—but it seemed farther than it was because every step brought her closer to Dame Barbara, and to the realization that Dame Barbara was a very big person indeed. Margaret had known this in the abstract, of course; but it was one thing to hear trade gossip about the difficulties this diva had in getting male leads who did not look diminutive alongside her, and quite another thing to be standing beneath her—there was no other way to think of it—craning to look up at the broad, plain, beaming face of the world’s best known coloratura soprano.

“So you’re Vinnie the Guinea’s little Chinese protégée. And a very pretty little thing you are.”

Dame Barbara’s expression was kindly and amused. Suddenly it transformed itself into an intense schoolmarm frown. “Has he been bonking you?”

“What? I’m sorry? My English …”

But Dame Barbara, and her pianist, and her conductor (who had been standing far back in the stalls but had now come down to the orchestra pit) were all hooting with laughter, and the pianist played some stripshow chords, and Margaret realized there had been some kind of joke. Not sure whether or not she was being made fun of, she felt herself beginning to blush; but a door slammed backstage, the boards trembled, and Vinnie strode on from stage left.

“BAMBINO!” he roared, advancing on Dame Barbara with arms outspread.

“AMORE!” sang out Dame Barbara, striding forward to engage him. They met in a Jurassic embrace.

“This poor little soubrette …” Dame Barbara indicated Margaret, “… has been telling me how you seduced her, you filthy dago. You and your pal Jug-Ears up at the palace. You should be ashamed, both of you! Slipping the one-eyed snake to an innocent little creature like this!”

“Che ingiustizia! I ’ave not laid a finger!” Vinnie lifted a plump digit by way of denial, his face all mock indignation.

“It’s not the fingers I’m talking about, ducky. We all know what you greasers are like, don’t we?” She favored Margaret with a wink as subtle as a fire curtain coming down.

The conductor, who was also Dame Barbara’s husband, was on stage now. He greeted Margaret with a smile, a bow, and a courteous handshake. Then he turned to his wife.

“Darling, perhaps we should hear our Isoletta sing.”

“Course we should.” Dame Barbara beamed down at her again. “Have you had a chance to look at the score, sweetie?”

“No. I’m sorry. I … I just couldn’t find one anywhere. Only a libretto …”

“Oh, it’s all right, dearie. It’s a rare piece. They always do these odd bits at Wexford. That’s the fun of it. Gives us a break from Mimi and Tosca. We’re all working from photocopies, matter of fact. Very naughty to do Mr Schirmer out of a royalty, but serves ’em right for not keeping things in print. Poor bloke only wrote, what?—ten operas, you’d think they could keep ’em printed up.”

The poor bloke in question was Vincenzo Bellini, a bel canto composer of the early 19th century, whose opera La straniera—The Stranger—was to be performed here in Ireland, at the Wexford Music Festival, with Dame Barbara Bacon as lead soprano, Vincenzo Cinelli as tenor, and various lesser talents in the supporting roles—including Miss Margaret Han as Isoletta, the betrayed bride.

The conductor took a vocal score from his folder and handed it to Margaret. It was a stapled photocopy of an original at least half a century old, the words all printed in tiny, fussy script, hard to pick out from between the staves.

“Here,” he said, “here …” pointing to a section near the back. “You just have this one solo. There’s the andante, ‘Ah! se non m’ami più,’ and a strongly contrasted cabaletta further down, ah, here. It’s a show stopper if you do it well.”

“Give it some feeling, love,” said Dame Barbara, who had taken a seat in one of the chairs at stage back. “The poor sheila’s supposed to be engaged to fatso here” (she jerked her head at Vinnie, standing beside her chair), “but she’s found out he’s double dipping. It’s despair, sweetie—despair and a bit of rage. Men, you know what swine they all are. Think despair. Bellini’s not really all that hard to sing, you know, once you get in stride with that long legato line, but he needs a lot of expression.”

When the time came to sing Margaret was more nervous than she could ever recall. She had sung cold before, sight reading from a previously unseen score—it had been a standard exercise at the Conservatory—but never in front of two first-rank international stars. She thought Dame Barbara was probably, on balance, non-life-threatening, and needed no more proofs of Vinnie’s faith in her; yet still it was daunting, and she made two false starts. Once properly embarked upon, however, the aria was not as difficult as it looked in the smudged script of the score, and she felt, when finished, that she might even have attempted some grace notes.

“Blimey,” said Dame Barbara. “That’s a big voice for such a little lady. Where does it all come from?”

Vinnie nodded, beaming appreciation at Margaret. “I told you she was hexceptional. The size, it does not matter.”

“Oh, that’s what you fellers always say.” Dame Barbara’s laughter rolled around the theater.

“But for singers is true,” Vinnie protested. “Bidú is no bigger, ’undred and sixty centimetri, I think.”

“’Sright,” nodded the diva. “Come to think of it, Mary Garden only weighed seven stone soaking wet.” (Addressing Margaret): “Sung in any of the big houses, have you, love?”

“Not really. Well, … I did Mélisande at Covent Garden. But otherwise … no, not really.”

“Dunno about Covent Garden. Wembley Stadium’d be more your fach, sweetheart.” Dame Barbara turned back to Vinnie. “Isn’t there a bit too much there for bel canto? She should be singing Wagner, voice like that.”

“No, the poor girl is nervous, that is all. She is a perfect lyrico, perfect.” Vinnie kissed the bunched tips of his fingers.

“Nice enunciation, anyway,” said Dame Barbara, perhaps thinking she had been too critical. This was very high praise, touching as it did on what must have been a sore point with her. It was widely agreed that Dame Barbara, though undoubtedly one of the finest soprano voices of the age, was weak in articulation. Opera fans had been joking for years about sitting through her performances trying to spot the consonants.

“I ’ad her study phonetics with Lubetsky,” said Vinnie. “’E is infallible.”

“Yeah, you can’t beat a Jew for the technical stuff. No offense, Sammy” (to the pianist, who responded with some bars of “Hava Nagila”).

“I think we have found our Isoletta,” said Dame Barbara’s husband. “Now if I could just have the prima donna’s attention for a moment? The passage from your last da capo …”

Dame Barbara came to her feet with surprising agility and strode to stage front, brandishing her score. “All right, possums, let’s do some work. Tell you what, Tub” (addressing Vinnie again), “I’m going cross-eyed trying to read this flaming score. You Ities really know how to bugger up a bit of music, don’t you? Look at these sodding appoggiaturas …”

By late afternoon they had run through all of what Dame Barbara called the “tasty bits” of the score, and tackled some of the problems of stage positions, entrances and exits. Margaret, though exhausted, was in a delirium of pride and satisfaction, having had the master class of her life. She only feared there had been too much of it: too many priceless pieces of advice, too many pearls of operatic wisdom for her to remember. Sitting at dinner in the hotel afterwards, with Dame Barbara, Bruce her husband, Vinnie and Mr Rocco, she let them talk while she desperately tried to recall and catalog every word of guidance, every precious lesson from that long afternoon. Vinnie, however, insisted on bringing her into the conversation.

“When you know Bellini,” he said to her as they were finishing main course, “you will want to sing nothing helse.”

“Don’t tell her that, Tub,” said Dame Barbara. “The girl’s got a career to make yet. You can’t build a repertoire from one composer.”

“But do you not think her voice is perfect for Bellini? She ’as the control, she ’as the legato, she ’as the color.”

“She has a living to make,” said Bruce, smiling across the table at her. “Bellini will get her three engagements a year.”

“One in Bogotá,” added Dame Barbara, “one in Nairobi, and one in Kookaburra Springs, Northern Territory.” She pealed laughter in appreciation of her own wit, making the water glasses on the table hum agreement, moiré wavelets shimmering across their surfaces. “Not one of our most popular composers,” she said aside to Margaret.

Vinnie gave a shrug. “Of course. She must cast ’er net wide. I am only saying that ’er voice was made especially to sing Bellini. Of course …” another shrug, “… we must all sing our way through the repertoire. I myself ’ave sung heverybody, I think. I ’ave sung Mahler in my time.”

“Have you, love?” Dame Barbara registered astonishment. “Strewth, I didn’t know that. Mahler? You sure it was Mahler, not Mascagni?”

“Why, yes. In my younger days. I was glad to do any kind of concert work, you know.”

“How is it, to sing Mahler?” asked Margaret, not very sure who Mahler was.

Vinnie grimaced, putting up his hands to ward off evil. “Terrible, terrible! Dismal stuff. Himpossible to sing well. For an Italian, any ’ow.” Everybody laughed. “But” (Vinnie went on) “as Bruce said, you must be prepared to sing hanything. Be … is it the same word in English? … versatile, yes. Be versatile. Still …” waving with a finger to make his point, “… we all know that there is one composer who is best for every voice. For you, bambino” (addressing Dame Barbara) “it is Donizetti. For me, Puccini I am afraid.” He laughed. “I would rather it was Verdi, but it is not. For Susan” (naming an American soprano, subject of a conversation over the appetizers) “it is Mozart, of course.”

“For Callas?” Mr Rocco spoke up—for only the second or third time that evening, Margaret thought.

Vinnie laughed. “Such a talent as that is above all rules. Maria could sing this …” he lifted up the wine list, “… and you would say it was a composition of genius.”

“Only she’d have needed five full dress rehearsals first, and have fallen out with three different conductors,” added Bruce. They all laughed again.

Margaret sat in bliss, letting the conversation flow around her. She loved this—the shop talk, the gossip, the private professional jokes. She wished she could participate herself; but she was too green, they all understood that. One day she would be able to join in. She would know who was having voice troubles, whose marriage was on the rocks, which singer had fallen out with which conductor, who was impossible to get on with, which house’s orchestra walked out on a rehearsal en masse, who was a lesbian and who was a pedophile, who ought to have retired five years ago. For now she only wanted to take it all in, and remember as much of it as possible, stacked alongside the afternoon’s master class. Perhaps she could write it all down when she got back to her room … but she thought she was too tired.

She puzzled over what Vinnie had said, about her voice being made for Bellini. She had not actually found Bellini all that difficult, not as difficult as she had been given to understand. Poppy, when Margaret had gone to her to try to get a score for the opera, had been scathing: Bellini? Aren’t you over-reaching a bit, my dear? It needs a very mature voice to take on Bellini. In fact, Margaret had the impression she had done well with the Isoletta role. She had been four times through her main aria, and really felt it would come naturally to her, with just a little more practice. So perhaps Vinnie was right, this was her composer—her guiren, as Chinese people said, her angel. Who was he, anyway? Who had he been, this Bellini? Margaret knew nothing about the man. She resolved to look up his life in Grove first chance she got.

“Here, sweetie.” Dame Barbara was tapping her arm. The dessert trolley had arrived. “Look at this—choux pastry, made in the kitchen! They brought a pastry chef down from Dublin for us. Go on, try some.”

*

So it was, by the misty quays of a provincial Irish town, that a dreamy, rather narcissistic young Sicilian, who had died of gastroenteritis at thirty-three, alone in a country house outside Paris a century and a quarter before Margaret was born, entered into and colonized a part of her soul.

Margaret heard Bellini’s story there in Wexford, even before she had a chance to look him up in Grove. She heard it from her stage father, Il Signore di Montolino, in this instance a cubic Irish bass with a face like a half-finished clay model of a face, ruddy and shining.

After Ten Operas We Shall Be United For Ever

To supplement his poor income while studying at the Naples conservatory, Bellini engaged to give singing lessons to Maddalena Fumaroli, the daughter of a prominent judge. They fell in love. When this became known to Maddalena’s parents they banned Bellini from their house and forbade him to see their daughter.

The lovers continued to communicate in secret. After the success of his first opera, Bellini went to presidente Fumaroli and formally requested Maddalena’s hand. The judge refused, pointing out that the young man’s prospects were very little better than before, and that one successful opera did not prove Bellini capable of supporting even himself, much less a wife.

The following year Bellini’s second opera was successful. Again he applied to Maddalena’s family; again he was refused. Meeting in secret with Maddalena, Bellini swore to her that if two operas would not satisfy her parents, he would write ten.

“When I have written ten operas” (he vowed) “and attained la mia gloria, we shall be united for ever.”

At age twenty-five Bellini left Naples for Milan, where his third opera was a sensation. Soon he was famous throughout Europe. One of his friends in Naples took it upon himself to present Bellini’s suit to Maddalena’s parents a third time. Now, of course, it was accepted. When Bellini received this news, however, he was no longer enthusiastic, being entirely absorbed with his career, and feeling that he had outgrown his provincial first love. He wrote a letter of rejection to Maddalena, phrasing it as tenderly as he could. On a subsequent visit to Naples, he made no effort to see her.

Notwithstanding this rejection, Maddalena kept faith with Bellini for six years, always hoping that he would return to her. At last she died of a broken heart. Seven months after this melancholy event, Bellini’s tenth opera was premièred in Paris; and seven months after that, having written precisely those ten operas, Bellini himself died, and the lovers were indeed united for ever.

*

The first performance of La straniera—the first anywhere outside Italy, so far as anyone could determine, for twenty years—was a roaring triumph. Margaret’s solo, “Ah! se non m’ami più,” was well received with a good long spell of applause, though of course the audience saved their hands and voices for Vinnie and Dame Barbara. It was not the applause, however, that made this night memorable to Margaret, nor the glory of being on stage with two great singers, but something much stranger and more personal. It was here, this night at Wexford, that she first experienced flying.

Flying was the term she settled on much later, after three or four episodes, when the phenomenon had settled itself firmly in her mind. That first time it was too strange to name.

Margaret’s aria came in the latter part of the performance. Her character, Isoletta, has been abandoned just before her wedding, when her fiancé has fallen in love with the mysterious stranger who gives the opera its title. Alone in her room, Isoletta laments her fate. After a lovely haunting flute solo she utters a few lines of recitative, then sings the cantabile—the slow section—of the aria. It was just as she began this cantabile, or soon after, that Margaret had the flying experience.

It was not actually anything like flying. It was not anything like anything she knew. Indeed, it was not, properly speaking, an experience at all, in the sense of something that happens to oneself; for her strongest recollection of it after the event, was that she herself had ceased to exist independent of the music. There was no Margaret Han, no stage, no costume, no orchestra, no conductor. There was only the music, of which these other things were epiphenomena, mere aspects.

In spite of its strangeness, this experience—or anti-experience—was not alarming or disconcerting in any way. Margaret never at any point felt she might forget music or words, or lose control of her voice. She had never, in fact, been further from any such fear; for the music was everything, eternal and invulnerable, all around her and inside her, flexing her diaphragm and intercostals for her and causing her tongue and lips to move. The music was her, and she was it.

The applause at the end of the slow movement woke Margaret from this peculiar state of dissolution. Reality was suddenly sharp all around her. She was on the narrow stage at Wexford, slightly left of front center. In her nostrils were the familiar smells of stages everywhere: paint, mildew, dust, sweat, glue. The conductor, Dame Barbara’s husband, was bent over his score, the parting of his hair a vertical white exclamation point in the light from his lectern. The audience, such faces as she could see clearly, were happy, clapping their hands and turning their heads to speak to each other as audiences do when applauding moderately. In the wings, two comprimarios—local Irish girls confusingly (to Margaret) named Eileen and Elaine—were waiting for their cue to rush on, to tell Isoletta that her sweetheart was on his way back to the palace to beg her forgiveness and marry her after all. Margaret would then express her joy and relief in a vigorous cabaletta: Al mio sguardo un roseo velo veste il cielo … (“It seems to me that a rosy veil has clothed the sky.”) Everything was normal, crystal clear and familiar. There was no disorientation. Further back in the wings, behind the comprimarios—the audience still applauding happily—she could make out Vinnie, his back to her, gesturing with his hands to someone she could not see. It was all quite real and solid, quite mundane, and whatever had happened in the previous few minutes was falling away from her like a dream.

Margaret did not speak of this odd experience to anyone. She had no words to describe it, even to herself—it was beyond words. It had, in any case, the character of something personal, something intimate, like one’s most private thoughts. Not to be shared, not to be spoken of, even if the words could have been found.

The second performance (the festival management, determined to get as much mileage as they could from the presence of two superstars, had inveigled Vinnie and Dame Barbara into both opening and closing the festival) was filmed for one of the Irish TV stations, with perhaps a video to be made and marketed if the sound quality was good enough. The audience contained, among other notables, the Prime Minister of Ireland and his wife. When Vinnie told her this, Margaret feared that the presence of so elevated a person might make the audience stiff, as it would have in China. In fact it was the liveliest, best-spirited house she had yet sung for. They seemed ready to applaud every entrance, every arioso, every gesture.

Margaret could not put from her mind that strange interlude in the first performance. She wondered if it would happen again; and wished for it, trying her best to duplicate the mood she had been in, her precise stage position, the very thoughts in her head. Of course she couldn’t, and the effort distracted her so that she momentarily lost tempo.

It was a tiny lapse. The conductor noticed—she saw him wince—but probably no-one else had, and Margaret took the lesson at once, and gave all her concentration to the aria. This time the applause at the end of the cantabile was even longer and more enthusiastic than before, and there were actually two shouts of Brava! from the hall, the first Margaret had ever had for herself. She tried to look, to see who had given them, but she could make out nothing in the dim mass of faces beyond the footlights. Her exultation was dampened only a little by the reflection that the fun was now over and she would soon be back with Poppy and her schedules.

*

There was a party for everyone after the last performance, held in the Town Hall. All the cast were there, and the Prime Minister his exalted self, and the organizers of the festival. Margaret felt rather at a loss, not being much used to these affairs. She stood at one side by the wall, trying to look agreeable, trying to look as if she was sipping at the drink Vinnie had got for her. Vinnie did his best to look after her, but too many people wanted to be with him, speak with him, shake his hand, have photographs taken with him. He smiled at her when he caught her eye across the room, and waved once, but could hardly do more.

The Prime Minister, a courtly man with the soft, musical speech of this country, came to her with his wife and another couple. They complimented her on “Ah! se non m’ami più,” and the man who was not the Prime Minister—a tall strapping fellow with a very unIrish tan—lifted and kissed her hand, bending low over it, while his escort laughed and the Prime Minister smiled. They moved on, and Margaret returned to her pretense of sipping. She was actually afraid to take in much of the drink, though the smell of it was not disagreeable. She did not want to blush from the alcohol, to appear ridiculous in front of all these eminent people.

“I should like to hear you sing coloratura,” said a voice behind her. Turning, Margaret saw a large plump man of fifty or so, his face smooth and well-fed, his head bald but for a sort of tonsure of neat gray hair at back and sides. His voice had the same lilt as the Prime Minister’s, as the local people’s in the shops and the hotel, as the stage workers and scenery shifters.

“Oh, please tell me who you are,” pleaded Margaret. “I know the older gentleman there was the Prime Minister, but the other one only gave me his name.”

The plump man chuckled at her frankness, and extended a hand. “Colman O’Toole, of this island. And various other places. The fellow with all the teeth is prominent on the television, here and in our neighbor island. You may very well be the only person in either place who does not know him.” He laughed, his extra chins wobbling.

“Are you very important, Mr O’Toole?”

“Sure there are not many that would say so.”

From the side pocket of his suit jacket Colman O’Toole took a great thick diary in a leather case closed by two press-studded tags. The thing was a filing system all by itself, with compartments and sub-compartments, dividers and transparencies, charts, calendars, notebooks, address lists and ephemerides all momentarily present to the eye as their proprietor somewhat laboriously located the correct enclosure. From it he extracted a business card, which he handed to Margaret. Theatrical and Operatic Agency, said the card, 225 Broadway, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10002.

“The word ‘theatrical’ is of historical interest only. For some years past I have represented only singers. I wonder if I might make so bold as to ask: Do you currently have an agent at all?” Colman O’Toole laughed at his own audacity; but it was a free, merry laugh, with no sign of real embarrassment.

“No. I am part of the Royal Youth International Company. Mr Cinelli’s company, do you know? And the Prince of Wales’s, of course.”

“Why, indeed. I should have made the connection. And it is through Vinnie that you got this engagement, I take it.”

“Yes. He has been very kind to me.”

“His judgment cannot be gainsaid. You have a remarkable voice.”

“It’s very kind of you to say so. Actually I lost tempo this evening, just for a moment. I thought I would die.”

O’Toole nodded. “In the phrase ‘mi rendi il core almen.’ Don’t be losing sleep over it. There were not three people in the hall would have noticed. Other than singers, of course. But your voice has a most unusual color. Were you trained first in Chinese opera?”

“No. The first aria I ever sang in public was ‘Porgi, amor.’”

O’Toole laughed again, his several chins trembling like a stack of bean-curd. “High ambitions for a beginning singer,” he said. “Have you performed in the States?”

“No. Belgium, Germany, Austria and Italy. That’s all. And England, of course. I was in Pelléas and Mélisande at Covent Garden, the part of Mélisande herself.”

“You will make a stir over there. They are keen, the Americans. Conservative in their broad tastes, but always interested in something new or striking. Especially in New York. The capital of a nation that doesn’t exist, who was it said that now? A paddy, for sure—Mr Wilde, perhaps.”

Margaret did not quite understand this last, but she liked this pink, genial man in his rumpled suit. “Is that where you live then, Mr O’Toole? In America?”

“Mostly. In New York. But I always come to Wexford.”

“I’m not sure whether the terms of my agreement—with the company, I mean—allow me to take an agent.”

As she spoke she saw Vinnie approaching from seven o’clock behind O’Toole. Vinnie was beaming at her and nodding, she could not understand why. Seeing Margaret looking over his shoulder, the Irishman turned.

“Ah, bless us, Signor Tenore. You were on best form this evening, Vinnie. Our damp Irish air is wonderfully softening to your voice.”

The two men embraced, Vinnie winking at Margaret over the other’s shoulder. “’E is a fisher of men,” said Vinnie as they separated. “’As ’e caught you in ’is net?”

“She should sing in New York,” said O’Toole. “All the Wall Street tycoons will fling roses at her. That woman you’ve got in charge, how is it that she has never got in touch with me? Such fine singers as this, and I’ve to traipse through all the brumous bogs of Hibernia to find them.”

Vinnie looked thoughtfully at Margaret, just long enough to make her feel uncomfortable. “Per’aps you should hengage ’er, Colman. She needs a good hagent now.”

Margaret looked from one of them to the other: O’Toole nodding gently, Vinnie with a faint smile hovering on his lips. He too was nodding, very slightly, agreeing with himself about something.

“Will the company allow it? Aren’t I under contract with them?”

“I will harrange it, my Perlina. Colman is the best singers' hagent in the world. Your career is ready to progress now. This is the man you need.” Vinnie put up his hands as if to brake himself. “Supposing, of course, you yourself feel ready to face life as a hindependent singer. Many auditions—many, Perlina. And only one in ten will be successful. You will become a hexpert at auditions.”

“The dear man is right,” said Colman. “It will not be an easy life. You are losing the security of belonging to a company. Casting your bread upon the waters. If you have no funds of your own you will have to get a job to support yourself, and spend your time sprinting from work to auditions and back. I take it you are single?”

“Yes.”

“Then at least you will spare yourself the inconvenience of a divorce.” Colman laughed. “But I am crying ‘stinking fish’ here. The advantage of independence, of course, is that many opportunities will be open to you that you would not have as one of Poppy’s flock.”

“If it means I can sing soprano, yes. I feel quite ready.”

“Don’t hope for that right away. If your résumé says ‘lyric mezzo,’ you must market yourself on that basis at first, while you look for opportunities to enlarge your repertoire. Those opportunities will come, you may be sure.”

“Listen to ’im,” said Vinnie, nodding agreement. “’E knows the business better than hanybody.”

O’Toole delved once again into the encyclopedic diary, frowning till he found the place he sought.

“December Twelfth, Brooklyn Academy of Music. You are a Chinese citizen? Will there be trouble getting a visa?”

“I don’t think so. Our countries have good relations now.”

“Go to the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, or in London if you are going straight back. Find out. Call me at this number, leave a message.”

“Oh!” Margaret put her hands to her face. “It is so sudden! I feel I am losing my balance. What shall I tell Poppy?”

Now Vinnie was smiling his great Mediterranean smile. “Tell ’er you ’ave houtgrown the company. Tell ’er you will now begin your career as a world-famous coloratura soprano. No, do not tell ’er. I will tell ’er.”

*

Margaret told Mrs Trott she would be going to America, and gave notice on her room. She felt sad to be leaving Ealing—the quiet leafy streets, where you could often walk quite alone in the middle of the day, the park with its bright chattering caged birds and the pock pock of tennis balls on the courts, waking in the morning in her own pastel room to the faint clatter of kitchen noises as Mrs Trott prepared Trevora for school.

“You’re going to be a big star, I’m sure of it,” said Mrs Trott, after congratulating her. “I shall have one of those blue plaques put on the wall: MARGARET HAN LIVED HERE, 1983-4.” She laughed. “We’ll have a party for you before you go.”

The party was only a visit to a restaurant; but Mrs Trott insisted they all dress up and “make an evening of it,” as she said. Proletarian Steve went with them, aristocratic Graham having faded away discreetly sometime that summer. The incomprehensible Irish boy had left for the summer but come back in September, and stunned them all this evening by emerging from his room wearing a suit and tie. Even unhappy Trevora got into the spirit of the thing, encouraged by a pretty new dress, and they all drove off to the restaurant in Steve’s car. The restaurant was Italian—“Opera’s Italian, isn’t it?” offered Mrs Trott by way of explanation.

Steve drank too much and began squeezing Margaret’s thigh under the table. “I never really thought you was a mole,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear with a blast of Chianti fumes. “But I do think you’ve got a lovely bum.”

Margaret drank too much and flushed as red as the wine itself. Paul, the Irish boy, drank too much and was inspired to sing a sentimental Irish song in a wobbling baritone. Oddly enough Margaret found she could understand every word of the song, though Paul’s spoken English was still, after a year’s occasional acquaintance, as far from her comprehension as Old Church Slavonic. Once Paul had sung, of course everyone wanted Margaret to sing. She gave them “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, a short aria which she knew people liked to hear. Everyone in the restaurant stopped to listen, and when she had finished they all stood up and applauded, the manager coming over to kiss her on the cheek, which of course made her blush even more wildly.

Mrs Trott drank too much, too. She flushed to a degree, though nothing like as much as Margaret, and laughed a great deal, and at home afterwards in the living room of the house put a record on the gramophone. It was a current pop song, a cheerful thing sung by a woman with a narrow contralto range and a London accent very much like Mrs Trott’s own:

Didn’t we have a lovely time

The day we went to Bangor …

And Mrs Trott, still glowing from the wine, all unexpectedly began to dance, holding up her skirt at the knees, skipping and turning with an agility surprising in an overweight London office worker—head back, skirt up, laughing, laughing, intoxicated with the simple pleasure of bodily movement. Margaret was thus privileged, as all of us are half a dozen times in life, to witness a fellow human being in a moment of perfect happiness, debts and lovers forgotten, absent husband and neurotic daughter both forgotten, dancing as her ancestors must have danced on the village greens of England, in a different time long before, when music began.

*

From the Skibbereen (County Cork) Eagle, 11/5/84:

Opera: Bellini’s La straniera at the Wexford Festival
reviewed by Proinsias Ui Haigeann.

The first and last offering at this year’s Wexford Festival was Bellini’s La straniera, for the performance of which we were favored by two international stars of the first magnitude, Dame Barbara Bacon and Mr Vincenzo Cinelli.

Naturally, toute l’Irlande was present for the final performance and the festivities that followed. We were not disappointed. Dame Barbara, though now well past her magnificent prime, seems set fair to go on for ever, like the Great Wall of China. Mr Cinelli gave the impression of enjoying himself immensely. This was quite wrong for the part he was playing, which is a tragic role, but the plot of the piece was so absurd it did not matter, and Mr Cinelli succeeded in infecting the audience with his high spirits. A splendid time was had by all and Bellini, who is still too little performed—when did any major company last give us a Pirata?—had a well-deserved airing.

For this reviewer the high point of the evening was a thrilling rendering of the aria “Ah! se non m’ami più,” by a new young singer from China, Miss Margaret Han. Miss Han’s voice is large and very beautiful, as strong and clear at the ends of her range as in the middle, and wonderfully expressive, though not without some technical shortcomings (she lost tempo for an instant, but realized her fault at once and recovered deftly). She also possesses entrancing grace of posture, and a sincerity of facial expression that entirely confounds our stereotype of oriental inscrutability.

Here she caught the spirit of Bellini very precisely—that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable and redeemed by compassion, friendship and love. A marvelous interpretation, that is ringing in my ears still.

I wish Miss Han well in her career, which (she is 26 years old) can only just have begun. It is, of course, hazardous to predict the future of a new voice, however striking. Perhaps Miss Han will allow early flattery to go to her head, and neglect her voice for the pleasures of success. Perhaps she will destroy it by overwork or inappropriate roles. Perhaps she will suffer some misfortune. But if she is wise, and lucky, and has a will of iron, she will be a great singer one day.

Chapter 46

A Chance Encounter by the Ice Dragon

Solitary Pleasures Prevail over Party Spirit

Wechsel Cassidy Bruno had had a very good year indeed. Much of this had been the work of the Mergers and Acquisitions teams, putting together deals to finance various kinds of corporate buyouts and takeovers, but the other divisions had played their parts too: Financial Engineering developing and pricing the necessary securities, the traders and sales force moving them into the markets. That summer the entire graduating class of Harvard Business School had applied for jobs at Wechsel Cassidy Bruno. The whole Street knew this, of course, and WCB was riding high. The WCB Christmas party was to be their most lavish ever.

It was held in the new midtown building on Park and Fifty-Third. The two hospitality floors—forty-four and forty-five, below the senior executive floor—were given over to it. Each of the largest rooms was designated a nation, and the refreshments served there represented that nation’s cuisine. In the French room were crepes, artichokes in butter, some species of tiny fowl cooked in a clear rich gravy. The Italian room boasted cannelloni, stuffed shells, bowls of king prawns in garlic sauce, sugared pastries. The Chinese room had Peking Duck, fried dumplings, shrimp toast, and a sensational creation of tinted gelatin made to resemble a lake, with fishes, ducks, water-lilies and reeds fabricated from slices of radish, turnip and carrot, orange segments, lychees and longans, shaved threads of celery.

The windows looked out over night-time Manhattan, a myriad lights leading the eye away down the avenues, past the Empire State looming large to the south, down to the World Trade Center towers and the old financial district in the distance. It was a view sufficiently familiar to William, who often worked late into the night in his office on forty-six; but for visitors, and those back office staff who had not yet been moved from the downtown building, or who never made it up to the executive floors, it was irresistible. They stood at the windows in little bunches, pointing out landmarks to each other, or trying to squint down past the reflections in the glass to Park Avenue seven hundred feet below.

William had been all afternoon in a meeting to work out a new type of acquisition deal the firm was structuring. He still thought of himself as a bond technician, whose expertise was in designing and marketing novel varieties of securities and obligations, but his very success had made him an indispensable part of all WCB’s decision-making, and he had been drawn more and more into the Mergers and Acquisitions world, though he thought much of what the M&A people did—especially the legal arcana—utterly without any intrinsic interest.

Much of that afternoon’s meeting had dealt with legal issues, and William walked downstairs at last with Theo Falconer, M&A’s best legal mind. Theo was something of an incongruity at WCB. He was, as Jeffrey would have said (had said—Jeffrey was still with the firm, now running Arbitrage) “white shoe.” He had attended Andover and Harvard; one of his uncles had been Secretary of the Treasury; his mother’s sister was married to a low-ranking member of the British royal family; his people had a spread up on the Maine coast, and his father went sea fishing with George Bush. Notwithstanding all this he was well liked at WCB. The firm needed all the legal brains they could get for the complex deals they were now underwriting. William himself liked Theo, who treated him without any trace of either condescension or deference, and whom he had tapped—at first cautiously and with trepidation, then quite freely—for those elements of his social education that had been missing when he first rose to fortune. Theo had been invaluable in this latter role, coaching William through restaurant etiquette, forms of address, where to buy clothes, which hotel to move into.

That last had been three years previously, in what William thought of privately as his “opening-up” period after the trip to China, when he had decided to find somewhere more commodious than the Second Avenue apartment. Theo had put him in touch with real estate agents, and he had viewed places on Fifth, on Park, on West. None had appealed; they all seemed to involve a great deal of trouble in the way of furnishing, decorating, hiring help, negotiating with co-op boards. At last William, concentrating his mind on the matter, had decided to move into a hotel, where everything could be taken care of for him. Theo had suggested the Pierre. The Pierre had been amenable, had given him his own suite with private elevator and put in cables for his equipment, and William had lived there ever since.

When they reached the forty-fifth floor, Theo peeled off to the reception area.

“Expecting a guest,” he explained. “Overstone Bruys from TT. Your old boss, wasn’t he?”

“Consorting with the enemy,” said William. “No, never my boss. I’ll pass on Overstone. See you later.”

Overstone Bruys, who had turned down the Bosco when William first thought it up, had gone on to become CEO of Talmadge Tucker; but he had had little joy of the position. TT was in trouble, everybody on the Street knew. They had stayed resolutely conservative, avoiding any involvement with the new securities, staying clear of the M&A scene altogether for fear of offending their blue-chip clients. The result was that they had missed out on the biggest boom the financial markets had ever seen, and were now regarded as terminally uncompetitive.

On forty-five, everybody wanted to shake William’s hand. It took him half an hour to work his way through France and Austria (schnitzel, goulash, Sachertorte) into China. In China he was temporarily left alone to sip his cup of warm Shaoxing wine and contemplate a huge ice sculpture of a dragon, complete with scales, wings and claws. It was beautifully done, the great beast in mid-flight, jaws wide open, wings outspread. William contemplated it, sipping at his wine, wondering idly how long it would survive in the warmth of the room, whether there would not be a hazard, or at least an inconvenience, from large pieces falling off as it melted and weakened.

“Should be an ox,” said a voice behind him.

Turning to the voice, William saw a guy about his own age, short but athletic-looking, with a good tan and that rather too emphatically well-dressed look that younger Wall Streeters affected—even, nowadays, at WCB—and that Theo had taught William to take up himself: loose British suit in heavy worsted, silk tie knotted just so, white cotton soft-collared shirt, black wing-tip brogues. William thought he had seen the guy before, but couldn’t place the occasion. Jewish, for sure—he could spot that now, three times out of four. Something wild, or at least mischievous, around the eyes and mouth. Not a serious person, though obviously doing well.

“Ox? I’m sorry?”

“This coming year, eighty-five. Year of the ox, isn’t it? In the Chinese calendar.”

William reflected, by no means for the first time, on how irritating foreigners could be when trying to show a polite interest in one’s country. Year of the ox, year of the duck, year of the wombat, who could be bothered with that stuff? William knew that when his age was divisible by twelve it must be the year of the rooster—the rest he had no idea about. But with a net worth close to three hundred million dollars, he could afford unembarrassed ignorance.

“I don’t know. Is it? And if it is, it would still be inappropriate. Lunar New Year isn’t till February.”

“Isn’t it? Boy, do I feel like an idiot.”

The guy obviously felt no such thing. To judge from his general air of self-satisfaction, it was unlikely he had ever in his life felt any such thing. He had his hands in his pockets, the heavy British suit jacket pushed back, showing the extravagant pleats of his trousers and sober elastic suspenders (garish suspenders marked you as a pushy trader and were de trop at the legal and managerial levels). Now he took the right hand out and extended it, grinning up at William.

“Sorry, I’m a gate-crasher. Moskowitz, Lionel Moskowitz. M&A at Cross, Hamilton. We did the GFX deal.”

William shook hands. Wall Street shake—the one they taught in their business schools, the one Theo had taught him: firm but not too firm. Only, this one went on a second or so too long.

“William Leung. Can’t help thinking we’ve met before …”

“No” (just at the point the handshake ended). “I would have remembered.”

Implying: Though of course I wouldn’t expect you to, a man of your stature. A very subtle compliment, William thought—one he appreciated. He smiled, and repaid the compliment.

“The GFX deal was beautiful. Wish we’d had a piece of it.”

Moskowitz seemed not to have blinked, nor indeed to have moved his eyes at all, during the entire exchange. Now he had his hands back in his pockets, the grin relaxed down into a sort of amiable smirk, head just a degree or two on one side. William caught something out of the ordinary: strange, and perhaps … dangerous.

“You’re much better looking than your pictures,” said Moskowitz.

“It’s very kind of you to say so,” said William, who felt he was beginning to lose his bearings. Discomfited by the other’s steady gaze, he flicked his eyes away, up across the room, and with some relief saw Wlad Z’s advancing towards him.

“Well …” he said, to disengage.

“You take it up the ass, don’t you?” said Moskowitz.

“I’m sorry?”

“Billy boy!” said Wlad Z’s. “Want you to come and meet … Oh, sorry. Not interrupting, I hope?”

“Not at all,” said Moskowitz, and walked away, hands still in pockets.

Wlad Z’s was WCB’s tame economist. His actual name was Wladimir Przebyszczewsky, but since no-one at WCB could pronounce the last part he was known to all as Wlad Z’s. The person he wanted William to meet was an economist too, but also a journalist, a very well-placed one who did frequent leader-page articles for the Journal and had all sorts of enviable connections in Washington. This economist was an older guy, another Jew, gray-haired and stoop-shouldered with one of those long Talmudic faces. Wlad started teasing him about his latest op-ed piece, a scathing denunciation of the Merger and Acquisition boom, and the fees that were being earned from it. This was for William’s benefit. Wlad Z’s knew, of course, that William was deeply involved in the M&A business now.

“Best thing that ever happened to American business,” Wlad was saying. “All those fat-ass corporate execs are running for the exits. They know they’re overpaid, they know their companies are underperforming. Look at GFX. They had eleven corporate jets before restructuring—eleven! Now they have four, which in point of fact is still three too many. Everybody’s brother and aunt was on retainer—the place was swilling in waste. Now they’re lean and mean.”

“They fired 12,000 workers, Wlad.”

“Who will get other jobs. This is a capitalist country, Benny. We don’t do lifetime employment.”

“Wlad, you’re an economist. You forget the political dimension.”

“Politics, schmolitics; the economy’s vigorous and we’re stoking the engine …”

William could not concentrate, would not have been able to if every word that dropped from the old boy’s mouth had had a million-dollar bearer bond attached—as occasionally proved to be the case in encounters of this kind. He could not help looking up every so often, glancing round the room for Moskowitz.

He saw him twice, three times, from the side or back: talking on the edge of a group, one on one with Pete Schumacher from the government desk, laughing at something Pete was saying (holding a glass now, other hand still in his pants pocket, rocking back on his heels to laugh, the laugh carrying well over all the voices in the room), standing alone at the window looking out over the evening city. What had he said? Was it possible William had just mis-heard? Mis-heard what? What might he actually have said? You have a lot of class? You might take another glass? William didn’t believe this, even as the possibilities rose up; the guy had spoken very clearly. What did he know? How did he know?

In his early years in New York William had sometimes given in to temptation and loneliness, visiting bars he had found listed in appropriate magazines or on late-night cable channels, taking a guy home to the scruffy apartment on Second Avenue, or being taken to the other guy’s—usually in the Village, or else way uptown. It had satisfied a momentary need, but was always somewhat remote from what he really wanted, and he had never pursued any permanent attachment—though one of the guys had pestered him with phone calls for a few weeks. Once William became famous he stopped even these occasional expeditions, for fear of exposure. This had been the case in Manhattan, at any rate. In other cities, or when traveling abroad, he was seized sometimes with a sort of holiday spirit, or just overcome with longing for the thing he wanted, and so yielded. But his Wall Street life was one of endless work and perfect celibacy. So how could this Moskowitz person know that about him?

It was the mystery of the thing, rather than anything more elemental, that led him to seek out Moskowitz at last. There was a corridor leading from China to Italy, a corridor with continuous window on one side and a row of glass-walled offices on the other. In each of these offices, as part of the festivities, a fortune-teller had been installed. Each one was different: this one read cards, the next cast yarrow stalks and read from the Book of Changes, the next was a numerologist, the next a palmist. Moskowitz was standing in this corridor, gazing in at the palmist. He looked up as William approached—no trace of embarrassment—and said: “If they wanted to read my palm they’d have to shave it first.”

William did not understand this. Face to face with Moskowitz, he lost his nerve, and was going to pass right by with a nod and a smile; but Moskowitz said: “Are you ready yet?”

“Ready? Ready to do what?”

“To go back to my place.”

William laughed, completely at a loss again. “I’m sorry … I don’t … To your place, for what?”

Moskowitz shrugged, without dropping the wicked little half-smile.

“Nose candy and a butt-fuck?”

“You’re crazy.”

“I should clear seven hundred grand in bonus this year from reading people’s body language. How crazy is that?”

“You can’t read my body language. I don’t believe that. We’ve met somewhere before.”

“No. It’s your face. Written all over it. Look …” he stopped—just stopped motionless, no change of expression, as two of the palmist’s clients came out and edged past them down the corridor, talking. “Right here,” he continued, lifting up a finger to touch William on the cheek. “Mattress muncher. Fuck me till I scream. Right here.” He laughed, genuinely amused at his own wit. “I’m up in the eighties. We can take a yellow cab, probably quicker than waiting for a limo.”

*

William was never able to account for falling in love with Lionel. They were not in any way well matched. To his own reluctance and reserve, Lionel brought frankness and perfect lack of shame. To his own yearning—which he knew was all too obvious—for tenderness and commitment, Lionel responded with cynicism and promiscuity.

Lionel’s cynicism was fathomless, and colored all his speech and actions, except presumably those he depended on for his living. At first William found he had to concentrate quite intently on each remark, to figure out when Lionel was speaking seriously. But he almost never was. He knew William loved him, yet never made the slightest effort to pretend to return the feelings. His pet names for William never advanced beyond “faggot”, “Mary,” and “butthole.” When he knew William had done something to please him he thought it a joke.

From the decoration of his apartment, and a chance remark, William thought he understood that Lionel liked contemporary art. So he went to a show at MOMA one lunch time and bought a small piece by a very well-known European artist, one even he himself had heard of. After a great deal of argument, and a phone call to the very artist, they let him take it out wrapped in brown paper. He took it to the office, then round to Lionel’s that evening. Lionel was highly amused.

“What a piece of shit!” he exclaimed. “Which is the front? Like it matters.”

“Come on, Lionel. I thought you’d like it. You’ve got these abstract paintings in the hall, and that one on the wall there.”

“It was a phase I was going through, couple of years ago. Pretending to be interested in that crap. Now I couldn’t care less. Oh, hey, I’ll keep the fucking thing. But this guy blew his wad years ago, nobody buys his stuff now. Little old ladies in states beginning with ‘M,’ perhaps. How much d’you pay for it?”

“Six hundred thousand.”

“Six hundred grand? Jesus fucking Christ, we could have you turned into a woman for less than that, you dumb queer.”

Lionel’s promiscuity went along with the thing that astonished William most about him, and which he could never reconcile himself to: his sexual appetite. He seemed to be in a permanent state of arousal, and a complete stranger to performance anxiety or failure of mood. His jiba, even when not actually erect, seemed to be always swollen and somehow alert, like one of the smaller hunting animals, ready for action at a moment’s notice. On their fourth or fifth night together, at William’s apartment, after thirty minutes of vigorous congress and no more than an hour’s sleep, William woke to see Lionel getting dressed.

“I’m going out,” he said in response to William’s query.

“What for?”

“Get laid.”

“You just did.”

“Too domestic. I want some filthy and degrading sex.”

And off he went, to one of the places he liked downtown. William knew the places slightly from his own earlier explorations, and soon came to know them better from accounts Lionel gave him, frankly and unblushingly. They were bars, with the light level down to a couple of photons per square yard and back rooms where you could do anything conceivable, with your own jiba or someone else’s, without ever seeing your partner’s face. Or they were bath houses where recreational activities were limited only by one’s imagination, and veiled in steam. From Lionel William had heard the jargon of this world, a world for which he himself felt no attraction whatever: drill parties, glory holes, daisy chains, rimming and fisting. It grieved him that Lionel had a taste for this outlandishness, a taste he knew he himself could never share; and it grieved him even more to think that Lionel could not find sufficient satisfaction in his company.

In only one respect did Lionel show restraint: he never flaunted his lifestyle at work. Once their relationship was as stable as it was ever going to be, William lived in dread of the suggestion that they might go to some social function as a couple. The suggestion never came, and would, he soon perceived, have been out of character. Listening around, William discovered widespread suspicion on the Street about Lionel, but no definite conclusions. Lionel never gave them anything concrete to work with. He made a pass only when he was quite sure of his target; and such was his skill at reading people, he had (he swore) never been wrong.

“Wall Street’s not ready for it,” was all he had to say on this subject. “Give it another twenty years, we’ll be able to take boys to the Christmas party and bone ’em in the copier room. But not yet.”

Inevitably William tried to accommodate himself to Lionel’s habits. He went to a bath-house with him once, but could hardly contain his disgust. It was not only the place itself—almost his first sight of which was of a large rat scurrying across the end of the corridor they came out on after changing. (“Oh, yeah,” explained Lionel, “they feed on the paper tissue the guys leave lying round. Some people have such disgusting habits.”) Nor was it only the things that were done, not all of which Lionel had prepared him for, and some of which he found hard to believe he was seeing. It was the clientele, few of whom were not either middle-aged and shapeless or twentyish ectomorphs, and all of whom seemed to want to make friends with him, hungry eyes searching his face as they approached.

“You’re the best-looking guy in the place,” was Lionel’s explanation. “They’re lining up to drill you. Go on, have a blast. Take two at a time.”

So saying, he disappeared into the steam room.

Because there seemed no way to avoid it, William engaged what seemed to him the healthiest-looking available of those courting him and took him to one of the side rooms. After that, feeling disgusted and depressed, he went looking for Lionel; but unable to find him, and sick to his heart and stomach of the place, of the eyes beseeching him and the hands reaching out to touch him, he fled alone.

“The problem with you, Mary,” said Lionel at their next meeting, “is you’re a faggot that doesn’t like faggots. In fact, to tell the truth of the matter, you don’t really like yourself, do you?”

“I just think it’s a private thing, that should be done in private.”

“Oh, excuse me. Next time I’ll remember to put the lights out before I blow you.”

*

It was the summer that really killed the affair. Lionel owned a house on the Atlantic coast, in a place named Fire Island Pines. The first William knew of this was when Lionel called to tell him, the week before Memorial Day. He gave a complicated set of directions involving a ferry, a bus and something called a water taxi.

“It’ll be fun,” he said in conclusion. “Sun, sea, surf, sand and sodomy.”

William assumed it was to be the two of them alone for the weekend. When he arrived that Saturday afternoon, however, the house seemed to be full of young men. William thought he recognized one from the bathhouse, but the others were all strange to him.

“Sure,” said Lionel, “of course they’re all staying here. It’d be kind of dull with just the two of us, wouldn’t it? What’d we do, sit around talking about yield curves all weekend? And check out the guys we’ve got here. Easy on the eye, or what? I mean, you were right about the bath-house crowd—kind of seedy. But these guys all work out, and I guarantee there are dicks here that never quit.”

William endured it for three weekends. He learned to barbecue, though he could never see the point of it, nor enjoy the results. He mastered backgammon in half an hour, though he could never think it anything but a childish game. He failed to master Trivial Pursuit, being utterly without any background knowledge of sports, movies or popular music. He watched without participating in the obsessive tanning, the night-time dancing to dull throbbing music, and the endless drinking and snorting, both of which made him feel ill.

The only thing that gave him pleasure, other than the occasional attentions of Lionel, was sailing. The house owned a tiny sailboat with a single triangular sail. It was just big enough to accommodate two, and one of the guests took him out on the Great South Bay and showed him how to control the thing.

“Sailing’s easy,” said the boy, “just action and reaction.”

The boy was one of that great tribe of Kevins that appeared all over the English-speaking world sometime in the 1960s. He had the muscular development all Lionel’s younger house-guests had, the product of endless hours spent working out, and pleasant regular features once you got past the odd combination of sky-blue eyes and black hair. He came from a high midwestern state and had acting ambitions, but worked as a waiter in a restaurant Lionel frequented.

“Heck of a guy, that Lionel,” he said, shaking his head and grinning. “What a joker. Generous, though, I’d have to say that. How much does he make a year, d’you think? What does he do, anyway?”

William learned to sail from Kevin, paying for his instruction in the manner that seemed most apt, right out there on the Bay with the sail down, the little fiberglass hull rocking wildly as it picked up the frequency of Kevin’s stroke, action and reaction. After that William went out often on his own, quickly mastering the limited number of maneuvers the craft was capable of, finding solace and relaxation in the hiss of water along the hull, the warm breeze on his face as the little vessel skipped over the wave tops. It was bitter to him to be away from Lionel when it seemed to him they ought to be together; but the bitterness was considerably assuaged by the reflection that at least he was not being required to join in the horseplay around the pool, show himself a duffer at volleyball, or pretend to enjoy that group activity which Lionel claimed, implausibly, to be his very own and unique invention: the Lights-Out Buttfuckerama.

The crisis came the fourth weekend they went to Fire Island. Bored with the poolside scene (which on this particular day included what William was assured was a celebrity, star of a daytime TV show), William took the sailboat out into the ocean. When he got back in early evening, the house was empty. The whole party had gone off to a bar the TV star knew of. This William learned when they came back after midnight, laughing and shouting all through the house. He cornered Lionel alone, not without difficulty.

“You could have waited for me. Or at the very least left a note telling me where you were.”

“Yeah, right, I could have. And you, Mary, could make a little more effort to get with the program here. Not be such a fucking party pooper.”

“I don’t like parties. I don’t want all this stuff. I just want to be with you.”

“What you want is, you want monogamy.”

“Yes, that’s what I want. What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it is, it’s boring. Sit home watching TV? I can do that when I’m eighty-five and my wiener’s dropped off.”

“We don’t have to watch TV. I’ve got more money than we could ever spend. We could go to shows, travel the world, go into business, buy a ranch. Anything you like.”

“Listen, faggot. This is what I like. Being around good-looking guys. Boning their asses and sucking their dicks. That’s what I like. Travel the world? What, is there something different about the queers in Paris, France? They carry their schlongs at the back and their buttholes at the front? Or what?”

William left the next morning, went back to town. It was the July 4th weekend, the city stank in stifling heat. He let himself into the office and browsed his screens, but there was little activity anywhere. At last he took out his files and worked on the Teaneck deal, an attempt—its success still uncertain—to leverage control of a nationwide chain of country-clubs and health gyms by issuing high-yield securities of a type he was responsible for having invented. William worked until midnight. Then, unable to keep his concentration, he left the office and walked aimlessly for hours; across to Second Avenue, down to the U.N., back across and up through Times Square, along Broadway to Lincoln Center, everything silent and shuttered, the fountains in the plaza playing to an audience of one.

Chapter 47

Tales of Success in the Land of Opportunity

An Intimate Alliance with a Trusted Friend

Johnny Liu was doing well for himself. Though technically an illegal immigrant, with no right to earn wages, he had no problem finding work.

“At first I worked the restaurants” (Johnny Liu explained). “That’s easiest, but the pay is lousy and the hours terrible. You work lunch hour, then get kicked out in the afternoon with no time to go home and take a nap; then you’re expected to be back there in the evening and work till midnight. So I got into construction. I’ve done plumbing, electrical, drywall, everything. The construction’s all controlled by unions in New York. They’re very powerful, and they’ve raised wages so high nobody can afford to employ them, except the government. So all the private construction work is done by immigrants. It’s good money and you learn a lot. But now I’m driving a truck. Delivery, all over the area. Long Island, New Jersey, even Pennsylvania. I like this best. Set your own hours, nobody watching you.”

This was driving in from the airport in Johnny Liu’s own car which (he told Margaret) he had bought at an auction for two thousand dollars.

“America is great. You can get anything. There’s plenty of work and plenty of money. The land of opportunity!”

When he had finished boasting about himself and trying to explain the niceties of U.S. immigration policy, Johnny Liu told Margaret about Professor Shi.

“He came to New York on an H visa, sponsored by one of the music colleges. Then he got a U.S. patent for the Iron Bride. I helped him find a patent lawyer. He’s making a lot of money from it.”

“Really? How can he make money from that contraption? Are there so many singers training in the States?”

“He sells it as exercise equipment. The Americans are crazy about exercise, you know. There are health clubs everywhere. Special machines to exercise every part of your body. Professor Shi’s started his own company.”

“Wa! So ingenious! Who would have thought it of old Shi? So scholarly and eccentric—yet he can become a successful businessman!”

“You can’t judge a book by its cover, Little Sister. I always thought old Shi was much more worldly than he let on.”

“Still, he had such a good position in China. To suddenly go and start a business in America—I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“You’ll be surprised at the fellow-countrymen you meet here. College teachers? Any number of them—working in restaurants, or as children’s nurses, or domestic help. Full professors too—oh, you’ll meet them. Old Shi’s done better than most, of course.”

“Yet still. To go from the prestige and status of a college position to … to … to living off one’s wits. It seems very strange.”

“Prestige, status—yes; and a salary of, what? Four hundred yuan a month? A hundred U.S. dollars. Ts! Restaurant work here pays five dollars an hour, plus tips. You can make five or six hundred dollars a week waiting tables. Off the books, no taxes. Send half back to your family in China, they can live like emperors. That’s what people do.”

“I never saw such things in England.”

“Of course you didn’t. Because the immigration laws are so strict in England, that’s why. Here, you can come in on a student or tourist visa, and just get a job right away. Those European countries, nobody will employ you. They’re too scared of the police. I worked with a fellow-countryman who’d lived a while in England, illegal. He nearly starved before he got a U.S. visa.”

“Still I’m surprised. Professor Shi! I thought he was dedicated to the Conservatory, to his students.”

“He hated the system. Easy to see that. Anyway, he’s coming to dinner with us this evening so you’ll have the chance to ask him in person.”

Johnny drove her to the room he had found. In an exchange of letters while she was waiting for her U.S. visa, Margaret had asked Johnny Liu to get a room for her in New York, ready for when she arrived.

The room was in a place named Flushing, in a quiet residential street lined with trees. Margaret was pleased with it at once. It was a small room but clean, with a bed, a chest of drawers, and an open tube-metal clothes rack on wheels. There was a kitchen used by the whole house, with a big refrigerator and a washing machine, and a bathroom she shared with two other tenants. All the rooms in the house were let to Chinese people. Margaret’s room was slightly below ground level, down some steps from the driveway. The owner of the house was a Taiwanese woman who lived a few blocks away. She turned up as Johnny was explaining the washing machine.

“Miss Han,” said the woman, who had the squat build and coarse dark skin of a southern peasant. “Just arrived from England. Your friend told me. Welcome to America!”

Margaret thanked her, and asked about the rent.

“Last Sunday of every month, I come round. If you can’t be here that day, please let me know. My phone number on the wall there. Your friend already paid first month and deposit.” The woman snickered. Clearly she thought Johnny and Margaret had some intimate connection.

“We are old friends,” said Margaret. “Glad to help each other.”

“Right, right. We are all Chinese, we must all help each other.”

That evening Johnny took her to a seafood restaurant in a busy district nearby. Professor Shi was there already, waiting for them inside by the cash desk. He looked more bohemian than ever, wearing a beige fisherman’s smock under his jacket, his gray hair pulled back in a pony tail, a tiny gold ring in one ear. Professor Shi reached out to take her hand in both of his.

“My star pupil! I read about your appearance at Wexford. Wonderful! With Cinelli and Miss Bacon! And now you have joined Mr O’Toole’s legions. He he he he! You must let me coach you! I’ll give you a special rate.”

This remark was intended seriously, it emerged over the meal. Professor Shi’s business responsibilities were not very onerous, the paperwork all delegated to a firm of attorneys in Chinatown who specialized in handling regulations and permits for non-English-speaking businessmen. Professor Shi kept himself busy with voice coaching and work as a journeyman musician. He even had a membership card for the American Federation of Musicians, which he showed them very proudly.

“Americans think it’s very difficult to get these things. Permits, visas, certificates. We Chinese have a big advantage here: we’re used to dealing with bureaucracy. Track down the right person, wait patiently a few hours in his office, greet him with a smile and a small gift, bend the knee … We think nothing of these things. Americans haven’t the patience. I tell you, Little Han, you can get anything here! No problem!”

No problem! was said in English, the first English Margaret had ever heard Professor Shi speak. She supposed he must have learned some to find his way around here in New York. Certainly he was quite Americanized, with his pony tail and union card. Listening to Professor Shi burbling on, listening without really taking in the words now, her thoughts drifted. It seemed to her, watching him—so animated! so full of spirit and vitality!—that their life in China had been lived as if under some great pressure, as on one of those planets where the force of gravity is supposed to be a hundred times stronger than on Earth. It was a crushed life, a life lived beneath the rotting bulk of some vast dead beast. And then the human spirit, once relieved of that pressure, once it had crawled out from under that massive carcass, filled and expanded with natural energy, glowed and shone, throwing out buds and brilliant flowers.

Here in the West everything was allowed. You would never think that society could be stable with such license; but somehow it was. She watched the cars going past on the big main road outside the restaurant window where they sat. The cars all had their lights on, and the lights were reflected from the road, which was wet from rain. Stable and prosperous, with everything allowed. Really, China’s system was very backward and stupid. Impossible to make your own way without powerful friends or family. “Heaven is high, the Emperor far away …” Who had said that to her? Oh, Mustache, so many years ago in Seven Kill Stele. What had happened to Mustache?

“Little Sister, are you awake?”

“Ha? Oh, I am sorry. I was just thinking how different things are here in the West.”

Professor Shi laughed. “Everything is better here. Even the air smells sweeter. I hope I shall never go back to that gui difang.”

Devil place. Margaret was shocked to hear him say it. “I thought you were happy in your work at the Conservatory, she said. Such a good position.”

“Ts! China is a jail. I was one of the upper-class prisoners. Yes, I was a full professor. Yet still I had to koutou to those morons! Secretary Kang—do you remember him? Our great leader. Responsible for all the affairs of a music conservatory—and he couldn’t tell the front of a piano from the back! Yet we couldn’t get anything done, couldn’t buy a score, without his permission. That ridiculous frame-up of the Englishman—what was his name?—Mr Piao” (using Mr Powell’s Chinese name). “They can just come at you out of the blue like that, come at you and destroy you, any time you’re inconvenient to someone more powerful than yourself. The whole country’s like that—ignorant bureaucrats running everything, no law or rights. Just as in the old saying: ‘The rulers can burn mountains, but the common people are not allowed to light a lantern.’ It’ll never change. Power will always mean everything in China, human qualities nothing.”

Johnny Liu nodded agreement. “We are a hopeless country. Chinese people can only flourish outside their homeland.”

Margaret felt patriotism stirring feebly in her breast. She hated to hear this negative stuff about China, even from fellow-countrymen. She wanted to refute them, but could not gather her thoughts. Her eyes felt heavy.

The food was first-rate, as Johnny Liu had promised. Margaret knew this was Johnny’s good nature at work—trying to give her a warm welcome, to ease her passage to this new country. But she was jet-lagged and before she had eaten much found herself blinking to stay awake. Knowing Johnny and Professor Shi must be noticing this, she apologized several times. Johnny laughed off her apologies, but still Margaret felt bad that she had let him down, spoiled his expensive treat. The bill was more than seventy dollars. When they took her home at last she fell asleep in her clothes right there on the bed, waking in the early morning to Taiwanese pop music from a neighboring room and a nagging feeling of guilt towards Johnny Liu.

*

Colman O’Toole had a tiny office high up in a building on Broadway. It was an old building, the elevator closed by a clanging metal grille. Colman’s door was dark polished wood with a frosted-glass panel proclaiming him:

C.J. O’TOOLE
ARTISTE’S REPRESENTATIVE
THEATRICAL & OPERATIC

Colman came out from behind his desk to shake Margaret’s hand.

“Welcome to America, my dear. How do you find New York City?”

“A bit smelly,” said Margaret, who had come in from Flushing on the subway, following directions prepared for her by Johnny Liu. She was still puzzling over the “e” in “artiste.”

Colman laughed merrily, his spare chins wobbling. “’Tis little enough you’ve smelt yet! Wait until the summer!”

He sat her down and beamed at her across the desk. “Have you got a voice coach?”

“I’ve only been here a day.”

“No time to lose. You’ll be wanting to broaden your opportunities, I’m thinking, now that you’re a free agent. Break out from your mezzo past. Well, for the time being your past is what you have to trade on, dear girl, so I shall be sending you in to audition for both mezzo and soprano roles. Meanwhile you should be in the hands of a good voice coach, strengthening your top. I can recommend someone if you’d like.”

“My old music professor from Beijing is in New York. He teaches voice. I think I shall train with him.”

“Good, good, so long as he suits you. Have you got any money?”

“Not much. A few hundred dollars I saved with Royal Youth International.”

“You’ll be after needing a day job. Anything that will support you, with an employer tolerant enough to give you time off for auditions and travel.”

“Travel?”

“This city unfortunately produces more opera singers than it can consume locally. You must be ready to accept engagements out of town.”

“Oh dear. Shall I really be able to find such an understanding employer?”

Colman chuckled. “Probably not. But there are jobs aplenty in New York, and you will survive. All young singers do, somehow.”

The great gothic diary was on the desktop in front of him. Opening it now, Colman gave her details of the recital he had her booked for at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and of an audition in a place named Philadelphia.

“Auditions will be your life from now on, dear girl. Until you are sufficiently well known that the houses come looking for you.”

“I wonder if I shall ever reach that level,” sighed Margaret.

From Colman’s office she went to see Professor Shi. He lived in an airy loft on Perry Street, in a place named Greenwich Village. This was not a village at all, it was just another district of Manhattan. The main room of Professor Shi’s loft was forty feet square, lit from above by a big skylight. Its principal item of furniture was a shining new grand piano. There was a stack of very expensive-looking brushed-chrome sound equipment against one wall, and a bookcase full of CDs, sheet music, and stacked colored brochures of the Iron Bride. On the floor at one side was the apparatus itself, modified somewhat from the form Margaret was familiar with, painted white and with the padded parts done in a pleasant beige cloth instead of Class Struggle green vinyl.

Professor Shi was dressed like a landlord in an old movie: loose pants in fine blue silk, white socks and white-soled black slippers, a high-collared silk jacket with frogged buttons. This somewhat heavy attire was quite suitable for the apartment, which, for all its size and appointments, was cool.

“Better for the voice,” said Professor Shi. “The heating system here dries up the air. Come, let’s try some scales. I always loved your voice, Han Yuezhu. It will be a pleasure to hear it again.”

They went through some of the exercises Margaret remembered from the Conservatory. Professor Shi seemed pleased.

“Strong and clear,” he said, nodding approval. “But I perceive a loss of control. Have you been keeping up your exercises?”

Margaret admitted she had not. The confusion and disorientation of moving from one country to another had upset all her routines.

“You must begin at once. Go home and do them! That wall of muscle must never weaken. Then come and see me after two or three days. We will arrange a schedule. Fees are waived until you have some steady income. Now, for old times sake …”

After some poking among the shelves of sheet music he produced a piano score of “Porgi, amor” from The Marriage of Figaro, a piece he had coached her through in college. Margaret had sung it for Poppy a year before, when they were doing try-outs for Royal Youth International’s production, but had not looked at it since. It seemed much more natural to be singing “Porgi, amor” with Professor Shi than it had with Poppy. He did not even look at his own sheet music; his eyes were either on his fingering, or on her face as she rounded the difficult corners.

“Beautiful,” he said when they were done. “Your voice is maturing very fast. And your stage experience shows. You are much more natural now. As if your singing were one part of a performance, not just something done for its own sake, like acrobatics. You have the making of a great dramatic soprano.”

“Oh! if only I dared dream of it! The director of my company in England had me fixed in her mind as a lyric mezzo.”

Professor Shi seemed to think this hilarious. “Lyric mezzo, he he he he! Ha ha ha, lyric mezzo. What a waste! No, your top is firm and strong. It only needs enlarging a little. Go home and do your exercises, and leave everything else to me.”

*

Johnny Liu showed her how to find a job by looking in the Chinese newspapers. New York had several Chinese newspapers, and you could find everything you wanted in them. He had found her room in the papers, Johnny Liu told her. His own room, too.

“This is my seventh or eighth room since I came to New York,” he explained. “I keep moving, trying to find a better deal. It’s easy. You just need to know the characters they use for the different districts. Falasheng, that’s Flushing, where we are now. Jiasunhai, that’s Jackson Heights, a bit pricier. Ailinhe, that’s Elmhurst—not a good area, full of South American drug dealers, but very cheap if you’re hard up.”

So far as jobs were concerned (Johnny Liu went on), her visa allowed her to work “on the books,” so she could get any kind of job. However, working on the books you lost a third of your wages in taxes of various kinds. In Chinatown you could work off the books, no taxes, and end up with more money in your pocket.

“I’d like to find an employer who’s understanding about my taking time off. You know, for auditions and rehearsals. And my agent said I may have to travel.”

Johnny Liu laughed, shaking his head. “Forget it. No such employers. Just take the time off, say you’re sick. After a couple of times they’ll fire you, but you’ll probably get paid.”

“It seems very unscrupulous.” Margaret was nervous about the whole thing. Other than as an employee of the Royal Youth International, she had never actually had a job in the West.

“Pei! This is New York. Everybody’s playing his own game here. An hour after you’ve left, they will have forgotten all about you. There are plenty of workers for them; there are plenty of jobs for you.”

So it proved. Not much liking the idea of giving up a third of her income in taxes, Margaret took up employment as a salesgirl in a Chinese boutique on Canal Street. The Brooklyn recital, being merely a recital, needed only two rehearsals, both in the evening, and Margaret got through both rehearsals and recital without losing her job. Philadelphia, however, turned out to be a city three hours away by bus. She had to take a day off work for the audition. The boutique didn’t fire her; but with beginner’s luck she got the part and had to be away a week, living in a hotel at the expense of the company that had engaged her. It was a mezzo role, covering for Lola in Cavalleria rusticana. A cover singer is there only to fill in for a principal; but the beginner’s luck was running strong, Lola bowed out for a night with throat problems, and Margaret sang her first full-dress opera to an American audience. By the time she got back to New York the boutique had forgotten all about her. They paid her off with ill grace when she presented herself, but had got a new salesgirl already.

Colman was delighted with the Philadelphia success. “A flying start,” he called it, and before she had been back a week had four auditions lined up for her. Now Margaret was working at a Chinese fast-food restaurant on Broadway, filling up and handing out little compartmented trays of noodles, rice, moo goo gai pan. She sang Rossini’s Isabella at Amato Opera, an outfit run out of a warehouse on the lower east side by an eccentric Italian. Then she had to fly to Kansas City, halfway across the country, for a Verdi role, taking in Cleveland on the way back for an audition, so of course the fast-food job was lost. At short notice she sang Carmen for a small company out on Long Island—a role and language for which she knew she was unsuited, and which she had had no time to prepare properly, but for an audience too unsophisticated to notice. By this time she was sales assistant for a jewelry store on the Bowery, run by a Hong Kong couple who made so much money, and declared so little of it to the IRS, they had to use up all their spare time in trips to the gambling hotels in Atlantic City to spend it all before the little office back of the store silted up with bank notes.

There was a comprimario role—servant to Verdi’s Lady Macbeth—at the Performing Arts Center of a famous college in New Jersey, which led to a principal role in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at that state’s Opera Festival, so there went the jewelry job. The role was a success, though in too small a venue to be noticed much. It led to an audition in Boston, travel not paid. By the time she got back from Boston, Margaret’s bank balance stood at forty-four dollars. She found another job quickly enough, at a fabric store in Allen Street, but was beginning to wonder if she could really sustain the freelance life for long.

*

She told all this to Johnny Liu, visiting with him at his room one Saturday.

“It’s the travel that really hurts. Sometimes they will pay your fare, sometimes they won’t. But there’s always some expense involved, and of course you’re not earning anything while you’re traveling, and as often as not you’re going to lose your job. Yet I have to take advantage of these opportunities. I have to. For my career. But I just can’t afford it.”

Johnny Liu considered. “How about your other expenses?”

Margaret laughed. “What other expenses? I eat, I sleep.”

“How much do you pay Professor Shi?”

“Nothing. He knows my situation. He won’t let me. I’m embarrassed, of course. But It’s a necessity. He’s raising my range, he really is. I can reach E flat now, quite strong. And teaching me so much. He really understands my voice.”

“Wa, you’re lucky. Voice coaches here charge minimum sixty dollars an hour. So what’s your biggest expense, after travel?”

“Rent, of course. Three hundred dollars for that place.”

She was sitting in Johnny Liu’s single chair. He himself was stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. He looked up at the ceiling for a while without speaking. Then he swung round to sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, hands clasped. Looking squarely at her, he said: “I’ll make a suggestion. But maybe you won’t like it.”

“Why not? I’m willing to consider anything. You think I can get a place with lower rent?”

“Why do you need a room? Two can live cheaper than one.”

“I’m ashamed of you,” said Margaret, when the meaning had sunk in. “Making such a suggestion.” She laughed—a nervous, unnatural laugh, as she heard herself make it.

Johnny Liu did not laugh. He was very serious.

“Why not, Little Sister? We’ve known each other long enough, haven’t we? Who’s suitable to live together, if not us? It’s only for convenience, we both know that. There’s no deception involved. It would save you three hundred dollars a month. More: we’ll save on food, too.”

“I’m sure that’s not the main thing on your mind.” Again the clumsy laugh—she could not help it, it seemed.

“What’s on my mind is, I’m trying to help you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know very well what you meant. Yes, there is only one bed.” Johnny Liu patted it with his hand. “And yes, I have strong needs, just like every other man. And how about you, Yuezhu? Women also have these needs, don’t they?”

“I don’t have that need,” said Margaret. But she was thinking of what Mr Lubetsky had said. And of Johnny Liu using her personal name, which she had very rarely heard from him.

Johnny Liu shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know you have it.”

“If I don’t know, why shouldn’t I just continue not knowing? Not knowing hasn’t done me any harm.”

“You’ve never done that thing?”

“No, Elder Brother. I’ve never done it.”

“Really? How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven last month.”

Now, for the first time in the conversation, Johnny Liu smiled at her. “Twenty-seven, Little Sister? Then it’s time. You can’t fight nature, you know. It’s a need, like eating and sleeping. It’s not good to go so long without it. It will affect your yin-yang.”

“Yin-yang? Since when are you an expert on traditional medicine, Elder Brother?”

“Doesn’t everybody know these things? You have to keep your qi in balance or your health will suffer.”

“Elder Brother, you really disappoint me. I never thought I’d have to fight you off.”

“You don’t have to fight me off at all. That’s a dumb thing to say. We’re both adults, aren’t we? You can make up your own mind what to do. I’m not putting any pressure on you. How could I? I have no pressure to put. It’s just a suggestion. I can’t see that there would be anything wrong with it. We both know it’s just for convenience. It’s not as if I’m making false promises to you. How can I?” Johnny Liu spread his hands and laughed. “I have nothing to promise. Except to save you some money.”

“What if we develop strong feelings for each other?”

“Well, then I suppose we would get married.”

“But what if only one of us developed strong feelings?”

Johnny Liu laughed again. “Then I think we would have to terminate the arrangement, wouldn’t we? Come on, Little Sister. You have to take chances in life. Nothing is guaranteed. Anyway, it’s not such a big chance you’d be taking. There’s nothing at stake here. Neither of us is going to lose anything.”

“Not true. I’m going to lose something.”

“Something you should have lost before. Something you’re better of without at the age of twenty-seven.”

Margaret was thinking again of Lubetsky’s words. Of his words; and of her voice, her voice, her voice. And three hundred dollars a month. Neither she nor Johnny Liu said anything for quite a long time. Then Margaret said: “All right.”

*

The first night with Johnny Liu, Margaret thought she had made a mistake. The tongfang business was much messier and more painful than she had supposed, insofar as she had ever formed any suppositions about it at all. Johnny Liu’s jiba seemed as big and hard as a bamboo carrying-pole, and when he pushed it into her she felt as if she was being split in half. There was a lot of blood, which she had not expected. Johnny Liu did his best to soothe and reassure her, but still she felt—lying there in the dark after the mess had been dealt with, Johnny Liu sleeping beside her—that she could not go through with it again, and had better find some way to tell him this. Try as she might, however, she could not think of any way to say it that would not make her look timid and foolish.

The second night, still unable to find a way to phrase the larger rejection, she told him she still hurt, and he was sympathetic and understanding. The third night, however, he was very urgent. Lying with her back to him, she could feel his jiba big and hard, pressing insistently against her leg and bottom, and Johnny Liu began stroking her hip and breasts with his hands and murmuring her name. Margaret had been to an especially trying audition and was too tired to put up any real resistance, so she let him do it. The pain was not as bad as the first time, and there was very little blood now, and she thought she might be able to endure the arrangement after all.

After that it was much easier. It was some time before Margaret could honestly say that she enjoyed tongfang with Johnny Liu, but she no longer minded it, and living with him was certainly very agreeable and convenient. And there were times when she felt it was at least comforting to have Johnny Liu’s large, strong body next to her in the bed, even to feel his arms around her, holding her.

Outside the narrow bed, their relationship did not change to something else, as she had feared it might. He still called her Little Sister; he was still the same cheerful, confident, somewhat boastful, Johnny Liu she had always known. Only now he had a tenderness, a quiet solicitude towards her that had not been there before.

His concern for her yin-yang, for example, turned out to be quite genuine. Over dinner one evening she mooted the idea of going to a gynecologist and getting birth control pills, to save Johnny Liu the inconvenience of prophylactics. Johnny Liu shook his head firmly at this.

“Birth control pills are no good. They upset your body’s natural balance. It would have a bad effect on your voice, I’m sure.”

“But those things you use. Such a nuisance.”

“Do you hear me complaining? It’s not a problem. Don’t go putting strange chemicals into your blood for my convenience. I won’t ask that from you.”

After this conversation Margaret’s last doubts about the arrangement disappeared. They fell into a comfortable routine, taking turns at cooking and laundry, shopping together when they could, going to the Chinese movie theaters when there were a few dollars to spare. It was April when she moved in with Johnny Liu. The Boston audition was a success, and in May she went off to sing Rossini’s Cinderella in that city. After that it was summer.

*

Johnny Liu had a sure way to make money in the summer months. He told Margaret about it over breakfast one Saturday, after she came back from Boston. It was a business he had discovered by himself the previous year.

In downtown Manhattan there was a place named South Street Seaport. It was a big open pedestrian area with shops and bars, and some mooring docks for small boats. Young people from all over the city went there in the evenings to drink and meet with each other. It was not a cheap place. The young people paid four or five dollars for a single drink, and they drank until they were drunk. When they were drunk, they hardly knew where they were. That was what gave Johnny Liu the idea. He bought a big Polaroid camera and a shoulder bag to carry it in. Then he walked around South Street Seaport asking the young people if they wanted a picture taken. He asked five dollars for a picture. The Polaroid film was only ten dollars for a pack of ten, the flashbulbs six dollars for ten, so there was more than two hundred per cent clear profit.

The first time he tried it (Johnny Liu went on) he had started too early. The young people had just laughed at him and walked away. As the evening wore on, however, and the young people filled up with drink, they became more willing to have their pictures taken. By the early morning hours, when the bars closed down, the customers were so drunk they often forgot to take change. Johnny could make four hundred dollars on a busy night. It was no good if it was raining, of course. And the security guards were a problem until he’d worked on them a little. New security guards—they changed all the time—threatened to call the police on him, and he had to appeal to their sympathies, say he was a poor student from China struggling to get through college.

“Why don’t you just bribe them?” asked Margaret. “Give them a ten dollar bill.”

Johnny Liu laughed at her innocence. “You really led a sheltered life in China, Little Sister, didn’t you? Let me tell you about bribery in a situation of that sort. Yes, ten dollars will do the trick tonight. Tomorrow they’ll want twenty. Next week they’ll be asking for a cut of the profits. Better to rely on charm and tact.”

He cultivated the security guards carefully (Johnny Liu went on), always giving them a smile, always stopping for a chat. They were all black; and the good thing about black people was, they didn’t stand on rules and regulations too much, so long as they liked you. The same with Irish people. The bartenders were all Irish, and he worked them the same way. He could get as many free drinks as he wanted. Johnny Liu himself didn’t drink; but he could generally sneak the drinks out to the security guards, who were not supposed to drink. This further cemented his relationship with them.

By summer’s end that previous year everybody knew Johnny the photographer. When another Chinese with a camera turned up one evening the security guards immediately called the police to take him away. This your pitch here, Johnny. We don’t want nobody else takin’ pictures here. The young people got to know Johnny too, and sometimes came looking for him to take a picture. These special commissions were usually something disgraceful. The young boys especially liked to stand in a line facing away from him and drop their pants together, so that he could take a photograph of their bare bottoms while their girlfriends stood at one side giggling. They called this a moon shot. Once or twice, when it was very late and they were all very drunk, the girls themselves even joined in the moon shot. Americans really had no shame!

Margaret’s own employment was on a more secure footing. After coming back from Boston she had told her financial troubles to Professor Shi in considerable detail. Professor Shi had reached out his hand in some way and found her a position with the one New York employer willing to tolerate sudden absences. It was a record store on the west side in midtown, owned by a man Professor Shi had met somehow. The man was an opera lover, and not only agreed to give Margaret whatever time off she needed, but gave instruction to the store manager that she was to be allowed to play any kind of music she liked over the Classical Department’s PA system.

Now Johnny Liu was going to South Street Seaport every night if there was no rain, and had given up daytime work altogether. On Margaret’s days off they would go to Central Park together. There was a shed in the park where you could hire bicycles for five dollars an hour. Then you could ride all round the park on the roads where no cars were allowed. Margaret loved this, whirling along under the trees, in and out of the summer sunshine, feeling the wind on her face. Johnny Liu, who had not kept up his voice exercises, did not have her lung power, and after two or three circuits of the park would fall behind, calling out to her for mercy. Then they would go to the restaurant by the lake and eat ice cream, sitting at a neat white table under the parasol watching the people boating on the lake—a scene of such charm and serenity that Margaret was moved, the first time, to say without thinking: “Wa! Just like a foreign country!” Johnny Liu laughed long and helplessly at this, and went back to laugh at it in spasms for the rest of the afternoon.

The Cleveland audition got her a role in a concert performance of Aida with that city’s Opera Orchestra in August. There are few auditions in late summer, and she had no actual engagements until December. Margaret thought she would begin the new season in much the same circumstances as she had begun the last, having made no real progress at all in her career. She wondered if she might not, after all, have been better staying with Royal Youth International, with all its drawbacks; and thought that if Colman could pull off a full contract—a one-year engagement with an established company—she would accept it, even if it were in Alaska.

Then Bellini, whom Wagner called “that sweet Sicilian,” smiled down on her again.

Chapter 48

Discontent in Wealth, High Above the City

An Old Acquaintance Has Taken Poetic Advice

William found he could less and less bear to be in his suite at the Pierre. He had installed full connectivity there, with every financial screen service known to man, as well as in-house terminals for the firm’s own systems; but now the screens scrolled their contents mainly to thin air, and he worked through the long hot days of July and late into the nights at his office high over Park Avenue—which was, of course, similarly equipped. Yet even there, with nothing to distract but the miniature cars crawling silently along the avenue far below, he felt himself losing his concentration.

Something was missing in his life, and William knew all too plainly what it was. He had thought Lionel was filling the void, but could see now that that had been an illusion born of wishful thinking.

Yet what to do? It seemed absurd, to be possessed of so much wealth and yet unable to solve such a straightforward problem. He nursed his pain, staring unseeing out over the night-time city. This ache, this desperate melancholy—he knew what it was, he knew what was missing in his life—what had once been there, and now was gone. Looking out at the hundred thousand lights of the city, still alive at two a.m., he allowed himself to think of it. The light, quiet apartment in Kowloon, his math books, the kitchen all so clean, the smell of the city as you stepped outside in air-conditioning season, that characteristic Hong Kong smell—food, joss, garbage and the sea.

And of course Gordon. Gordon’s irreverent smile, his sly humor, his large strong hands on William’s naked shoulders, the beer on his breath. Gordon on late shift, lying in bed till noon, Gordon on the beach at Repulse Bay—they had ventured out a few times—lying back on the sand laughing loud and unrestrained at some joke now forgotten.

But surely this was something that could be managed. There are very few things, surely, that wealth cannot adjust. A few, perhaps, but very few. Late one night, from his eyrie there up above the city, William picked up the phone and began calling.

*

The agency he settled on was remarkably fast. Twelve days; and a call, in the middle of the night, from the Emperor hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The Thai consul was obliging, and the visa came through that afternoon, and William was on a flight that evening. He checked into the President, which the guide book rated highest, and booked a car and driver through the front desk.

It was an all-day drive from Bangkok. The clogged, raucous streets of the capital gave way to straight, level country roads bordered by fields. Then the land began to fold up in contours, and stretches of forest appeared. The road was narrower and emptier now, little country towns drowsing in the August heat. Confused by the change of time zones, and somewhat sluggish from a mild but tenacious influenza-like infection that had been dogging him for some weeks past, William himself slept, stretched out on the back seat of the limousine.

It was late afternoon when they arrived. The driver was patting him gently on the shoulder. “Sir! Sir!” The dirty brown faces of children were all around, staring at him. Every child in the town seemed to have come to see the big shining Mercedes. When William stirred and sat up they breathed a collective sigh, as if of wonder. The driver shouted at them in Thai, and they backed off a foot or two.

“This is the place?”

“Yes, Sir. Nong-khlan. Main town in this district.”

William got out of the car, the children parting in front as he advanced. The heat was not as bad here as in Bangkok, though still heavy after the air-conditioning in the car. He took off the light summer jacket he was wearing and threw it onto the back seat.

A few yards down the street was a little store or food parlor open to the sidewalk. He could see some men at the tables in the shade, looking at the car, leaning back on their chairs to look, one standing.

“Ask those men where the foreigner lives.”

The driver went off and came back. “He live on outside part of town, Sir, next river. That way.”

They drove half a mile. Here the road turned to run parallel with a small turbid river fringed with trees. On the river side of the road was a quite imposing temple, with a white stupa rising from behind a wall, and the gilded head of a large Buddha statue visible. Further along were some houses, each on its own plot of land, each surrounded by a wall. The limo pulled up outside one of these houses. Through an open-work wrought-iron gate in the wall could be seen a small courtyard or garden, shaded by a single large fig tree, with a stone table and little barrel-shaped stone seats set out. Two small boys were playing marbles on the ground. When the limo driver called to them from the gate they scampered inside calling “Por-por! Por-por!”

Gordon appeared in the door of the house as William approached the gate. He was naked from the waist up, wearing a floor-length sarong made from a single strip of maroon cloth. He was plump and brown, much heavier than William remembered, his waistline quite gone; but still unmistakably a foreigner among the Thai, familiar mats of tight-curling hair on his chest and arms still mostly dark, though now beginning to be streaked with silver.

“Guid Lord,” he said. “It’s ma sweet William.”

Gordon opened the gate and took him through a narrow hallway to the back of the house. There was a Thai woman here, some way into her thirties, William guessed, dark-skinned and starting to be plump, but pleasant-featured, and with a flowing grace of movement as she rose to greet him. She put her hands together, palms flat together in front of her as if praying like a Christian, and bowed her head over them in the gesture called sawat-di. Gordon spoke some words in Thai, and they passed on to an open verandah at the back of the house, looking down onto and across the river.

The river was brisk, up here in this hill country, swirling and churning its way down toward the plains. Gordon sat William in a wicker armchair, and took another alongside him. The woman came out with drinks for them—iced coffee made with condensed milk, in tall glass tumblers. She spoke to Gordon in Thai and made a merry little laugh, then knelt down to light a mosquito coil. The two boys who had been playing marbles were now watching from the back door of the house, and had been joined by three or four other children of various sizes and genders.

Gordon turned his head to look across at William. He laughed; then turned back to contemplate the river.

“How ever did ye find me?”

“Detective agency in Singapore. They have branches all over Southeast Asia. Don’t worry, they’re very discreet. I think there’s some kind of statute of limitations, anyway.”

“Och, I’m no worried. I’ve enough guid contacts here tae keep me out of trouble.”

“Is the lady your wife?”

“Ay, all fine and legal, and sanctified by the bonzes at yon temple there.” Gordon turned to smile at William again. “I’ve nae more tae do wi’ boys now. I’m a reformed character, William, and very well content wi’ it.”

“Are the children all yours?”

“Indeed they are. Seven, I believe—or is it eight?” Gordon laughed easily. “‘I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.’ I took my cue from the poet, ye see.”

Gordon laughed again, the same carefree laugh. He was plainly very much at ease with his circumstances. His hair was graying now at the sides, William noticed, but his face was unlined, the mouth and eyes full of humor. William asked how he lived, in this remote place.

“Och, it’s nae that remote. Did ye come up from Bangkok?”

“Yes.”

“Ye could have flown in to Chiang Mai, saved a few hours on the road. It’s only eighty miles away. Perfectly civilized, there’s an excellent English bookstore. The bus tae Bangkok is ten hours each way. How long did it take ye in yon car?”

William looked at his watch. “Six, six and a half.”

“Ay, the bus doesnae go direct. That’s how I found this town, ye know. I had someone at the terminus in Bangkok put me on an up-country bus. Then I sat on the bus for as long as I could bear. Och, it’s a filthy ride. Peasants with live chickens in sacks, a platoon of drunken soldiers throwing up in the aisle, a brace of American hippies, God rot them all. Worse than Princess Street at Hogmanay. Well, when I could stand nae more of it, I got off. It was a week before I even knew the name of the place.”

“Was that right after you left Hong Kong?”

“Ay. Well, a few weeks. Malaysia was my first choice—but the British authorities are a wee bit too present there, though the country is independent. I thought Thailand would be just the ticket, and bless me I was right. I came out here, set maself up as a teacher of English—just for cover, d’ye know, with what I brought from Hong Kong I’d no need tae work, then or ever. Pranee” (he pointed back to the house with a movement of the head) “was one of my pupils. Very bright she was, too, though I never did get much English intae her pretty head. One thing led tae another, and next thing I knew, I’d all these bairns scampering round my feet.” Gordon laughed the same easy laugh. “Difficult to move much, wi’ a tribe of kiddies.”

“But isn’t it dull here? So quiet. Nothing to do.”

“Not at all, laddie. I’m well involved wi’ the local gentry. Though I didnae get much English intae the wife, she taught me good Thai. I’d always an ear for languages, and it’s no much different from Cantonese in the sounds—and only five tones instead of seven. Alphabet’s a mean bitch: the vowel sometimes to the left of its wee consonant, sometimes to the right, sometimes above, sometimes below, sometimes on all sides at once. I clubbed it intae submission, though, and I can dash off a business letter as sweet as ye please the now. We go visiting, and we’ve one or two wee business ventures on the go, joint enterprises with our local friends. And then there’s excellent hunting up in the hills. This is the last of the cultivated land here. Northward …” Gordon waved with a hand to indicate the other side of the river, “… it’s hardwood forest all the way tae China. Ye’ve tae watch ye don’t venture into the Golden Triangle, of course. Certain roads, certain towns, ye’ll run intae someone’s private army and they’ll use ye for target practice if the spirit moves them.” Gordon chuckled. “But the boundaries are well known, and there’s plenty of room. First-class fishing, no permits or licenses required thank ye very much. Game birds, any number of varieties. Deer, hares. A sort of wild pig that cooks up very nicely, if ye like a bit of crackling. Tiger, if ye’re very lucky. I’ve a tiger-skin rug in the house I’ll show ye. Full-grown male, shot him maself in the mountains over by the Burmese border in ’78. Pranee cured the skin, she’s a very capable woman. Och, I’m quite the country gentleman.”

The lady of the house appeared with the limo driver hovering in the door behind her. William had forgotten all about him, left him outside in the car.

“He wants to know could he go and get dinner,” Gordon interpreted. “Ye’ll be staying the night wi’ us, I’ll hear no argument about it. There’s a wee hotel in the town yon driver can put up in. It’s no much, but they’ll give him a bed, a mosquito net and a whore for the night.”

William pulled from his pocket the stack of bills he had exchanged at the hotel. He peeled off a random half-dozen and gave them to the driver, who backed off bowing and gibbering in Thai, his English quite swept away by gratitude.

Gordon was chuckling quietly. “With what ye gave him,” he said when the man had left, “he could buy the whole blessed hotel. It seems ye’ve done well for yourself, sweet William.”

“Yes. In fact, I’m rich.” William gave a brief account of his success on Wall Street.

“I was quite a sensation when I first struck gold,” he concluded. “Picture on the cover of Time magazine, written up in all the papers. Someone wanted to write a book about me, but I set my lawyers on them.”

“Aye.” Gordon frowned, not altogether in earnest. “It wouldnae do to have them dig too deeply into your past.”

The frown turned to an odd smile. William’s hand was resting on the arm of his wicker chair. Gordon put his own hand on top of it for a moment, then withdrew.

“We had some happy times, sweet William, did we not?”

“Yes. Very happy. I often think of them.”

Gordon looked out across the river. Dusk was falling. Inside the house a light had gone on.

“I’m sorry I had tae leave ye like that. I hope the money was enough tae tide ye over.”

“What money? What do you mean?”

“Why, the money I left in the kitty for ye. Twelve thousand Hong Kong dollars, it was. All I had to hand when I left the flat. I was in somewhat of a hurry, d’ye understand. D’ye mean tae tell me ye didnae find it?”

“The police were there already when I got home. I had no chance to get anything. They took me away immediately.”

“What? Ye poor wee laddie! How did ye manage? Och, dinnae tell me, I dinnae wish tae hear.” Gordon covered his face with his hands.

“No, I was all right. I went to Papa Wu. He helped me find a foster family from his own clan. They were very kind to me. I wasn’t in any hardship at all.”

“Thank God for that. I had a vision of ye selling your sweet bottom on the streets of Kowloon. Ye had no recourse tae such things?”

“No, not at all.”

“For this relief much thanks.” Gordon smiled at him again. “But it was wicked of the corruption squad tae take your money, as I’m sure they did. Corruption squad!” Gordon threw back his head and laughed.

“Were you really mixed up in corruption yourself, Gordon?”

Gordon nodded. “I was taking bribes from the triads, certainly. So much the less for them tae spend on their nefarious activities. And no very much, compared tae what was going on elsewhere. A hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there. But I never took money from honest people, as many did. My conscience doesnae trouble me, laddie. There now, she’s calling us tae dinner. Come, I’ll show ye ma tiger skin.”

After the tiger skin had been admired they took dinner at two circular Chinese-style tables, each with a lazy susan in the center. Gordon and his wife sat at one table with William and two of the smallest children, the younger of whom was still in a high chair. The other children sat at the second table, the eldest keeping them in order. A woman William hadn’t seen before—a maid, Gordon explained, a relative of his wife—brought in the food and helped with the youngest children. A ceiling fan moved the heavy evening air, and opera played from the next room. The food was varied and plentiful, with a lot of hot spice. Gordon asked for news of the outside world, of which he seemed remarkably ignorant. He did not know the result of America’s 1984 election, nor of Mrs Thatcher’s trip to China and the agreement on Hong Kong.

“Havnae read a newspaper for months,” he explained. “Lost all interest, tae tell ye the truth. Unless it concerns one of our wee business ventures, there’s little I care tae know. Newspapers only get ye worked up about things ye cannae help. We’re very quiet here, and I’ve come tae like that. I’ve a radio since they put in the electricity three years ago. I suppose I could get World Service, but I’ve never bothered. What’s it tae me, things that are happening in America or Europe? I’ve nae interest at all.”

Faintly, from the temple a hundred yards away, there was the sound of a bell—a single tone, repeated a dozen times. It was followed by human voices chanting.

“‘Let the traffic of the world yield to silence and peace,’” said William in Chinese.

“Ah, that would be your man Du Fu. ‘Night in the Pavilion,’ if I’m no mistaken.”

William was impressed. “You have a terrific memory,” he said. “You still remember your Chinese.”

“Memory nothing. There’s a Chinese family in the town, run the local hardware store. I’m guid friends with them. Often go over there for a chat. They’re Chaozhou people, of course, like most of the Chinese in Thailand, but the old fellow has beautiful Mandarin, he was a colonel in Chiang Kaishek’s army. And I often read the old poems, ye know. Very calming to the mind.”

“Very suitable to your situation too.”

“Oh? In what way d’ye mean?”

“Well, you’re like a retired gentleman in old China, aren’t you? Living out in the country, studying Taoism, practicing poetry. Almost like one of those tiny figures in a Chinese painting. You know, living in a little hut up on the mountainside.”

Gordon chuckled. “I’d never considered that. But aye, there’s something in it. At a certain time of life your mind turns to such things. Of course, I’m lucky. I’ve no work tae do, no very great responsibilities. The wife’s no great burden, the wee bairns look after themselves for a’ I can see. I’ve my books, my music of course.”

“Yes. You still listen to opera.”

“Aye. The tragedy of ma life is, I cannae see it in performance. I often think I’ll take maself off to Sydney for a holiday, they’ve a beautiful opera house there. But if I did it once I should have tae do it again, and I’m no so rich I can afford such gallivantings. So all I can do is listen. It’s wonderfully soothing to the spirit, even so. I couldnae live without it. And you yourself, ma sweet boy, did I fire a wee spark of love for the opera in ye?”

“Not really. I’ve never heard any since … since you left.”

“Ye should take it up, laddie. Ye live in New York, do ye not? Why, ye’ve two first-class companies right there, and half a dozen smaller outfits. It’s food for the soul, William, and the soul needs nourishment.”

Gordon’s wife had been watching them. Now she said something in Thai, nodding her head at William.

“She says ye’re a handsome fellow,” translated Gordon. “Dinna fear, she knows nothing of what passed between us. She’s not wrong, though. Ye turned out very well, Willy boy. Are ye married yourself?”

“No.”

“Och, I hope I didnae make a bugger out of ye. Tell me it’s not so.”

William could not bear to speak the truth. “No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Then ye should get married. It’s the natural state of affairs. Ye’re well able to provide for kiddies, so it seems. Find an honest woman, no one of yon American sluts. An oriental girl would be best for you, I believe.” Gordon laughed. “Och, maybe Pranee here has a relative.” He addressed some words in Thai to his wife, who responded. They both laughed.

*

Lying in his bed waiting for sleep, listening to the faint occasional chirp of the geckos on the wall, the mosquito netting over him dimly luminous in the moonlight, William reflected on his naivety in thinking that the past could be recreated, and on the different paths he and Gordon had followed. He, to success and wealth in a great city; Gordon to tranquillity and contentment in this remote hill town. Let the traffic of the world yield to silence and peace. He himself often wished for that silence and peace—much more often, he thought now, than he had ever realized. Yet how could he ever attain it? He had gone too far in his solitary mathematical obsessions, spent too much time in front of his flickering screens, poring over his tables and charts. They had penetrated his soul, those tables, those charts. They, and the ancillary things, too: the conferences and meetings, the parties where people sought him out and flattered him, yet where he never felt at ease, the speed with which routine daily chores could be disposed of when one had an infinite supply of cash. Lionel had been right, in a way: he was hardly fit for human companionship. Party pooper.

Yet he knew he could not live Gordon’s life. Not that it wasn’t attractive to him in the abstract, to his Chinese blood. A hut on a mountainside in Taiwan, perhaps, a smiling unobtrusive wife, a gaggle of half-naked children. Hunting in the woods, listening to opera, “eating the air and drinking the dew.” But no—he would be bored to distraction. The screens, the charts, the flattery had poisoned his spirit.

Yet perhaps he might turn himself, slowly, toward that Taoist ideal. Perhaps there were small daily exercises he might do to liberate his spirit. Certainly he could go to the opera. Finding a wife should present no problem, either, though it needed to be a wise choice—not one of those keen-eyed American huntresses who sometimes plagued him at parties. Of course he could not go on living as he had been.

So William slept, schemes of self-improvement stirring restlessly in his brain. In sleep the thin chirruping of the geckos on the wall seemed to be human voices in a room, a room he knew well, and whose interior he could see in perfect detail, yet seen from above at the end of a long black tunnel, immensely far away: Gordon in his policeman’s uniform seated in front of the hi-fi, voices coming from the hi-fi, chirruping, chirruping.

*

Gordon wanted him to stay a week, but William was reluctant to spend too long away while the Teaneck deal was under negotiation. So after breakfast Gordon’s wife was dispatched to fetch the limo driver from his hotel, all the children old enough to be relied on for such a mission having gone to school. When the car arrived Gordon walked down the path with him across the garden, past the little stone table and stools, the frangipani and scarlet hibiscus, to the door in the wall. The door had been left open by Gordon’s wife, who had said her farewell with another graceful sawat-di at the house doorway, where she still stood smiling, three of the pre-school children clustered behind, peering around her simple floor-length shift.

“I wish you would come and visit me in New York,” said William. “Everything on me. I’ll fly you out first class.”

Gordon smiled, shaking his head. “It wouldnae do, laddie, ye know it too well. I’m verra well settled here the now, I’ll no be traveling any more. We’ll always be glad tae see ye, though. Remember ye can fly in to Chiang Mai nowadays, it’ll save ye a few hours on the road.”

They shook hands at the door. A trishaw—tricycle rickshaw—was passing on the street outside; cyclist and passenger both turned their heads to stare at the large shining limousine. William caught Gordon’s eyes.

“Ye were the love of my life, sweet William,” said Gordon softly.

As the limousine accelerated away along the river road, before turning off toward the center of the town and the main highway to Bangkok, William did not look back. There was no point. Blinded as his eyes were by a film of tears, he would not have been able to make out Gordon’s dwindling figure. But with his inner eye, the eye of the spirit, William saw all too clearly the horrid irretrievability of the past. The wood has been made into a boat: and the stony impossibility of ever returning to what once had been, of ever restoring or redeeming it, was a pain in his soul that would not stop, would not stop.

Chapter 49

A Great Man Regrets His Flippancy

Moon Pearl’s Guiren Brings Her a Triumph

It was in September, just before Labor Day. Margaret was in the kitchen when Colman called. The house where she and Johnny were living had only one telephone, on the landing upstairs next to the room where they lived. Johnny called her up to the phone.

“I have a terrific cover role for you,” said Colman at once, when she had identified herself.

“Cover? Terrific? Where is it, Colman?” In spite of the fluke at Philadelphia, Margaret regarded cover roles with little enthusiasm. What could be terrific about a cover role? The odds were against you getting a chance to sing.

“It’s at the Met.”

“Really? The Met? Oh! Comprimario?”

“No, principal.”

“Principal? Oh, Heaven! What role?”

“Romeo.”

“Romeo? Romeo? I don’t know … What part is that? What opera?”

“I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Bellini. It’s the Romeo and Juliet story, you know? From Shakespeare. Don’t be telling me you’ve no Shakespeare in China, now.”

“Of course we have. I know the story. Didn’t know there was an opera. But Romeo was the boy, wasn’t he?”

“It’s a pants role. Mezzo still, I’m afraid. Juliet’s the soprano. It’s a rare piece for the Met. You know how conservative they are. Bohème, Fledermaus, Cav’n’Pag. But Leo, this new musical director, he wants to do one rare piece each season, d’you see? and this season it’s Capuleti. Early Bellini is the management’s notion of ‘rare’, bless their souls. And their cover for Romeo’s gone missing, don’t ask me what happened. And Leo says he can’t find Bellini voices for love nor money, at all. Then I thought of you in Straniera at Wexford and told him about it, and he said to send you in.”

“For an audition?”

“Certainly for an audition. Now d’you think they’d be putting a singer on in front of four thousand people at fifty dollars a seat, sight unseen? Wednesday morning at ten, go in the stage entrance downstairs and ask at the security desk, they’ll tell you where to go. They generally audition in one of the rehearsal rooms, but it may be the actual auditorium, so be ready to go full throttle. If it’s the auditorium, Leo’s going to want to hear your voice fill that space, so don’t hold anything back. Give them your Isoletta and some Rossini, nothing that’s not bel canto unless they ask. If they ask, give them Mozart or early Verdi. They’ll only want to hear Italian, I’m sure.”

“Who am I covering for?”

“Dorothy.”

“Blaine?”

“To be sure. How many first-rank mezzos do we have named Dorothy?”

Dorothy Blaine was a large strong black singer from Chicago, possessed of a large strong black voice. Margaret had never actually met her, but thought, from trade gossip and from pictures she had seen, that the woman probably had the constitution of an ox.

“Does she cancel much?”

“Never been known to.”

“So there’s practically no chance that I’ll go on?”

“Practically none.” Colman gave her his merriest leprechaun laugh. “But it’s a marvelous opportunity for you anyway. You’ll audition with Leo Fischel himself, he’d not be trusting anyone else with it, I know. If you can catch his ear—sure there’s no telling what may come of it.”

Margaret thanked him and hung up. Johnny Liu had been frankly eavesdropping, standing in the door of their room with a big grin on his face.

“The Met? Principal role? Wa, Little Sister! Your big break!”

“Only if that big healthy black woman falls downstairs. And it’s a piece I don’t know at all.”

Johnny Liu laughed, clearly delighted for her. “I wonder what’ll be playing at Record Bonanza tomorrow?”

Record Bonanza was the store where Margaret worked, the one Professor Shi had found for her, in which she had PA system privileges to play any music she liked.

*

Margaret hiked over to Lincoln Center in her lunch break, but the library had no score for I Capuleti. The store next to the ticket office, she noted, had a single recording from the late sixties, with Renata Scotto as Juliet, and the pants role transposed to allow a male tenor to sing it. She did not buy this. Contrary to Johnny Liu’s guess about her choice of PA music, Margaret was a strict adherent of Professor Shi’s dictum that one should not prejudice one’s approach to a new part by listening to other people’s interpretations, at least until you had settled on your own. At Patelson’s, on her way back to the store, Margaret got a vocal score and picked up Weinstock’s biography of Bellini in a second-hand copy. She had been using “Ah! se non m’ami più” for auditions, when it seemed appropriate, but had otherwise given no further thought to the composer since Wexford, ten months before. On her way home that evening she stopped in at Barnes and Noble on Fifth to buy a small paperback edition of Romeo and Juliet, and arrived home feeling that she had equipped herself for a decently good start.

She called Professor Shi, who was thrilled.

“The audition of your life, Little Han. Mr O’Toole is a wonder. We must do a complete preparation. I am at your disposal.”

Margaret spent all her free time that holiday weekend with Professor Shi. They worked over the vocal score, singing through the whole opera. Professor Shi’s expertise in singing was entirely theoretical, but he had a house guest, an occidental boy of no more than twenty, with delicate looks and a high tenor voice, who made a fine Giulietta. Together the three of them managed a complete cast, joining their voices to make the chorus. Margaret found that the music came easily to her—she remembered thinking the same of La straniera.

“Why do people say Bellini is difficult?” she asked Professor Shi during a break for dumplings and green tea. Professor Shi made his own dumplings in steamer boxes, using skins he bought in Chinatown and a vegetarian filling of his own concoction.

“Very … individual composer,” said Professor Shi in his fractured English. They were speaking English for the benefit of the boy, who spoke no Chinese. “Hard to put in category. Bel canto? Traditionally so said. But stands one foot in romantic style. If live long life, will more, will over … what? Chaoguo.”

“Surpass.”

“Yes. Will surpass Verdi. Die too young. So unfortunate. Like Mozart same. But not so fertile Mozart. Genius not always fertile. Shallow soil sometimes fertile, deep soil often not.”

“I think it’s the most beautiful music,” said the boy, putting a hand flat against his breast to indicate the strength of his feeling. “Those long flowing lines.”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “That’s what everyone says is so difficult. But I don’t find them difficult.”

Professor Shi chuckled. “Perhaps Bellini is your guiren.”

The literal meaning of guiren is “precious one”; but in the superstitions of the Chinese it refers to a person whose fate is benevolently linked to one’s own, every encounter with whom brings good fortune.

“Then I shall have a poor career,” said Margaret, remembering Vinnie’s offer of the same theory across the dinner table talk at Wexford. “He is not much performed.”

“Oh, Miss Han, with your voice I can’t believe you will ever be short of roles!” The boy smiled at her sweetly, his adoration obviously quite sincere. Looking at the boy, Margaret thought of Baoyu. From his manner he might have been Baoyu’s younger brother, if he were Chinese.

“Miss Han will be big star,” said Professor Shi through a mouthful of dumpling. “This one her first time big chance.”

“It’s only a cover role,” said Margaret. “I probably won’t even sing.”

“You will audition for Mr Fischel. Is enough.”

*

Fischel was tall and distinguished, with a proper conductor’s mane of white hair, sharp, interrogating features, and a slight Hungarian accent. He sat beside a utilitarian tube-metal table with a middle-aged woman he had not bothered to introduce while Margaret sang “Ah! se non m’ami più.” This was to piano accompaniment in one of the Met’s rehearsal rooms.

“An interesting voice,” said Fischel when she had finished. “Have you sung much Bellini?”

“No, Sir. Only La straniera at Wexford, as Mr O’Toole told you.”

“Your top floats very well. I don’t really believe it’s your top at all.”

“That’s right. I can sing soprano, any fach. I can sing fioritura, coloratura. I have an E flat, good and strong in tenuto.”

“An E flat indeed!” Leo Fischel laughed, freely like a child, his body rocking from side to side in the chair, making the rubber-shod feet of the chair squeak on the bare floor. “An E flat! We had better put away our glassware then!”

The middle-aged woman looked embarrassed, taking off her spectacles and cleaning them somewhat too vigorously with a handkerchief.

Margaret wondered why Fischel found it so funny that she should have a high E flat. Something in her wondering communicated itself to Fischel, and he stopped laughing at once. He even apologized.

“I meant no offense. I hope to hear your E flat one day, Miss, ah …” he checked a yellow notepad on the table in front of him “… Miss Han. It’s just that mezzo thing. The mezzo who yearns to be a soprano, you know? Not one in ten will admit to being a natural-born mezzo.”

“Not so bad,” said the woman, rubbing away at her lenses. “Perhaps one in four will admit it.”

Fischel nodded. “One in four. Yes, one in four will confess to being a true-born natural mezzo. The others all want to sing Tosca.”

“Well, I can sing Tosca. I can sing ‘Vissi d’arte.’”

Leo Fischel was a man who budgeted his time with utmost care. He would not normally have wasted a full ten minutes in this way, indulging the conceits of an unknown voice. Perhaps he felt a little ashamed at having mocked Margaret’s E flat. At any rate, for this or some other, unknown, reason, he asked Margaret to sing “Vissi d’arte” then and there. There was a pause while the pianist went to fetch a score, and Margaret desperately ran through the words she had not sung since a time two and a half years before, in the thin high air of Tibet, knowing now that it must be right first time or the great man would tire of his sport. Score in place, the pianist played some introductory bars twice through. Perhaps sensing her nervousness, Leo Fischel raised his hand then dropped it to give her the entrance. Margaret sang, coming in precisely on tempo, filling the room with the lovely prayer.

When she was finished, Leo Fischel was leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, watching her face. He was obviously pleased. Still Margaret left without any certainty in her mind of having got the part, and she did not believe it until Colman called to tell her.

*

Margaret dutifully carried out all the responsibilities of a cover singer, attending all rehearsals, being fitted for wig and costume, going to the house for the first performance to be on immediate call. She watched most of the opera from the wings, murmuring the words for all the parts, which by this time she had committed to memory, in conformity with another of Professor Shi’s dictums: Try to learn the whole of an opera—every part, every note and word of every part—not just your own role. It was of course a thrill to be on stage (or just off stage) at the Metropolitan Opera House, but she wished she could have been singing, and thought herself a better actor than Dorothy Blaine, who seemed not to know what to do with her hands, nor how to rise gracefully from a sitting position.

Dorothy Blaine declined to fall downstairs however, and was as invincibly robust as she looked. Even when that fall’s epidemic of Shanghai flu hit New York she was unaffected, striding in to rehearsals looking as large and invulnerable as an outcrop of brown gneiss. Not so the soprano, who went down with the flu two days before the second performance, along with three members of the chorus, the first violinist—and then her own cover!

“I need a Giulietta,” said Leo Fischel to Margaret on the phone—(Leo Fischel! calling to the phone on the landing! in the very house where she lived!)—“and I want to know if you can do it.” This call was made at two in the morning, the night before the second performance.

“But I’m covering for Romeo.”

“I know that, child. Romeo is not the problem. Dorothy would sing her way through all the plagues of the Apocalypse. The problem is Giulietta. She’s out, and her cover is out, and the only house singer who could do it is out. And the question is: can you sing it? Or do we have to ship someone in, one of the three point five singers in the entire fucking world who knows this stinking motherfucking godforsaken opera? Listen, Margaret: do you know the part?”

“Yes. My training was, to learn all the parts of an opera, not only the part I’d be singing.”

A pause. Fischel was taking a huge gamble, Margaret knew. Not that he had much choice. A Butterfly or a Carmen—you could get someone from one of the music schools to do it. Someone? To sing the Met? You could get a dozen, any of whom would do it for nothing. But an opera like this, a little-known piece … He was right, the only people who knew it were in Italy, probably.

“Sing me the romanza,” said Fischel at last. “‘Oh quante volte.’ Not full blast, of course, just give me the words and the melody, mezza voce.”

Margaret sang it down the phone, feeling foolish. Johnny Liu had put his pants on and come to the door of their room. His face was there at the door, watching her.

“I can sing the original, if you like,” said Margaret when she had finished.

“Original?”

“Bellini took the tune from a previous opera of his, a student piece, and just changed the words.”

She heard Fischel chuckle. “No need to try so hard, young lady. You’ve got the part. And God help us both. Now listen carefully. I want you here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll go over the entire vocal score. I won’t make you sing much. The last thing we need is for you to tire your voice before tomorrow night. But Dorothy is coming in too, and I can tell you for sure she will want to sing through some of the duets with you. Not full voice, but she’ll want to get the measure of you as a partner. The unison cantilena at the end of Act One—she’ll certainly want to do that. Probably the other duets too. The romanza and aria I am ready to take on trust, and we can prompt you through the recitatives if necessary. I’ll get Janet in, she’s our most experienced prompt. Who was your répétiteur for Romeo? … Good, he’ll be there. We’ll go through stage positions and work out some signals in case you get lost. Then there’s wardrobe of course—you’re half the size of Anna. And the wig—Oh Lord. But I’ll leave you plenty of time to rest up in the afternoon.”

Johnny Liu stepped back from the door to let her back in to the bedroom. He had not put on the light. In the dim glow from the street lamps his bare chest and arms were smooth and contoured.

“It was Mr Fischel, musical director of the Met,” said Margaret to his query. “I am to sing lead soprano there tomorrow night.”

“Soprano? Lead soprano? At the Met? Ai ai ai ai ai, Little Sister! Heaven is smiling on you at last!”

“A role I have never sung, even in rehearsal,” said Margaret, and burst into tears.

Johnny Liu put his arms around her and pulled her into the bed. He held her in his arms for a long time, alternately laughing with delight at her good fortune and cooing to soothe her tears. After a long time, still wrapped in his arms, Margaret fell asleep.

*

And so Margaret became a soprano. When the shock of Mr Fischel’s request had worn off, she was perfectly confident. She knew the whole opera, every word and note, every performance and recording, everything about it. In the six weeks since the audition she had immersed herself in this opera, thinking of nothing else. Not just for the role; for the beauty of the thing, and the conviction—confirmed now by Professor Shi—that her voice was made to sing this kind of music, that the “sweet Sicilian” was, indeed, her guiren.

When she got in that morning Fischel had people all over the stage—all the stage hands and chorus members not felled by the epidemic, others she did not recognize who perhaps he had just called in off the street (“There’ll be all hell to pay with the union if he did,” said Colman, laughing, when she told him about it later)—writing out the libretto with black marker on large white sheets of card for sight-prompts he planned to place everywhere they could be seen from the stage but not the hall.

“Not necessary,” said Margaret, when she grasped what was happening. “I know the libretto, all the roles. Really, Mr Fischel. And the score. It’s all right.”

Fischel frowned skeptically at her a moment, then began leafing through his score.

“Capellio setting his men on Lorenzo, Act Two Scene Four. The words, please, just the words.”

“Qual turbamento io provo! Quale scompiglio in cor! Taci, o pietade …”

“Romeo’s last words.”

“Più non ti veggo; ah! parlami—un solo accento ancor …”

“Scena to romanza, Act One Scene Four.”

“Eccomi in lieta vesta, eccomi adorna …”

“The andante from Tebaldo’s cavatina.”

“È serbato a questo acciaro …”

“Not bad at all.” Fischel nodded approvingly. “All right, I am ready to believe you are word perfect. Now let us go through the score. Can you read music?”

Dorothy Blaine came in at ten thirty, in a foul mood, loudly cursing the missing soprano and her cover, and Fischel, and the general management, and (it seemed to Margaret) every other living creature she could think of except the humble oriental virus that was causing all their problems. Her mood was not much improved when she left an hour later, by which time she had made Margaret sing through the unison cantilena three times, once at full throat.

“She tries not to use her voice for twenty-four hours before a performance,” said Fischel when Dorothy had left. “Like a lot of other singers.”

“I’m the same myself,” said Margaret, anxious to be like all those other singers. “It’s odd she didn’t want to try the other duets, isn’t it?”

Fischel chuckled. “If she hadn’t been satisfied with the cantilena, you can be sure she would have done. Dorothy can be tough to work with, but she’s a pro. She thinks you’ll be all right, so she left well alone. And her opinion is worth three of mine. A real pro, Dorothy—a trouper.” He smiled up at Margaret from his podium. “You too, young lady.”

“Me too, what, Sir?” asked Margaret, not quite following.

“A pro.” Fischel was nodding at her, still smiling. “I feel so much better than I did at nine o’clock.”

“I’m sure we shall be all right, Sir.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear, Margaret Han. And enough with the ‘Sir’ already. ‘Maestro’ will do just fine. Oh, here comes wardrobe.”

Fischel stationed the prompts all around anyway—one in each of the wings, one in a vacant box, two in the orchestra pit. The actual prompt girl, in her space capsule at the front of the stage, was reading so loud Margaret thought the front rows must surely be distracted by her, and was pronouncing all of each word, instead of—as is usually done—only the first syllable. The stagehands with their cards, the unceasing murmur of the prompt girl, were distracting to Margaret herself—more of a distraction than a help, since she did not need them. The cards especially were a constant irritating presence in the corners of Margaret’s eyes all the time she was on stage, drawing her eyes from the conductor’s white baton, making her fear that she would lose tempo.

She did not lose tempo. Nor stumble, nor forget lines, nor come in too soon or too late. There was a moment of fear when the front scenery first parted to reveal her to the audience—such a huge hall!—but once she was engaged with the music there was no time for fear. Her character, Giulietta, was active the whole time she was on stage, except for the last scene where she had only to feign catalepsy. This made things easier; Margaret hated to be on stage for long spells when others were singing. It was easy then for one’s mind to wander and lose its place.

There was good applause for the romanza and duet, and for both sections of the aria. Good, but not tremendous. But then (Margaret consoled herself) there were many empty seats, presumably casualties of the epidemic. Still, she thought she had deserved a brava!—at least for the romanza—but none came. Then at the end, when the cast stepped out to take their bows, Leo Fischel came up from the orchestra pit, having a corded microphone handed to him as he passed the wings. He took her by the hand and brought her out in front of the others.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he addressed the audience, “our Giulietta tonight was sung by Miss Margaret Han of Peking. Miss Han stepped in at the last moment, as you can see from your program notes. At the very last moment, ladies and gentlemen—at two a.m. this morning, to be precise, when both the scheduled Giulietta and her understudy had withdrawn for reasons of health. Ladies and gentlemen, it is no small thing for a young singer to prepare herself for a major role at eighteen hours’ notice. Even more impressive: I must tell you that Miss Han is by training a mezzo-soprano, on our books as cover for Miss Blaine. Tonight was her first performance as a full soprano, though she has been training her voice in that direction for some time. I hope you will show your special appreciation, ladies and gentlemen, not only for a fine young singer, but for a consummate professional.”

Fischel turned to Margaret and bowed. Now came the Bravas!, loud and strong, from all parts of the house, and a great storm of applause. People were standing everywhere, smiling at her or calling out, clapping their hands. Margaret curtseyed, bowing low. Coming up she saw Fischel, facing her and applauding with the audience, making look-over-your-shoulder signals with his face and head. Turning, Margaret saw that all the cast was applauding—including Dorothy Blaine, a huge white grin splitting her brown face, nodding approval at her. Margaret curtseyed to the cast, then again back to the audience, and accepted an armful of flowers from the stage director, and thought she might happily die from relief and gratification right there at front center stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, age twenty-seven and a half.

Chapter 50

A Romantic Tragedy Has Weilin’s Full Attention

The Way That Can Be Spoken Of Is Not The True Way

In all his seven years in New York William had never been to the opera. He knew about it, of course. At least, he knew about the Met. The older Wall Street crowd—the MDs, the Treasurers, the white-shoe lawyers and accountants—all patronized the Met. It was a grand place, a class place: a place for people like them, people with money who wanted to show they had finer sensibilities, too. They liked to be seen there, among their own kind, among the power players of business and politics. They liked it to be known that they supported the place from their own pockets, their names printed up in the programs for all to see as “benefactors” or “donors.” They liked to breeze out of the office saying: “Must go, we’re seeing Don Giovanni, hate to miss that overture.” They liked to be heard humming a choice aria in the elevator. And—such is the civilizing power of art—whatever their original motives for going to see opera might have been, eventually they liked the music.

William had never been part of this. Though he thought of himself as perfectly respectable now, perfectly Wall Street, and believed that the other players so regarded him, he had never developed any enthusiasm for these extramural displays of wealth and culture. That kind of thing was, in any case, much more indulged in at the older firms on the Street. For all Wechsel Cassidy Bruno’s success and prestige, long-time employees still cherished their image as insurgents—lower-middle-class poachers in the hunting preserves of the gentry. In 1983, when new hires were turning up on the trading floor in British wool suits and silk ties, some of the older hands had even tried to start up a company bowling league at the Madison Square Garden lanes in a rearguard effort to maintain the white-trash ethos.

Furthermore William had never thought of himself as having any particular feeling for music. Perhaps that was a reaction; perhaps he had shut music from his mind after losing Gordon. The Ngs’ musical tastes had reached no further than Country and Western, and the stylized declamatory mannerisms of Cantonese opera. William’s life since leaving the Ngs had just been too busy. Since those evenings when Gordon had sat head back in his armchair letting the room fill up with Callas, Tebaldi, Di Stefano, Corelli, music had made no claims on William’s attention. It had ignored him, and he had returned the favor.

As soon as the Teaneck deal had been put to bed, early in December, he spoke to Theo about the opera, judging correctly that Theo would be the person most likely to know of such things.

“Why,” said Theo, “you just call up the Met and get a subscription. There are different levels of subscription—depends how much of your money you want to give ’em. Sponsor, patron, benefactor, guarantor. Be a benefactor, that’s the best thing. Guarantor’s kind of over the top. Corporations, mostly, looking to put a shine on their name, and get a tax break of course. But benefactor’s fine. You get to go to all the parties.”

“Is that what you are, a benefactor?”

“Right. Fifty grand.” Theo shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having been so vulgar as to mention the price. “It’s a great institution, great for the city, great for the country. I’m glad to do it.”

“Is there anything I need to know before I go to the opera?”

“Well, whatever opera it is you’re going to see, get a libretto and read it through. They sell librettos in the bookstore right there. Then you’ll know what’s happening. You can’t tell from the singing, even if you know the language. City Opera, they show a running translation on a screen over the stage, you could try that if you like. But it’s a barn of a place and they don’t get the big international stars. The Met’s the thing.”

“What … what’s the point of opera? I mean, what am I looking for?”

Theo laughed. “Depends what kind. Easiest is Italian. You’ve got a tenor in love with the soprano. She’s involved somehow with the bass who tries to get her away from the tenor. There’s a mezzo who helps her—a friend, a maid or something, or possibly a rival; and a baritone who helps make the plot work. If the tenor gets the soprano it’s a comedy and ends with a marriage. If not it’s a tragedy and everybody dies. There you go. The Germans are more complicated though. You know Germans. The Italians want to make you laugh or cry. The Germans want to make you think.”

“Sounds like I should start with Italian. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well, the Met’s doing I Capuleti. You could try that. It’s the Romeo and Juliet story, which I guess you probably know. Pretty straightforward. Not a long opera. Classic stand-up arias. Oh, and the soprano is a fellow-countryman of yours. Countrywoman, I should say. Came in at the last minute out of left field. Been getting good reviews.”

“Have you seen it yourself?”

“Nineteenth we’re going. If you call ’em they’ll get you in.” Theo laughed. “If you sign up as a benefactor they’ll get you in for sure. On the stage if necessary. They love those big checks.”

It was not on the stage but in Theo’s box that William was sitting when the orchestra struck up the overture to I Capuleti that December 19th. He had thought that before making any large commitment he should sample both the art form and the theater, and Theo made the necessary arrangements. The box was at stage right on the third level, and it was from there, with the occasional aid of Theo’s wife’s antique mother-of-pearl opera glasses, that he saw the assembly of the Capulets, the rejection of Romeo’s peace offer, and Juliet—Giulietta, she was named in the program—in wedding dress, pacing her apartment alone.

Giulietta’s appearance made no particular impression on William. She was Chinese, clearly, as Theo had told him. Somewhat smaller than the other singers, he thought, though since there was no-one else on stage it was difficult to be sure.

The first two minutes of the scene was a horn solo, Giulietta pacing to and fro in silence. She moved with much grace—the grace of a dancer. Then she sang some recitative, to no particular melody. William could make nothing of the words, but could appreciate the contrast between the girl’s distressful state of mind and the joyous finery of her wedding dress. Still it was only a fellow-countrywoman in heavy stage makeup, singing sad words in a strong, restrained voice. William was trying—trying consciously, and therefore failing—to recreate the sensation of long before, sitting in the apartment with Gordon listening to the voice of the goddess. It was the romanza that revealed the astonishing truth to him.

The romanza was introduced by harp, then harp and woodwinds, then solo harp again bringing in the voice. The voice! William knew at once, though it was the lower, closing notes that convinced him of what he knew but could not at first credit. By that time he had the opera glasses fixed on Giulietta’s face and yes, it was certain.

The romanza was very well received. Several calls of brava! rang out as the music closed and Giulietta sank on to her couch, head lowered, hand covering brow in an attitude of great despair. There was a long spell of applause, dying down then rising up again. As the applause went on, William thought she might rise and come down to stage front to make a curtsey; but she did not. By this time he had located the printed insert in the program notes.

Margaret Han, soprano

Born in southwest China and trained as a mezzo-soprano at the Music Conservatory of Beijing, Miss Han was a founder member of the Royal Youth International Opera Company of London, England, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. Her roles included Cherubino and Mélisande. Following her success as Isoletta in Bellini’s La straniera at the 1984 Wexford Festival she decided to pursue an independent career based in New York, and at the same time began working to lift her range so that she might take on soprano roles. Recent engagements include Lola with Philadephia Opera, Verdi’s Maddalena at Kansas City Opera, Dorabella at New Jersey Opera Festival, the title role in La Cenerentola at Boston’s Willis Center, and Amneris as a guest singer with Cleveland Opera Orchestra. Giulietta is her first major soprano role and her Met debut.

“Is there any way to meet the singers?” William asked Theo in the interval, walking the corridor behind to the bar.

“Any singer in particular?”

“The soprano. My countrywoman. It’s possible—it’s a long shot, but possible—I might know her.”

Theo laughed. “I would never have taken you for a stage-door Johnny, William.” He had to explain this, it was an idiom William did not know.

“I’m just interested to meet her. We both come from the same part of China. Seem to be similar ages. And here we are, both in New York. Like to compare notes.”

“I don’t know. You could have flowers sent to her dressing room, I suppose. Or perhaps you really could hang around the stage door. I’m not at all sure how these things work. You need a top hat and a cloak, I think, and a silver-topped cane.”

“I think the management rather frown on that sort of thing, actually,” said Theo’s wife. William thought she herself was mentally frowning at it. “These singers really are high-strung, you know. They don’t like any kind of harassment.”

“There’s the Christmas party, of course,” said Theo. “They always have a bash for the benefactors at Christmas. This coming Sunday, in fact. I can probably get you in. Pony up the fifty thou, they’ll send a coach and four to fetch you.”

“Do the singers go?”

“If they can get ’em to. Anything to pull in the punters. But the big names, you know, they often have to be somewhere else for an engagement. And some hate to use their voices too much, specially in rooms where people are smoking. And some just don’t like partying with a bunch of Manhattan socialites.” Theo laughed, not at all self-consciously. “It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. If you’re not au courant with who’s boinking whom on Fifth and Fifty-seventh you don’t have a lot to tell them.”

“Theo! Really.” Now Theo’s wife actually was frowning.

*

The party was held in a hotel named The Marque up on the West Side, on the Sunday evening before Christmas. Coming down the half-dozen steps into the main room, William saw her at once. Her face, now without stage makeup, was smooth and round, rounder than he remembered. She had a good figure, he noted; full now of course, yet not the barrel-chested bulkiness one might have thought if one had only heard her singing, but the wiry equine strength he remembered from the very first, from the pool in Seven Kill Stele, her clavicles smooth and perfect emerging from the flowered bathing costume, her hand gripping his arm. Now those clavicles were in plain sight above the top of a low-cut sheath dress in some shiny black material enhanced with gold.

She—Margaret, that was what she called herself in English—was standing in a group of five, herself and two couples, just to the side of the inevitable ice sculpture, and was explaining something, something about the voice, placing her hand horizontal and palm up level with her chin, then raising it slowly, as if by an effort. Meanwhile the large, mobile eyes (how many years? twenty? nineteen!) were flicking here and there, unable to stay long on her listeners. By the instinct we have of being watched, the eyes picked out his, and held them for a moment, then went back to her companions. No recognition.

William walked away to Theo’s group, a Wall Street crowd who, when William arrived, were all talking about Talmadge Tucker. It had been announced that Friday that TT was giving up the ghost. Overstone Bruys had been forced to engineer a sale to Freeholders, a big insurance company. “Poor Overstone,” someone was saying. “Arrived at the banquet just as they were serving coffee.” Everybody laughed. Theo introduced the only person William did not know, an old dry woman of great elegance with an ancient name and a fortune in real estate. All the time William was checking on Margaret, waiting for her to be alone, until for a moment she was. He excused himself abruptly to Theo’s people and walked over.

“I enjoyed your performance last Thursday very much,” he said in Mandarin.

She smiled up at him, a little warily—a pretty woman too often approached by strange men bearing flattery. Still no recognition at all. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t place your accent. Cantonese?”

“Not so far south,” said William. “Tell me: have you ever sung Madame Butterfly?”

He said the name of the opera in Chinese—Hudie Furen—which would not normally be done among English-speaking fellow-countrymen, and which puzzled her for a second or two.

“Hudie Furen? What? Oh, I see.” A nervous laugh, with something in it from deep in the chest, just as he remembered. That ancient thrill again. “No, I never have. It’s a soprano role, and I’ve only just established myself as a soprano. Also it’s considered rather a heavy role, for mature singers, and I’m still a youngster by opera standards.” The eyes moving from side to side more than on him now, looking to escape from this odd boor who would not introduce himself.

“But you have danced the part of a butterfly. That I know.”

She furrowed her brows. He had her full attention now. “Yes,” she said, “I used to be a dancer, it’s true. But a butterfly? I don’t think …”

“The part of Zhu Yingtai. In the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the butterfly lovers. In the hollow behind the bamboo thicket on the Chengdu road.”

Now there was something he could savor! The large, beautiful eyes widening, widening, like the eyes of the dogs in the Andersen story—like saucers, like mill wheels, like the Round Tower. Behind them, slow recognition, recovery of things long buried. The fevered daytime dreams of pubescence—an iridescent butterfly, golden and naked; a mossy plinth; blood dripping to the floor from a bench; all connected somehow. Shouting voices on the basketball court under artificial light: DENOUNCE! DENOUNCE! Scattered loquats on dry brown earth. And further back, something long forgotten—yes, she had reached it—dancing Zhu Yingtai in the hollow among the bamboo. Margaret blinked very fast twice, and a hand flew up to cover her mouth with the tips of its fingers.

“Oh! So long ago! Liang … Liang … I can’t remember the given name.”

William laughed. “Then perhaps you had better call me Liang Shanbo.”

“Don’t be silly.”

The rebuke was pleasing to William. It was just as she had been in ancient times: somewhat sharp, bossy, always ready with a reproof. One of Nature’s schoolmistresses. It was oddly satisfying that after so many years, so very many years, things should be just as they were. An affirmation of the fundamental stability of the universe, perhaps—like the sun rising every day. But now that she had remembered the hollow behind the bamboo grove, all the initial wariness came back in triple force. She looked as if she were ready to bolt.

“In this place I am called William Leung,” said William, switching into English to complete the topic. “L-E-U-N-G. After I left …” (he could not bring himself to name the town) “… the southwest, I went to Hong Kong. I had to speak Cantonese, and my name went into Cantonese too, and I guess my accent got corrupted.”

“Weilin. Now I remember. I guess that’s where you got ‘William’ from.”

“Yes. How about ‘Margaret’?”

“One of the foreign teachers at Beijing Conservatory. It means ‘pearl,’ you see?”

“Ah-ha.” Quite deliberately William said nothing more, just waited her out. He could not be quite sure, watching her, that she recalled what she had done; but clearly she knew there was something unpleasant separating them. She was very uncomfortable, turning her head this way and that in desperation, anything not to meet his eyes now.

While William was still waiting, Margaret’s prayers were answered. A person William did not know, a Jewish guy of fifty or so, close-cropped gray hair and beard framing a tanned face, joined them. He made a small bow to Margaret, shook her offered hand, and said: “Your voice is very beautiful, Miss Han. I hope we shall hear much more of it.” Margaret thanked him, relieved but still distracted, her eyes not knowing where to go. The Jew turned to William, whom of course he recognized, and shook hands, saying some words of congratulation about the Teaneck deal, which he seemed to know all about. William nodded, making to step away; then, in the moment when the Jew turned his attention back to Margaret, said loudly and clearly in Mandarin: “You killed my father.”

Margaret looked as if she had been shot in the back. Eyes, yes, like mill-wheels, staring right at him now.

“I’m sorry?” The Jew did not seem to grasp that William had been speaking Chinese. He looked at William, then at Margaret. Seeing Margaret’s face, all his cocktail-party affability dropped away. By instinct he reached out a hand to take her elbow. “Are you all right, Miss Han?” And glanced back to William—something accusing in his bafflement, knight riding to a lady’s rescue.

Again in Chinese: “You and your accursed half brother, you killed my father.”

This time the guy grasped that it was not English. He frowned at the display of bad manners. William turned and walked away, not looking back. He stood with Theo’s group a while, taking in nothing. When he looked around Margaret had gone. He did a comprehensive scan: definitely gone, the Jewish guy too. However had she got out of Qinghai Province?

*

The man who took her home was named Jake Robbins. He was a producer; though a producer of what, Margaret could not have said. He had told her about himself in great detail on the drive to Flushing, and asked her questions about herself to which she gave answers; but so distracted was she by the encounter at the party that very few of their words stayed in her mind.

Jake thought she had been insulted somehow, by those words in her language he had not understood. Chivalrously he offered to seek some satisfaction for her: to go back and tell the guy off, extract some kind of apology from him. But Margaret said no, it wasn’t important, she had gone to the party against her better judgment anyway, having suffered all day from a migraine headache, and there had been a small disagreement about a business matter, and she had begun to feel faint. She thanked the man named Jake and firmly declined his offer to see her into the house.

Johnny Liu was out visiting some Shanghai people who had recently arrived in New York. The room was empty. Margaret went back downstairs to the kitchen to make tea. She brought the tea back up to the room, together with some dried jujubes in a cellophane packet. So his father had died. She honestly had not known that, didn’t remember hearing it. She remembered him being beaten—yes, they had beaten him, and in the melee someone had stepped on her and scraped the skin from her leg. That was all she could recall. But his father had died; and he remembered; and he still bore the resentment.

Margaret changed into pajamas, taking out her earrings, carefully hanging up the dress, which had cost four hundred dollars. A bargain at that; it was the kind of dress you might pay twelve hundred dollars for in Lord and Taylor or Saks. But Johnny Liu knew rag trade middlemen in Chinatown, and had got it for her on a deal. Soon he would be home.

She took off her makeup, then lay down on the bed, thinking of the strange incident, and of Liang Weilin. Yes, they had been friends, though how it had come about she could not recall. He had liked her a lot, she knew. Perhaps he had been in love with her, in a juvenile way. She had liked him, too. He had been very handsome, she remembered thinking. Athletic, too—a good swimmer. And with a kind of wry thoughtfulness she had liked very much. He had used to walk home along the road past the barracks, and she would make a point of playing there just at the time he came by, and they would walk together up to the college, then buy loquats at the little store set in the college wall. After that they would walk along the Chengdu Road to a bamboo grove. In the grove they sat and talked, or sometimes played; though what they talked about, or what games were played, were lost to her. Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, he had mentioned that. Perhaps he had told her that story; or perhaps she had told it to him. What did it matter, really? Childish things, so long ago. Yet she could not stop thinking about it. The more she thought about it, the more details emerged from the fog.

This guy—William, he called himself—was he an enemy? Margaret had never thought of herself as having enemies. Secretary Ma, perhaps—but he had disliked her on general and unjustified grounds, and not from any personal grievance. The man named Jake, who had taken her home in his car, had said something about William being immensely rich. “Big player on Wall Street,” or words to that effect. If he was really her enemy—if he considered himself as such—could he harm her career? Now that her career had turned for the better?

Anna Argoleto, the soprano who should have been singing Giulietta, had advanced from influenza to pleurisy and was out of action for the rest of the New York season. Her original cover had got her voice back within the week; but by that time Margaret had had her little triumph, and Colman had parlayed it into a full engagement, and she had sung Giulietta twice more, the last time flying through the romanza in that same peculiar abstracted state of being, or non-being, she had experienced at Wexford, and she was to sing it twice more again in January.

The reviews had been good, if not ecstatic. Much better than the reviews—which (Colman said) would soon be forgotten—was the way she had stepped in to save the production. With one stroke Margaret had established a solid reputation as a trouper, a pro—the kind of reputation that could take years to build, and that would stand her in very good stead with managers and conductors everywhere. The people who ran the world’s opera houses lived on their nerves (Colman had further explained), and next to a great voice they most loved a reliable singer who could walk out and take a role with minimal preparation, who could get them out of the holes they so often found themselves in. Yes, Margaret could feel that her career had taken off at last.

And now, this William person, coming out of nowhere to be her enemy. Was this the counter-blow she always half-expected? The demon’s revenge, the rock that came tied to every piece of good fortune she had ever had? perhaps she would talk to Johnny Liu about it. Perhaps he would have some idea about how to proceed.

*

It was not to Johnny Liu that she spoke, however. She fell asleep before he came home, and next day, reflecting on the matter over breakfast while Johnny slept, she thought he might not be the right person to go to for advice. His own family had suffered badly in the Cultural Revolution, and Margaret did not feel she wanted to reveal herself as having been among the persecutors of that time. Then Colman called her before Johnny woke, and she went to Manhattan to see him about some engagements he was setting up for her. He was very busy on her behalf now, and spoke of San Francisco, Sydney, Vienna, Milan.

“La Scala, Milan?” [Naming the oldest and most famous of all opera houses.]

“Perhaps. It’s not certain. Fingers crossed, young lady, fingers crossed. You have to sing the European houses, you know. Rite of passage. And now we’re in a position to set up a really good tour for you. It’ll be hard work, several new roles to learn, but a wonderful boost for your career.”

Margaret had half-thought she might ask Colman’s advice about this enemy, but the thought of singing at La Scala put it out of her mind. It was to Professor Shi that she unburdened herself at last, that same afternoon.

“The name is familiar to me,” said Professor Shi, when she had explained about William. “He is often mentioned in the local Chinese press. I had the impression he was Cantonese, perhaps from seeing his name in its American spelling somewhere. Or perhaps I have heard it spoken in some context. I never thought you might be acquainted with him.”

“It was a childhood friendship,” said Margaret. “I had forgotten all about it.”

“But he had not.” Professor Shi chuckled. “What different things we can mean to each other! A chance acquaintance, forgotten in an instance. A glance across a room—a face seen, a voice heard, then lost in the chaos of life. Yet the other party, all unknown to us, is pierced to the soul, his life changed utterly. Is there no balance, no reciprocity in life? Of course, there is, there always is; only sometimes it is too deep for us to fathom. Ah! ‘The Way that can be spoken of is not the true Way.’” [Quoting the Morality Classic.]

“That’s all very well.” Margaret had not much patience with her teacher’s philosophizing. “In the meantime, what am I to do? I don’t need enemies at this point in my career. Not an enemy who is one of the richest men in America. Who knows what he might do? Perhaps he will pay the houses not to engage me.”

“He he he he he!” Professor Shi laughed his odd, effeminate laugh. “That is how it would be done in China, to be sure. But I don’t think that kind of thing happens much here. Americans have strong principles. Still, you should try to make peace with this person. Other considerations aside, this is, as you have said, a critical point in your career. Based on your recent success, you will soon have a full schedule of engagements all over the world. You will need all your strength and all your concentration to acquire new roles and keep your voice at its best. You do not need worries and distractions of this sort.”

“Then what do you think I should do?”

“Why, explain yourself to him. Persuade him to see your point of view. You were only a child. A child is not culpable in law.”

Margaret put a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I should be afraid to meet him again. He scares me. You should have heard the way he said it. You killed my father. Such feeling! It pierced me like an ice-cold sword! If I could pack that much feeling into my voice I should be another Callas.”

“Then write him a letter. You have a good education, you know how to express yourself in writing.”

“Even that … I’m really afraid of this guy.”

Professor Shi leaned forward and patted her knee. “Were you not afraid when you first stepped out in front of an audience, every one of them ready to judge and condemn your merest error? Were you not afraid last month when you stood on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House to perform a role you had never rehearsed? Nothing can be accomplished if we are inhibited by fear, Yuezhu.”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “Yes, of course. I must write to him. But where does he live? How can I find out?”

“I shall make some inquiries. Please, Little Han, leave it to me.”

Chapter 51

From the Top of Mount Tai the World Looks Small

Some Illusions The Mathematical Temperament Is Prone To

Margaret did not, after all, write to William. She took Professor Shi’s words to heart, gathered up her courage, and went to seek him.

This was some days later. The day she spoke with Professor Shi was a Monday, December 23rd. Two days later was Christmas Day. Everything was closed, there was nothing to do. She went with Johnny Liu to a seafood restaurant. Several dozen fellow-countrymen had had the same idea, and Margaret and Johnny had to wait an hour to be seated. Thursday she went in to the Met for some full-voice practice, her next performance being still ten days away. The pianist did not show, however, and after vocalizing for an hour Margaret whiled away the rest of the afternoon reading through a score of Nabucco, an opera Colman had mentioned as a possible engagement for her in the spring. On Friday she went to see Professor Shi for a lesson. Professor Shi told her about William right away.

“He lives in the Pierre Hotel. Can you believe it? The money he must have! He has his own suite there and pays a monthly rate. Here, that’s the suite number.”

“In a hotel?” Margaret laughed. “If he’s really so rich, why doesn’t he get a big apartment on Park Avenue?”

“Oh, he’s very eccentric. He has a name for that. Besides, I can see his point. We Chinese, your generation and mine, we are not used to material possessions. An apartment, a house, a car—what do these things mean to us? We have no experience of managing them. They are a nuisance, consumers of one’s time. Why not just hire them as you need them, then discard them without a thought? So much simpler! Perhaps if I had the wealth our Mr Liang has I should do as he has done.”

It was the fact of William’s living in a hotel that led Margaret to call on him. The grand apartment buildings on Park and Fifth intimidated her, with their awnings and bare gleaming lobbies and forbidding, military-looking doormen; but a hotel was a public place. You could just walk in and speak to a desk clerk, with people passing to and fro all around. So that is what she did, in the morning of New Year’s Day 1986—a public holiday, Johnny Liu had told her, when the Stock Exchange and all the banks would be closed.

It was easier than she had supposed. The desk clerk spoke her name into a telephone, listened for some time, then hung up the phone and told her to wait in the lobby. Margaret waited, leafing through some fashion magazines. After twenty minutes a squat, tough-looking fellow-countryman, bulging out of an ill-made suit, approached and asked her, in Chinese with a thick Shandong accent, to confirm her name.

“Yes. I am Han Yuezhu.”

“Mr Liang will see you now. Please follow me.”

They rode up in an elevator which the Shandong guy had to open with a key. Along a corridor, its thick maroon carpet making Margaret think of Buckingham Palace—though this place was much better maintained. A door. Shandong addressed a speaker phone beside the door.

“Boss? The lady is here, Miss Han Yuezhu.”

There was no reply, but after a few seconds some mechanism in the door made a clicking sound and Shandong pushed it open. From her fairly extensive experience of hotels, Margaret had supposed the door would let right into the room, as at Ramada or Holiday Inn. Instead it opened into a wood-paneled lobby, with a coat-rack and an umbrella-stand and two doors leading off. William was standing in the nearer doorway. He was wearing baggy jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and cheap rubber flip-flops of the kind that can be bought in convenience stores for sixty-nine cents, right and left yoked with a loop of tough plastic to be severed and discarded before you could wear the things.

“Han Yuezhu, welcome to my home. Thank you,” (to the Shandong man, who bowed out back into the corridor).

Margaret followed him into a large light room, with windows looking out over Central Park, across the whole width of Central Park.

“Wa!” she said. “Beautiful view!”

“‘From the top of Mount Tai, the world looks small,’” said William, quoting a classical tag.

The room was much larger than anything Margaret had experienced on her trips out of New York, but you would not have said it was opulent. The furniture was for the most part comfortable-looking and rather old-fashioned: a big, heavy sofa with matching armchairs, an elaborate sound system in a polished wood cabinet, a table also in polished wood, with straight-backed chairs to match. There was a grand marble fireplace, its orifice hidden behind a fine-looking wood-framed tapestry screen. A large-screen TV stood in one corner. Two doors led off into other rooms, in addition to the one she had entered from.

Margaret seated herself in one of the armchairs, William on the sofa. His manner did not seem hostile, though he had not smiled. He leaned back, contemplating her without expression. Margaret noticed now, as she had not before, how very handsome he was: well-proportioned features and smooth skin, the body slender but capable-looking, athletic even—he had been an enthusiastic swimmer, she recalled.

“Is that guy your bodyguard?” she asked, for something to say.

His eyes steady on her, William seemed not to hear for a second or two. Then he blinked and made a quick little smile.

“One of them. I have several. He’s from Shandong.”

“Yes, he has the accent. Looks it, too. Very suitable for a bodyguard.” [Shandong people are proverbially pugnacious.]

“I’m not crazy about it, but the hotel insisted. John Lennon was shot just a short distance from here. Do you know this name, John Lennon?” They were speaking Chinese, and he had used the Chinese name, Yuehan Lainong. He seemed to have a rooted aversion to putting foreign names into his Chinese sentences in their native forms, as most modern people did without thinking.

“Yes, I know.”

“And there have been some kidnappings. So it’s probably for the best.”

“I’ve heard that you are terrifically rich.”

“Yes, very. Net worth close to half a billion, probably. I’m really not sure. After a hundred million it stops meaning anything. Certainly I could buy candy for everybody in China.”

His face flickered in an odd, secretive half-smile, as if this were some inner joke he did not expect her to understand. Margaret was reeling from the numerals he had used. The Chinese language counts off its zeros by fours; Weilin’s “close to half a billion” had actually been expressed as “four or five yi,” yi being the word for ten thousand ten thousands. This number was normally heard only in reference to populations, China’s being of course ten yi. It inevitably brought to mind the vastness of the homeland and the teeming density of her people, and in Margaret’s not-particularly-numerate mind was a near synonym for “infinity.” Yes, he could buy candy for all of them!

“So much money! I’m surprised you live in a hotel. You could have your own apartment, here on Fifth. Or a big estate in Connecticut.”

William smiled, quite relaxed and amiable. Margaret wondered if he was playing some kind of trick on her—storing up his resentment for the right moment, to unleash it on her again, to stun and terrify her with it. If so, he was a great actor. No, it could not be.

“Too much trouble,” William was saying. “Yes, I looked at a lot of apartments here in New York. But you have to hire people to cook and clean, get furniture—a lot of things I just didn’t want to be bothered with. So I decided a hotel would suit me best. Here everything is taken care of for me. Except the bodyguards, I hire them. Hotels—even a high-class hotel like this one—are public places, they felt I needed the extra security. But overall it’s a great simplification. I have the mathematical personality, Yuezhu—I love simplicity. Einstein had all the cuffs cut off his shirts, you know. He said it was a waste of time doing up the buttons. I think I shall be like that when I’m older. But it wouldn’t do on Wall Street.”

“With half a billion, I should think you could pay to have someone come and do up your buttons for you.”

This brought out a real smile; and in the smile, she saw her playmate of so many years before, coming up the road toward the barracks, carrying his book-bag, his eyes scanning for her. Seeing that, she remembered why she had come, and dropped her eyes in embarrassment.

William seemed not to notice her discomfort. “I really have quite the wrong personality to be so rich,” he said. “Not a shopper at all. My colleagues are always telling me I should buy a yacht, or a plane, or a casino, or something else. I think about it. A yacht—yes, I might like that. But it all seems like so much trouble.”

He smiled again—the same smile, evoking those same memories.

“As it is, I don’t even own a car. I used to. My colleagues insisted, and made such a joke of it, I gave in to them and bought something called a Lamborghini, a car they recommended. But I couldn’t get the hang of driving. I smashed it up. There were interviews with the police, and insurance reports, and stories in the newspapers, and all kinds of unpleasantness. So I gave up on owning cars. Anyway, I find I can hire everything I need. But how about you, Yuezhu? You have done well for yourself, it seems. Singing at the Met.”

“It was a lucky break. I came here a year ago from England. I’ve been doing whatever roles I could get, all over the country. Then two singers dropped out in the flu epidemic, and I got that part.”

“You sang very beautifully. It was your voice that gave you away. As soon as you got into that song, I knew it was you.”

“Did I sing for you when we were playmates together? I really don’t remember it.”

“No, I don’t think so. But your voice always had that quality. A certain … I don’t know. Something deep, from the chest. Even when you were a child.”

“Yes. We call it ‘timbre.’ It’s unique, as individual as a fingerprint. It’s a singer’s trademark.”

William flicked the little smile again. Then, very abruptly: “I guess you came to tell me you’re sorry about my father.”

Margaret had hoped the ice-breaking might go on indefinitely. She did not feel at all ready to broach the subject of William’s father. Taken aback by his frankness, she could not speak.

“It’s all right,” said William. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so rude at the Met party. After all, those things happened such a long time ago.”

“Oh! Do you mean it? I thought … after what you said at the party, I thought you were nursing such resentment.”

William got up from the sofa and walked over to the window. He looked out at the park. It was some time before he spoke. Nervous, afraid of what reaction she might provoke, Margaret dared not break his mood, hardly dared even to breathe.

“Yes,” said William eventually. “I thought so, too. It’s strange, you know. You keep these things in your heart for years—cherishing them, almost. Taking them out and looking at them, reflecting on them, rehearsing them. And then, when the light of day shines on them at last, they are not at all what you thought they were.”

He turned to face her, not really smiling but with a pensive, somewhat self-mocking look.

“There’s a saying in English: ‘Revenge is sweet.’ But actually it’s not. Nursing the thought of revenge, that is sweet. Knowing that the moment of revenge will come—anticipating it, preparing for it—that is very sweet. But the thing itself, when you see it—I mean, when you see the person who’s the target of it, when you actually see that person struck by it—it’s not sweet at all. It’s tasteless. Even a little bitter, I think. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve tasted a lot of revenge, settled a lot of accounts. Enough, I’ve done enough of that now.”

The full smile again now. Somehow, Margaret felt shamed. She looked down in embarrassment.

“You know,” (William continued) “foreigners say that the national vice of us Chinese is gambling. I don’t think so. In my opinion, our national vice is self-pity. How we love to whine, to feel sorry for ourselves! It’s everywhere in our culture. How many times have you heard a fellow-countryman say: ‘I’ve shown nothing but kindness to so-and-so, and see how he repays me with coldness and injustice!’ Then you go to so-and-so and ask him about it, and he uses exactly the same words about the first guy. Sometimes I think we Chinese are not capable of human relationships. There’s something pathological in us, some irresistible impulse to whine and moan about our misfortunes. It’s in our literature: Lin Daiyu sniveling herself to death,” [referring to a character in the great classic novel Red Chamber Dream, who dies from thwarted love for the hero, Baoyu] “all those mawkish poems about loss and sorrow and being victimized—the Songs of the South and so on. It’s in our politics: look at the way our leaders go on about the humiliations of the last century, how they love to present us as a nation wronged, to whom some kind of restitution is due. It’s pathological, a beggar displaying his wounds—most of which wounds, if truth be told, we inflicted on ourselves. We are not a healthy people.”

“If someone has done you a wrong, isn’t it healthy to feel resentment about it?” put in Margaret, who always hated to hear criticism of her race.

“Healthy to feel it. Not healthy to enjoy it, to wallow in it. I think the Christians are right; forgiveness is a very high virtue. To be practiced properly, of course—in the right time and place. But forgiveness is more difficult for us Chinese than for any other people. So very difficult! Perhaps because we never had Christianity to teach it to us. Perhaps because our land is too poor and crowded, our lives too hard and competitive. Or perhaps something in our actual nature—our blood, our genes. I don’t know. We’re a very inbred nation, after all. Been fucking each other for five thousand years. Of course we’re not healthy.”

He came over to stand in front of her.

“All I’m saying is, you were just a child, Yuezhu. You can’t be blamed. Let’s forget it. Let’s make peace.”

Now he put out his hand. Somewhat awkwardly from her sitting position, Margaret shook it.

William smiled—the full, natural smile. He had beautiful teeth; not perfectly regular, but nearly enough so that the one minor irregularity—a lower incisor folded behind two others—bore all the charm of the lesser kinds of human frailty.

“Great! Will you stay and have lunch with me?”

“All right. Does room service just bring it up? Is that how you take your meals?”

“Sometimes. But they have no regular Chinese chef, and usually I prefer to eat Chinese. There’s a restaurant, Silver River, on Fifty-Eighth Street. I have an arrangement with them. They cook whatever I want and bring it round. They rip me off disgracefully, of course, but I don’t care. What is it, eleven fifteen? the boss should be there already. You can order anything—what would you like? It’s first-class food. Anything at all.”

Margaret considered. “Bear paw,” she said at last.

William laughed. He had gone to the table behind the sofa and picked up a phone. “I doubt they’ll do that. It’s illegal in America, you know. Americans are very sentimental about animals. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it for me, of course, but they’d probably want a few days lead time. Hello? Wai?” William had a brief conversation with the telephone in Cantonese. “No bear paw,” he said at last. “Next choice.”

“Lobster. I like lobster.”

“No problem. You shall have a big fat one right out of the tank. What else?”

“Lotus root. Sea cucumber. And seven treasures soup.”

There was more Cantonese, then William hung up. “Twelve thirty. Meantime, I’ll show you the suite.”

Next to the room they had been in was another, with the curtains drawn. It was full of computer equipment. There were three or four monitors, one very big, and printers, and processors, and a copying machine, and tangles of wires everywhere. All the screens were live, one of them scrolling up lines of text and numbers. It was possible to do business, apparently, even when the New York exchanges were closed. William seemed very proud of this room, and tried to explain the screens, going from one to the other, tapping at the keyboards, lapsing into technical jargon with, now, some English words imbedded in his Chinese: network, server, software, cache.

“The hotel had to rip open walls to bring the cabling up. Cost a fortune.”

“It’s all a mystery to me,” said Margaret frankly. “I really don’t understand this stuff at all.”

William laughed and apologized. “Well, other people’s work … I suppose if you told me all the technical details of your singing I’d be just as lost.”

There was a bedroom, very untidy, a huge bathroom with a sunken tub and some exercise equipment—not the Iron Bride—and another room William was using as a library, shelves of books covering every wall. He pulled down one of the books to show her. It was a thick compendium of mathematical tables.

“Abramowitz and Stegun,” said William, running his finger along the names on the front cover. “A classic. Useless now, of course—anybody who needs this stuff has a computer. Could print his own.” William seemed oddly fond of this quite exceptionally dry volume, gazing at it tenderly for some seconds before carefully setting it back on its shelf.

“My father taught mathematics,” said William, when they were seated again back in the main room. “I don’t know if you remember that. I guess the talent is inherited. I always liked math. So pure! So certain! He had that book of tables, the one I showed you. The Red Guards used it as evidence when they struggled him. They said he was a spy and that was his code book. Can you imagine? The stupidity of it!”

“They were very idealistic,” said Margaret cautiously. “Of course, what they did can’t be excused. But they thought they were upholding the revolution, saving Chairman Mao from his enemies.”

She held her breath after this, wondering if he would take it amiss. But William only went on contemplating her calmly.

“What happened to your half brother?” he asked.

“He went into the army. Now he’s quite a senior officer. In one of the secret branches—to tell the truth, I’m not quite sure what exactly he does. Some kind of intelligence work, I suppose. He’s not allowed to talk about it.”

“Rooting out counter-revolutionaries, no doubt.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t alluding to my father. Perhaps we should just avoid these topics.”

There was an uncomfortable pause, William himself somewhat embarrassed, it seemed. Unable to think of anything else to break the silence, Margaret asked: “Do you have other family?”

William shook his head firmly. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s rule our families out of this and all future conversations. Out of bounds. Okay?”

“All right.” Margaret laughed, relieved. “Tell me what it feels like to be tremendously rich.”

“No. You tell me what it feels like to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House.”

*

“I felt uneasy the whole time,” said Margaret to Professor Shi. “But I must say, he was very amiable. I didn’t feel that he hated me at all. He was more like I remember him when we were small together. A bit dreamy, an intellectual by nature—though of course the Cultural Revolution destroyed his chance of an education. And very handsome—I had forgotten that. Charming, really, in a … what’s that American word? Nerd. Nerdy. In a nerdy way.” Margaret had to explain nerd to Professor Shi.

Professor Shi nodded. He had been listening with great attention to Margaret’s account. “I am familiar with this type of character,” he said. “Self-absorbed, narcissistic, monomaniacal. He is fortunate that his particular mania is so profitable. And you, I think, are fortunate that this young man limits his external actions to that one tiny sphere. Such great wealth might make a monster out of a more worldly man.”

“I don’t think he’s a monster. He seems quite gentle, actually. And rather lonely.”

“Do I perceive some attraction?”

Margaret laughed. “Oh no. Just a sentimental one.”

“Shall you see him again?”

“Yes. I promised to go to Lohengrin with him. He’s a big Met benefactor, got his own box. Now he just has to learn opera.”

*

William himself had no-one he could talk this over with. He had brooded on it from seeing Margaret at the party to her appearance in his suite, with the conclusions he had expressed to her. Now he found it in his thoughts even more. This woman he imagined he had hated—he did not, in fact, hate her at all. About that, he was quite clear. However, there was more.

Some of it was simple physical attraction. Sitting there in his armchair, so nervous with him, she had been pretty and vulnerable, and he had felt aroused. Still that was not all. More than simple possession of her, he wanted to restore what had once been; to re-establish contact with one of the few people he had ever felt close to. In fact—the thought came uncalled, then would not leave—he wanted to marry her, to fulfill the scheme Gordon had inspired. Simplify his life; lift up his soul with music; marry a wife. For a wife, Han Yuezhu would do nicely, very nicely indeed, if only she could be persuaded to it—if only he could find the way to persuade her.

He had a date with her for Lohengrin, and a promise from her to give him a comprehensive explanation of the opera, its production, and the different vocal skills employed by the singers. William saw this as the opening skirmish of his campaign. He had given the Met a hundred thousand dollars, and consequently had his own box, with his name on the door on an engraved brass plate someone polished every day.

In the event, though, Ortrud schemed and Elsa wept without benefit of his or Margaret’s appreciation, and Lohengrin rode his swan-boat—at least so far as William and Margaret were concerned—in vain.

*

For dinner before the show, William had booked a table at Pamplemousse, currently the most fashionable and expensive restaurant in Manhattan. He sent a car for Margaret, to the house in Flushing where she lived with a classmate from the Beijing Conservatory, a young Shanghainese fellow with no immigration status who lived by his wits, and whose father had had a cap put on him in the Cultural Revolution as a “historical counter-revolutionary.” (The addiction to high-class detective agencies is, for those who can afford it, extraordinarily difficult to break.)

William himself was at the restaurant ten minutes before the time he had given the car service and waited in the lobby for her. When she arrived and had been relieved of her coat—an unhappy thing in leather and fake fur—he walked behind her to their table. She was wearing the dress she had worn to the Met Christmas party, the dress he had insulted her in: a simple black-and-gold floor-length gown low at back and front, with narrow shoulder straps. The skin of her shoulders, arms and back was exceptionally smooth, pale and firm-looking. Her figure was slim, and moved with a dancer’s fluid precision. Her chest and shoulders were (William thought) a shade wider than they ought have been to suit her figure, but the long sturdy neck he remembered from their infant years was as striking as ever. Her breasts, he saw as she was being seated, were in proportion to her shoulders and chest—larger than normal for a Chinese woman, but not enough to make her look top-heavy.

She caught his glance as he himself was being seated, and blushed just perceptibly. Ill at ease in such a place, as fellow-countrymen always were, as he himself still was, just a little, despite years of practice. The four tail-coated waiters cooed over them in French accents. (French-Canadian farm boys, Theo had explained when introducing him to Pamplemousse a year and a half before, with no marketable skills, the only requirements for this job being a passable French accent and a willingness to be insulted.)

William knew, from the detective’s report, that she was not used to any kind of expensive lifestyle. Capuleti had been her first real success; before that she had been a struggling singer, one among dozens fighting for roles in obscure under-financed productions. Probably the lovely black dress was the only decent one she owned. Certainly the address in Flushing was a long way from any center of fashion, and she and the Shanghai boy shared a room. William thought about her sharing a room with the Shanghai boy and wondered at their most private moments, trying to imagine her face gasping in ecstasy. It was a pleasing thought, and arousing to him, and William rededicated himself to the plan he had formed.

He prompted her to talk about the opera they were to see. It was not one she knew well, Margaret confessed, though there was a famous chorus in it she had sung at college. Just being a singer didn’t mean you knew all the operas. There were more than a hundred operas in frequent performance; a singer needed at least a month’s preparation to be able to sing a role at all, several different performances of it under different circumstances and with different partners to know it well, and so it required many years’ steady work to build up a good repertoire with sound, deep knowledge of your roles. Still, by the time the entrée arrived William had learned the outlines of the plot, the fact that the work’s first conductor had been Liszt, that Liszt’s daughter had later married the composer, that the set they were to see was thirty years old, having been erected for the old Met, and therefore was somewhat too small for the stage, and that the mezzo had recently endured an unhappy affair with a leading Spanish tenor, said affair concluding with an abortion and nervous breakdown of the minor sort.

It was part of William’s plan to confess to Margaret the part he had played in her exile and disgrace. Like many theoretical and unworldly people, he felt that a sound relationship could only be established on a basis of perfect honesty, could only get properly under way when the participants had no secrets from each other. The world would be a very different place if this were so, and most of us would be married to somebody else; but the belief is strong among the mathematically inclined nevertheless. In their conversation at his Pierre suite on New Year’s Day Margaret had told him of her exile in the far west, and William had listened quietly to the tale. Now, when she passed a remark about social conditions during her days at the Conservatory, he saw his chance.

“That was the time after the Cultural Revolution had ended,” he said. “The time of ‘settling accounts.’”

“I’m surprised you know such things,” she said. “You were long out of China by that time, I think, weren’t you?”

“I kept in touch.”

William sipped at his wine. It was something very expensive, a name he remembered Theo having ordered once. Wasted on them tonight, of course. Neither he nor Margaret knew anything about European wine. It could be something the restaurant kept in buckets in the basement, for all they knew. William could drink no more than one glass anyway, and Margaret seemed unlikely to do much better—she had hardly touched hers. But when you went to a high-class restaurant in the West you ordered a bottle of wine, that was how it was done; and besides, William thought he needed fortifying for his confession. Now he took a breath.

“I did some settling of accounts myself.”

Margaret frowned at him, puzzled, not sure of his meaning. “In America?”

“No. Hong Kong and China. As a matter of fact, it was because of me that you were sent to Qinghai.”

“Because of you? What do you mean, Weilin?”

“That frame-up at the college. I have an old friend in China. In Shanghai—but he has connections all over the country. Using my money—a huge sum of money, let me tell you—he bribed someone at a very high level in the Public Security Bureau in Beijing. They organized the whole thing.”

Margaret was stunned. She stared at him. “What … Why?”

“Revenge. My revenge against you. Because of my father.”

“You did that?”

“Yes. It was me, Yuezhu. I really wanted to get your half brother, but he was in some secret military unit, even my friend with all his connections couldn’t reach him. But you were an easy target, once we found you.”

Margaret’s thoughts were in turmoil. “The Englishman,” she said, “Mr Powell … they charged him with being a spy! You did that?”

“I don’t know the details. They told me there’d been some kind of frame-up and you’d been assigned to Qinghai Province. That was all.”

“He might have been shot!”

“Who?”

“The Englishman. You can be shot for spying.”

“I don’t know anything about this Englishman. Somebody would have been shot? Well, then he’d be dead, wouldn’t he—same as my father. A life for a life, Yuezhu.”

“And I … I was two years in that stinking place. Because of you?”

Margaret’s head was clearing. Clearing of confusion, at any rate: clouding with something else—rage, pure hot rage.

“Because of you?”

Up to this point William had been taking the matter lightly. It seemed to him, weighing the thing mathematically, with the mathematician’s illusion of objectivity in worldly matters, that Margaret had no great injustice to complain of. All right, she had endured a few months in a poor district. How could she think that weighed in the balance? His father was dead, and his mother too, and his life had been torn apart. He himself had lived in poverty for years. What had she to complain of? Why, he had been merciful! He had not foreseen, and could not now see how his actions appeared to her: machinations conceived in malice and executed in darkness—deeds done, as the Chinese say, “behind the curtain.” So far, therefore, he had supposed she would see things as he did, would be understanding. When Margaret stood up suddenly—jolting the table, causing one of the stemmed wineglasses to fall and break on the cloth, splashing its contents red across the white cloth—he saw the color in her face, the fire in her eyes, and he knew he had miscalculated everything horribly.

“Yuezhu …”

“You stinking dogfucker.”

In her fury, Margaret reached back to the dialect of her childhood, to the expressions she had heard from peasant hawkers on the street in Seven Kill Stele, the worst expressions she knew.

“Son of a bitch turtle egg fuck your grandmother. Rotten meat filthy pig dick rat cunt.”

“Yuezhu …”

“Your mother’s wet pussy, you stinking snake turd. You arranged all that? All that happened because of you?”

“Yuezhu, my father …”

“Up your father’s ass! What about my father? He’s dead, too—and if not for what you did, he might still be alive! I hope your stinking father is eating shit in hell!”

Now William was standing, too. People at other tables were looking at them. Fortunately very few of the kinds of people who patronize expensive Manhattan restaurants can understand profanities uttered in the southwestern dialect of Mandarin. Still Margaret’s agitation was clear enough, and her voice—that magnificent instrument now flying loose without restraint—carried to every part of the establishment.

“Yuezhu, I am truly sorry. It was because of my father.”

Margaret stared at him a moment, then took her pocketbook from the chair back and strode away.

Chapter 52

Precious Jade Reveals His Nature

St Agatha Watches over the Dance of Three

Margaret’s fury soon abated, settling into a cold determination to have nothing more to do with William Leung. She did not now feel any fear of him. Their brief reacquaintance had left her sure that he would do her no further harm. Her career, in any case, had been flung into orbit by the Capuleti success, and hardly a day went by without a call from Colman O’Toole to discuss an audition, an engagement, a recital, even—now, for the first time—the possibility of a recording contract.

“People want to hear your voice, young lady,” explained Colman. “It’s a small world, this opera business we move in, and news travels fast. They are asking: Who is this girl that saved the Met in the flu epidemic of ’85? Let’s hear what she can do. I’m thinking a single studio CD—some selections from Bellini, Rossini, Mozart and so on—would enjoy a steady modest sale, and make some respectable pocket money for the both of us.”

The recording contract was still up in the air when Margaret finished her Capuleti engagement at the beginning of February. It was too late in the season to get new bookings in any of the big houses, but Colman sent her off on a five-city tour of recitals and concert performances that had been arranged the previous fall. On Margaret’s first day back in New York after that, he called to tell her he had set up a South American tour for the summer, taking in Australia and New Zealand [the southern hemisphere’s opera season is in its own winter, May to September], and had every hope of a full European tour in the coming fall. Now all her fares and hotel bills would be paid.

Margaret felt dizzy from it all. There were three completely new roles to learn for the summer, all principals and one—Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata—a big, difficult, challenging part of the kind that can make a singer’s name, or destroy it. But she sat down with Professor Shi and made a study plan, and once it was set out on paper in weeks and days the tasks confronting her did not seem so intimidating. Professor Shi was plainly sad at the thought of her coming absence.

“We shall not be seeing much of you for a while after the spring, then, Yuezhu.”

“I wish I could take you with me, Old Shi.”

Margaret felt a twinge of impiety at saying “Old Shi.” It implied equality, or at most inconsequential inequality, and lacked the respect due to a teacher. But Professor Shi had been her friend and confidante as well as her teacher, and she thought the more democratic, American form would be better suited to their relationship, now that her career was properly embarked upon. Professor Shi, in any case, did not seem to mind. He laughed.

“Indeed, I should enjoy seeing these places. Perhaps I will take a tour of my own. But you hardly need me now. I have taught you all that I know.”

“I shall always need you, Old Shi. ‘With the mirror we correct our improper appearance.’ You are my mirror, you are my Wei Zheng. You may think I’m ready, but I don’t feel it. Who knows my voice as well as you, Old Shi? To whom can I go for honest criticism and suggestions?”

[Wei Zheng was a minister at the court of the second Tang emperor. When Wei Zheng died the emperor said: “With bronze as a mirror we correct our improper appearance; with history as a mirror we understand the rise and fall of nations; with wise men as a mirror we learn right from wrong.”]

Old Shi chortled with delight at this erudite compliment. He got up from the piano stool and shook Margaret’s hand with both of his, and told her she would be a fine Violetta—“but only after I have taken you through the difficult parts!”

More troublesome to Margaret’s mind was Johnny Liu. Her success at the Met had done little to disturb their private routines, any more than had her various trips around the country. Now, however, she was to be away all summer; and if the European tour materialized, all fall and winter, too. It did not seem fair to continue the living arrangement with Johnny, leaving him alone so long, inhibited from entering into any other relationships.

She spoke frankly about this to Johnny, one evening over dinner at the table in the kitchen. She had cooked the dinner herself, to give her time to think and prepare what she would say, her hands busy but her mind free. At a suitable point she laid out her plans to Johnny. Johnny listened without expression.

“You are right, of course,” he said at last. “I think you are going to be very successful, Yuezhu. I don’t think you’ll be sharing a room in Flushing ever again.”

“It’s been a real home to me, living here with you. If we hadn’t done this, I don’t know how I would have managed.”

Johnny Liu chuckled, picking slowly at his food. “You didn’t like the suggestion when I first made it, remember?”

“Yes, I remember. But you were right, Johnny. It was the proper thing for that time.”

Johnny Liu looked up and nodded. “Yes. And this is the proper thing for this time.”

“So I believe. I hope you won’t miss me.”

“Of course I shall miss you. Especially our bicycle rides in the park.”

“Yes. I shall miss that, too. Perhaps you can find someone else to ride with you.”

“Mm. I’m sure I shall. But not immediately. I shall live by myself a few months first. It’s not good to go too quickly from one girl to another. I might call her by your name in error.” Johnny Liu laughed—not altogether whole-heartedly, Margaret thought.

“I wish you could establish yourself properly here. Why don’t you find an American girl and marry her? You’d get a Green Card right away.”

“No. I want a Chinese wife. I don’t believe there can be understanding between two people from different countries. A Shanghai girl, I hope.”

“The sooner the better. You can’t go on doing odd jobs all your life.”

Johnny shrugged. “‘When the hunter is ready, the prey will appear.’”

*

It seemed for a time that the southern tour might be a complete fiasco.

The first truth about modern opera production is that all opera companies and opera houses, everywhere in the world, are chronically hard up. A visiting singer—even a minor sensation like Margaret—will be lodged in cheap accommodation and left to fend for herself in matters of food, clothing, taxi fares and so on. A succession of Holiday Inns and Econolodges and their antipodean equivalents can be mighty wearying to the spirit; a regular diet of cheap food cooked by strangers—strangers who, in some cases, have learned the elements of hygiene in clearings deep in the matto grosso, or huddled around dung fires on the pampas—can play havoc with the metabolism. Margaret picked up a nasty stomach infection somewhere east of the Andes, and by the time she got to Sydney was so weakened she could barely struggle through her daily exercises. Fortunately there was a good lead time before the first performance of Traviata at Sydney, interrupted only by a recital at Melbourne. Knowing that, from the point of view of advancing her career, the Traviata outweighed the recital by a factor of a hundred, Margaret bit her lip and canceled Melbourne. She called Colman to explain. Colman was entirely supportive.

“Traviata is the prize, my dear. Cancel everything if you have to. Sure every pub in Melbourne can supply an opera singer, you’ll not be missed.”

Carefully husbanding her voice and strength, Margaret devoted long hours to silent study of the Traviata score, which she had already sung through with Professor Shi. The crux of her role was the grand aria “Ah, fors’ è lui”—the very one whose opening words had so vexed her in Nakri four years before. Then she had merely been acquainted with it, as a famous piece by a great composer; now she had to master it. “Ah, fors’ è lui” was a huge glowering behemoth 252 measures long, in four sections and fifteen subsections, artfully seeded with every kind of land mine known to the soprano voice: optional rubatos, tenutos and portamentos, trills over the orchestra, a truly sadistic refusal to allow the singer to take breaths when she most needs to, and three separate occurrences of the soprano’s worst nightmare—the “ee” vowel on a high note.

By piano rehearsal Margaret was steady on her feet; by stage rehearsal she could feel the firm, satisfying strength returning to the muscles of her chest and stomach; by piano dress rehearsal she could use her top without undue effort; by orchestra dress she was in full voice. The virus, not quite conquered, fought a rearguard action through the first night’s performance, giving her a terrifying attack of hot diarrhea pain during the brindisi, but by sheer force of will Margaret kept to her score till the end of the first act, executing “Fors’ è lui” without any major fault, and after that all was well.

At the last performance she was on her best form, had internalized the role thoroughly and satisfied herself and the conductor that her interpretation of “Fors’ è lui” was the best possible for her voice and stage manner. When, with her hands crossed on her breast, she opened her throat for the great aria, the sound came out unbidden. Margaret lost all sense of herself even while declaiming the introductory scena; as the andantino kicked in, the music rose under her, lifting her off her feet, and she flew, she soared like an eagle, through scena, cantabile, recitative and cabaletta, returning to the knowledge of her own trifling existence only in Alfredo’s arms at the end, the curtain coming down, her partner whispering Bravissima! Oh, bravissima! in her ear, the audience on their feet, the roar of their approval coming up over the footlights like a tsunami.

Margaret took sixteen curtain calls. Her local reviews were ecstatic, and just before she left the country Colman called to tell her there had been an excellent one in Opera Weekly which would do well for her in the States, this being a New York paper which ran an “Opera round the world” page. There must have been notices in Europe, too: Vinnie Cinelli sent a cable of congratulations from his home in Italy.

The local people took her to their heart. They were very proud of their opera house, and keenly interested in all that took place there. In the three weeks before taking her Traviata to New Zealand, Margaret did two TV interviews, an impromptu recital—at a colossal fee, negotiated by Colman via long distance phone—that was also televised, gave further interviews for newspapers and the radio, and attended four grand parties, at one of which she had to fight off—literally, physically fight off—advances from one of the country’s cabinet ministers, much the worse for drink. It was all very gratifying and pleasurable in its own way, though not to be compared with the joy of flying through two hundred and fifty bars of prime Verdi.

Following the last of the three concert performances in New Zealand—which was also the last of their winter season—the house held a small party. Here, somewhat at a loss among people she knew only from having rehearsed with them, Margaret was turning from the buffet table with a plate of small dry crackers and cheese—still not altogether trusting her stomach—when she found herself looking into the smooth, regular features of William Leung.

To see him here, at the furthest end of the planet, took Margaret’s breath away. For a moment she stood speechless. Perceiving her condition, William smiled and made a little bow.

“A wonderful performance,” he said in Chinese.

“I have nothing to say to you,” said Margaret in the same language when she had recovered her breath. “You’re a bad egg. Go away.”

“Oh, come on, Yuezhu. You know me better than that. You know my character’s not so bad.”

“Your character! What character? You make a fortune gambling on the stock market. Then you use it to launch dark plots against people, or stash it away in Swiss bank accounts.”

“All my accounts are with American banks. I have never gambled with stocks. I’m a bond man. I got rich developing new kinds of bonds, so that companies could raise money more easily, for the benefit of all society. And the only people I’ve made plots against were those who took a hand in murdering my father and mother. Who would blame me for that?”

He spoke calmly but firmly, using the simplest words and constructions. This had its effect on Margaret, taking the wind out of her sails somewhat. She wanted to turn away from him but this was not easy, with the buffet table behind her, the wall to her left and a crowd of buffeteers to her right. She looked at William with some resignation. There was justice in what he had said, after all.

“Besides,” William continued, “Opera Weekly said the unusual quality of your voice may have its origins in those two years in Tibet, up in that thin dry air. In which case, you have me to thank for your career.”

“What are you doing in New Zealand?” asked Margaret, ignoring this last hypothesis, which she had also heard from Old Shi.

“Why, I came to hear you sing. ‘Concert performance’—I wasn’t sure what it meant. So you just stand there on stage with no costumes or acting, and sing the words.”

“It’s much cheaper than a full production. We singers like it—nothing to think about but your voice.”

“Your voice is really very beautiful, Han Yuezhu. I noticed it even when we were small. It’s a gift.”

“I hope I will use it wisely.”

“I’m sure you will.”

There was a little uncomfortable pause. To break it, Margaret asked how he had come to be at the party.

William shrugged. “I gave them some money. It’s a nice hall, but they told me it needs some repairs. So I gave them fifty thousand dollars.” William laughed. “They wanted to put me on the board, but I said no, I spend all my time in New York.”

“Fifty thousand! Wa! You really spend money like water, Weilin!”

“Is it really so much? I sometimes think I’ve lost my sense of proportion. How much was your fee?”

“Three thousand. But that’s New Zealand dollars, it’s less in American, I’m not sure how much. Plus expenses, which is probably more than three.”

“Do they put you up in a nice hotel?”

“No. Guest room at a local conservatory. You have to be a superstar to get a good hotel.”

“You can move to my hotel if you like. It’s the best in the country. I’ll pick up the tab. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“No, no, absolutely not.” Margaret shook her head firmly, feeling a little of the rage coming back. “I won’t take anything from you.”

William smiled, but it was easy to see that he felt the rebuff. “Do you know that this is one of the world’s most beautiful countries?” he said. “South Island especially. Steep mountains covered with forest, high waterfalls—like a Song Dynasty painting. A person could set up a hut in the mountains and live like a Taoist hermit, ‘eating the air and drinking the dew.’”

Margaret was going to say: Why don’t you do that? To atone for your sins. But something about the way he said it, something wistful, caught her and silenced her. He wasn’t just fantasizing, he really had it in mind to do that. For a moment she glimpsed something in him she had not seen before—something yearning, yearning for stillness and peace. It was odd and a little creepy.

“Wouldn’t you like to go for a trip to see the southern mountains?” William asked.

“No. Not if it comes from you, no. I told you, I won’t take anything from you.”

There was a gap to her right now and Margaret stepped away with no valediction, turning from him and walking straight off to the ladies’ room. She sat on the couch in there for a while, then came back out. William was still in the room, talking with a group of men at one side, but he made no further approach to her and gave no more acknowledgment of her existence. The next day Margaret took a plane for New York, richer than she had left but with no place to live.

*

Margaret camped out in Old Shi’s studio for a week. It was at this point that she grasped the nature of the relationship between Old Shi and the boy she had thought so much like Baoyu, who had been in the apartment so often when she went for lessons. He actually lived there, and slept in Old Shi’s bedroom. Having grown up under Maoist puritanism, Margaret still, even after three years in the West, found these things hard to accept, or even to believe. Her affection for Old Shi was only just strong enough to overcome her instinctive reaction of disgust and revulsion, and once she understood the situation she was painfully ill at ease with the two of them.

Sitting with them one evening around a phoned-in banquet of Chinese food in tidy foil cartons, she responded to Old Shi’s: “Help yourself, Yuezhu—what will you have?” by saying, in Chinese: “Mmm, why don’t I have some chicken?” But her chronic unease betrayed her. “Chicken” is ji in Chinese, and “why don’t I …?” is signified by a ba at the end of the phrase; so the last two syllables of this sentence, as she spoke it, were  …ji, ba. But Margaret got the emphasis wrong, and her utterance sounded like “I’ll take a jiba!” Old Shi squealed with laughter, Margaret blushed purple, and the boy insisted on being told the joke. Once told it, he blushed too, and Margaret got up early next morning, walked down to Canal Street for a Chinese newspaper, and by five p.m. had secured herself a room in Elmhurst for two hundred and fifty dollars a month.

That fall of 1986 Margaret became a recording artist. Colman had set up a contract with one of the record companies for her to produce a CD of arias from popular operas. This involved six weeks in a recording studio in White Plains. Studio recording, Margaret discovered, involved a very small amount of time spent singing and a very large amount of time watching young men in beards, dungarees and earphones making adjustments to their machines and conversing in technical jargon.

After the studio work Margaret went on European tour for the winter. The recording had consumed more of her time than she had planned, and she set off for London feeling ill-prepared. Only when she came out of the arrivals door at Heathrow and saw Baoyu waving at her did her spirits lift.

It was not a surprise. She and Baoyu had settled into a regular correspondence, three letters each a year, and when she got travel details for the London engagement Margaret had written to tell him. Baoyu was a principal with Sadlers Wells now, an international star; but too much ballet is danced in the off-season for opera, and the two of them had never managed to be in the same city at the same time since her days with Royal Youth International.

“I can’t wait for your CD to come out,” said Baoyu, driving her into the city in a tiny British automobile. “That’s the advantage singers have over dancers. What would be the use of my making a CD?”

“You could make a video.”

“I have, I’ve made several in fact, but there’s no money in it. People can’t watch a video driving their car. They can’t watch a video while jogging. They don’t put a video on to make love to.” Baoyu laughed. “Which reminds me. There’s something I should tell you, since you’ll be staying with us.”

In his letter, Baoyu had said he shared a flat with a friend, but that they had a spare room she was welcome to make use of. Primed by her experience with Old Shi in the summer, Margaret guessed the revelation before Baoyu made it.

“I didn’t tell you before,” Baoyu explained, “because a lot of fellow-countrymen still find it too shocking. I didn’t know what your reaction would be. I suppose I should have mentioned it, since you’ll be staying with us.”

“Oh,” said Margaret, “I’m quite sophisticated about these things now. I just found out my voice coach is a same-sexer, too. But I must say, to tell you the truth, I think it’s against nature.”

“So is dancing en point. So is wandering round a stage singing high Cs. Where do you see those things in nature? We are human beings. We are above nature.”

Margaret looked away, embarrassed though she did not want to be. The part of London they were driving through looked familiar. Perhaps it was Ealing. Oddly, she found herself thinking of William. What a variety of people there were in the world! Education really didn’t prepare you for this. Her own education had presented humanity in two categories: Good People, who struggled to promote the interest of the masses, and Bad People, who opposed them. Obviously there were more things in the world of human affairs than ever were dreamed of in Chairman Mao’s philosophy.

“Perhaps,” she said to Baoyu at last, “we human beings can’t really understand nature. We are part of it, we come from it, but still we rise above it. Then sometimes we fall below it. Where do you see wars and murder in nature? Where do you see plotting and revenge? I guess you’re right, Baoyu. I shouldn’t have spoken so glibly about what is natural and what isn’t. This guy you share with. Does he care about you?”

“Oh, yes, Elder Sister. We care about each other very much.”

“Then you have my blessing,” said Margaret, and laughed to show she was not really so arrogant as to think Baoyu was in need of blessings from her. Baoyu took it seriously though.

“Oh, Elder Sister, I’m so glad to hear you say that. You of all people I didn’t want to think less of me. You’ll like Jan, I know.”

In spite of which, Margaret did not like Jan, mainly because of a powerful impression that Jan did not like her. Probably, she surmised, after a few days’ acquaintance, Jan did not like anyone who had known Baoyu before him, or been close to Baoyu in any way. Somewhat older than Baoyu—close to forty, perhaps—and a choreographer with England’s Royal Ballet, Jan was dark and brooding, with few words, though his English was excellent. He was Danish by origin—the beginning of Baoyu’s career at the Royal Danish Ballet had overlapped with the end of his—and he sometimes spoke to Baoyu in that language when Margaret was present, as if in deliberate assertion of an intimacy she could not share.

Baoyu clearly adored Jan, however, and Margaret struggled to like him for Baoyu’s sake. Jan was famous in the ballet world, Baoyu told her proudly, and was spoken of everywhere as one of the finest in his art. Margaret, who had quite lost touch with the world of ballet, did not doubt the truth of this, but the respect it added to her knowledge of Jan could not overcome her discomfort at his jealousy. She saw Baoyu dance in a production of Manon entirely choreographed by Jan; he, but not Jan, came to see her sing Gilda at Covent Garden. When her engagement was over, Baoyu drove her to the airport, another airport this time.

“I shall be in New York in January,” he told her, “Guest appearance with the American Ballet Theater.”

“I shall be in Italy,” said Margaret. “Ai! We are like birds, migrating with the seasons. So difficult to keep up relationships. No wonder the married singers all seem to have problems.”

“The same with us,” said Baoyu. “Yes, it’s difficult. But I truly believe Jan is faithful to me when I’m away.”

“Yes. I can see he adores you. How about you, Baoyu? Are you faithful to him?”

Baoyu laughed. “Mostly. Our way of life … Look, Elder Sister, I know in your heart you can’t approve of it. I can see how uncomfortable you are when you’re together with me and Jan. I can understand. The way we were brought up … same-sex wasn’t even disgusting, it was beyond disgusting. It was unthinkable. It was unthinkable to me till I came to the West—and I’ve got it in my nature! In China when we were growing up, it didn’t exist. If you did that, they put you in jail. I think they still do. In the Cultural Revolution, they killed you. So I understand how hard it is for you to accept. Perhaps you can never accept it, really. Perhaps your knowing this about me will put a barrier between us for always. For me myself, to accept that this was my nature, that this was what I wanted—it was a terrible struggle. But now I have accepted it, and I can tell you for sure, I wouldn’t wish to be any other way.”

Margaret was touched by this little apologia. They drove in silence for some minutes while she tried to sort it all out in her mind. It was true what Baoyu had said: she could not really accept it, and perhaps never would be able to. Yet Baoyu was still Baoyu, her old classmate. He wasn’t a different person.

“I don’t think there’s a barrier,” Margaret said cautiously at last, “so long as it’s just the two of us together. But when you’re with your … your friend—yes, then there’s a barrier.”

“Jan’s very jealous. I’m sorry, it’s just his character.”

“Mm, I think it would be the same with anybody. It’s just … well, as you said, it’s hard for me to accept. But you, dear Baoyu, you’ll always be my old classmate. I’ll never hold it against you. You must be careful, though. This new disease that’s come up. Same-sexers are very susceptible, so it’s said.”

“Of course. We all know that. Don’t worry, Elder Sister, I’ll take good care of myself.”

After London Margaret sang Santuzza at the Paris Opera, seeing—and ascending—the Eiffel Tower at last; then she was one of the three ladies in Magic Flute at the Staatsoper in Vienna, the best German role Colman had been able to get for her this season. From Vienna Margaret crossed the Alps to Italy.

*

This was not the Italy Margaret knew from Royal Youth International’s brief visit, bunk beds in ill-lit cheap travelers’ hostels and college auditoriums. She was now a known singer, her impromptu Giulietta already a minor legend among the art’s closest followers, her Violetta favorably reviewed, if only for the benefit of those non-Australians who read the international summaries in their fan magazines. Now she sang at the great historic houses: La Scala in Milan, the Regio in Parma, La Fenice in Venice, and Teatro Bellini in Catania, the composer’s birthplace.

Singing at these big old Italian houses was quite different from any previous experience Margaret had had. Each place had its own traditions and cherished eccentricities; and at the same time all shared in the fractious, disorderly quality of modern Italian life. Everybody had warned her about the strikes, and she duly encountered two: one by the chorus at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera, one by the stagehands at the Regio in Parma. Both were settled quite briskly; neither affected her own performance. Other Italian customs were less easy to adjust to.

Backstage at La Scala after the second act of Don Carlo with Vinnie Cinelli himself, she was accosted by a small fat man who stuck out his hand to her.

“Sono dal claque,” said the man.

Margaret did not grasp the meaning at first. She supposed it must be someone involved with the production, some Signor (or possibly Conte—for a Republic, Italy has a prodigious quantity of aristocrats) with a name like Antonio dal Claque. She had started to extend her own hand with a Piacere… when Vinnie appeared out of nowhere, stepped between them, put a mighty arm across the little man’s shoulders and bore him away with a cheery Eh! Amico mio … Margaret saw them arguing off behind a large mock fountain in the offstage clutter of discarded scenery, with much Italian hand-talk. At last some bank notes passed from Vinnie to Signor dal Claque, the latter bowed and left, and Vinnie stood frowning at the bills left in his hand.

“Who was it?” asked Margaret, baffled by the whole thing.

“Just as ’e hintroduced ’imself. ’E is from the claque.”

“The claque? Such a thing really exists?”

Vinnie shrugged, putting away the bills in an inner pocket of his costume. “At some of the ’ouses, yes. We must still pay for our happlause.”

“What ’appens, I mean what happens, if you don’t pay? Will they boo instead of applauding?”

“Per’aps. Nowadays, per’aps not. They ’ave not such power as before. Per’aps nothing will ’appen. But it is a custom, and we must honor our customs.”

Other peculiarities were even more unsettling. At that same La Scala the occupants of one box seemed to be holding a riotous party all through the second performance of Don Carlo—talking at the tops of their voices, laughing, clinking glasses, paying little attention to proceedings on stage. Nobody seemed to mind this, or find it unusual. At Naples things were even more informal, with people strolling in and out calling to their friends, having meals served in their boxes all through—though they paid attention when a major aria was being sung, as indeed did the revelers at La Scala.

“This is ’ow it was in hold times,” explained Vinnie after the La Scala incident. “People go to the hopera to meet their friends. Is why so many of the bel canto operas ’ave no hoverture. Waste of the composer’s time—nobody would be able to ’ear it above the greetings. Rossini used the same hoverture for three different works. Is probable nobody noticed.”

Parma caused Margaret much foreboding, that city having cherished for a century and a half its reputation as home to the toughest opera audience in Italy (and therefore in the world). Her role was one she knew well—it was the Countess in Marriage of Figaro—and Margaret knew she had been on top form all through her European trip, but still it was daunting to look out through the stage lights at a thousand silent loggionisti, knowing that their disapproval had more than once closed down an opera in the first act and that at least one singer who disappointed them had had to be escorted to the railroad station by the town police. In the event they treated her well, calling out good-naturedly Brava la Cinesa! after “Porgi, amor.”

But it was at Catania in Sicily that Margaret got her warmest welcome, and an instance of how opera, instead of being something apart from the life of a place, could be integral to it.

Catania, a gray, smoggy, traffic-strangled little town looking out through gray drizzle across the gray Ionian Sea, was the birthplace of Bellini, and the citizens nursed a fierce pride in their native son. Margaret seemed to be known to everyone here as the Cinesa who had stepped in to rescue Capuleti at New York. She was interviewed for the newspaper on her arrival, and again on the radio. People called out to her in the streets above the traffic din.

But most magical was the last performance of her opera—Il Pirata, by Bellini himself, a new role for Margaret, but one which she had mastered as easily as everything else by the Sicilian she had taken on. Sitting in her dressing room in the interval between the two acts, she became aware of hurrying feet and shouted voices. Margaret’s first reaction was alarm—it sounded as if there were a fire.

This indeed proved to be the case, though not in the sense that had alarmed her. Stepping out into the little lobby from which the dressing rooms led off, she encountered the baritone, a native Sicilian, as tall and almost as large around as Vinnie, striding towards the exit with a huge smile on his face.

“Fuochi!” he sang out. “La festa! La festa di Sant’Agata!”

Margaret did not understand this at all; but since her colleague had not a word of either English or Chinese he could not explain further except by making a dramatic exploding gesture with his arms, hands and fingers, and saying, in his thick Sicilian accent: “Oggi è la festa di Sant’ Agata. C’è un spettacolo di fuochi artificiale nel centro. Vieni!”

Not quite getting it, Margaret followed him out. People were streaming down toward the piazza. The whole theater had emptied, and apparently all the surrounding houses. She could see colleagues in stage costume among the crowd, and musicians from the orchestra in tail-coats. One violinist actually had his instrument with him.

The reason for the exodus became clear at once: a huge balloon of white fire exploded in the air above, then a cluster of twinkling red stars appeared, swelled and burst, then a whole fusillade of fireworks, blue and yellow and green, lighting up the sky above them, the people calling out in approval, even shouting Bravo! Little children—of which the city, and even the opera audience, seemed to have an unnaturally large supply—were lifted up by their elders to see. It was a gloriously happy, convivial scene, quintessentially Italian in its spontaneous sociability. All around the pillar at the center of the piazza were stacked clusters of huge model candles—one of the emblems of Saint Agatha, the patron of the town and of this particular festival—carved from wood. Up in front was a glorious garish statuette of the Saint herself, holding out a silver platter with her severed breasts on it (her martyrdom was exceptionally gruesome).

It was some minutes before the absurdity of her situation struck Margaret: herself and the other performers standing out there in full stage costume and makeup. Realizing it, she felt suddenly conspicuous—a feeling which quickly turned out to be well justified, for someone was calling to her across the crowd, calling her name in Chinese: “Han Yuezhu! Han Yuezhu!” Margaret was too short and hemmed in to see who it was. It must, she supposed, have been her tall jeweled headdress that revealed her to whoever it was, now calling from closer at hand.

It was William, pushing through the crowd, waving to get her attention.

“Yuezhu,” he said as he came up to her. He stopped abruptly, startled by her face. “Wa! Your makeup really looks dramatic close up. Like a temple god. Is it really you?” And he laughed.

“If not, why would you be here? Wherever I go, there you must be, it seems.”

“That’s not very fair. It’s only been twice in over a year. I like opera, I like your voice, and I can afford to travel anywhere I please in great comfort. The wonder is you don’t meet me more often.”

“So much for your open movements. Meanwhile, what are you organizing in secret? Planning to have me exiled again?”

“Oh, Yuezhu, don’t say that. You’re really unfair to me.”

In fact, Margaret was not displeased to see him. The more she had reflected on their recent exchanges, the more she felt she had been harsh to him. In any case, the cheerful crowd all around made it impossible to feel ill-will to anyone at this moment. She favored William with a smile.

“How much money did you give the Teatro Bellini?” she asked, pointing back down the street at it.

“The opera house? Nothing. I got scalped for my ticket, I only found out about your performance at the last minute. Two hundred dollars! I don’t follow the opera press as well as I should.”

“I think you should give something,” said Margaret, mocking him with her smile. “A hundred thousand at least.”

“If you tell me to, I will.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s up to you what you do with your money. No business of mine.”

“I’ve decided to anyway. Yes, a hundred thousand. It’s a fine old theater. And I like the music very much. It’s the same composer that wrote your, what? I can’t remember the Italian name. Luomiou yu Zhuliye.” [Saying the name of Shakespeare’s play in Chinese.]

“Bellini, yes. This is his birthplace. They do a lot of his operas here. Elsewhere he’s not much performed.”

“I think his music suits your voice very well.”

“You’re very perceptive, Weilin. The experts say the same thing. I consider Bellini to be my guiren.”

“Then I’ll certainly give them a donation. It’ll be a terrific sum in Italian. What is it, a thousand lire to the dollar?”

Margaret laughed at him again, at his childlike delight in numbers and in his wealth. “Now,” she added, “it’s time you offered to take me on a tour of the island.”

“Oh, of course! Would you really like to, Yuezhu? Oh, yes! We could …”

“No, no! Never! I was just kidding.”

Margaret saw his disappointment, but did not savor it this time. She could see his loneliness clearly for a moment, and felt a little sorry for him. But the fireworks had ended; the theater crowd and the singers in their brilliant costumes were beginning to drift back towards the Teatro.

“I must go back. I have some weeping and wailing to do.”

“You will do it very beautifully.” William turned with her and started back. “This is the last performance, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Back to New York next week.”

“I hope we can meet in New York.”

Margaret laughed. “Somehow I feel sure we shall.”

“I think you’ve forgiven me for Tibet, haven’t you?”

“Mm, maybe. But I really don’t want anything to do with you, Weilin. And it was Qinghai Province, not Tibet. You should pay more attention to the consequences of your crimes.”

“Where do you live in New York?”

“Nowhere. I have a friend I must call tomorrow. He’ll find a room for me.”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll book you into the Pierre. Or the Carlyle, or the Waldorf. Or the Plaza, with all the rich cattle barons from Texas, if you like.”

“No thanks, Weilin. Not interested. I shall manage somehow.”

“I offer you these things—they mean nothing to me, it can be done so easily—but it seems you’re not willing to accept anything from me.”

Margaret stopped and confronted him, there in the street with the people streaming past them back to the Teatro.

“Look, Weilin. Please don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I really hate you, or nurse resentment against you. What you did to me was very bad. I’m not going to forget it. On the other hand, you had a rough time in China, I know, and my family—yes, I myself—played a part in that. Perhaps we can say we are even. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? I am an opera singer and you’re a big opera supporter. It’s inevitable that we shall meet from time to time. For those purposes, we can consider ourselves friends. Otherwise, there is nothing between us.”

“Nothing, Yuezhu? What about the bamboo grove?”

“What bamboo grove? What are you talking about? Oh, yes—but that was when we were children.”

“The child is the father of the man.”

“And the child must leave the father to go out into the world. We have our separate lives to live, our separate careers to make. I don’t think there is anything we can do together.”

William looked at her without speaking for a moment, then made a little smile and held out his hand. “Just as you say, Yuezhu.” Then, in English: “Break a leg.”

“You shouldn’t say that in the middle of a performance. But thank you anyway.”

Chapter 53

A High Mandarin Pursues Enlightenment

Significance of a Good Municipal Water Supply

The big sensation on Wall Street that Spring of 1987 was the arrests of Bobby Plotznik and Morrey DiSantangelo.

William knew Bobby Plotznik well. Bobby had been Jeffrey’s predecessor as head of arbitrage at WCB. He had moved on to set up his own firm, Soundview Securities (he had grown up in the Soundview section of the Bronx), specializing in leveraged buyouts. Now it appeared that he had been trading tips with Morrey DiSantangelo of Stieglitz, Hall & Klemper. Bobby and Morrey had had a gentlemen’s agreement (so the rumors said—the Government had revealed no details) on payment for these tips: so much to Bobby for each tip that panned out, so much in the other direction for each that failed. At the end of a certain period the net-net figure had been exchanged. The actual method of exchange was said to have been via a briefcase full of bank notes in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel. While it is not illegal to carry money around in a briefcase, or to pass it to someone else thus embagged, either in a hotel lobby or anywhere else, the office of the U.S. District Attorney, under whose authority the arrests were made, had been observing Bobby and Morrey for some time, and had a good list of tax and regulatory offenses ready.

This unhappy little episode had in fact had its origins some months earlier, at a table in Danielle’s on East 76th Street, where four men had come together for dinner. This had been at the suggestion of Overstone Bruys, who was also one of the participants.

Overstone Bruys had had a trying time those first few months of 1986. At the end of the previous year he had been obliged to negotiate the sale of Talmadge Tucker, the firm he had worked for most of his life—and briefly headed—to a nondescript insurance company with an unprepossessing square glass office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The loss of TT still rankled with Overstone Bruys. Not that he had had any very strong emotional attachment to the firm—he was not a man of strong emotional attachments—nor that he had depended on it for his living, which had been made quite secure by the investments of his grandfather and great-grandfather. It was rather that the fall of Talmadge Tucker represented, to Overstone Bruys’s limited vision, the disruption of a way of life he had been brought up to think of as the natural order. One left school, took a position in a brokerage firm, became head of the firm, then retired gracefully with honors after twenty years’ service, to give younger fellows a chance and to devote oneself to philanthropy and objets d’art, or to deepsea fishing. Having one’s firm get into difficulties and being obliged to sell it to men from Tulsa wearing ill-fitting suits and polyester ties was not part of the script.

To add to Overstone Bruys’s irritations, his eldest son, a senior at Harvard, had got a girl in trouble—an Asiatic girl, for Heaven’s sake, from Thailand or one of those fool places—and was insisting on doing the decent thing by her. The situation had recently reached the point where Bruys Sr was seriously considering deployment of the Ultimate Deterrent—nullification of Bruys Jr’s trust fund provisions. To further compound matters, Overstone Bruys had a cold.

Three other men were at the table in Danielle’s. One was a respected economist, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, now mainly retired except for occasional lectures and journalism. He had written several blistering op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal about the fortunes being made in leveraged buyouts. The second was a lawyer, house attorney for the Association of Scientific and Technical Employees, a labor union. The third was Valentine O’Driscoll, recently appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“Appointed,” though technically correct, did not quite tell the tale of Valentine O’Driscoll’s career change. O’Driscoll had formerly been associate attorney-general in the nation’s Justice Department, and had thus been responsible for filling all U.S. attorney positions. When a vacancy appeared in New York Southern, he had taken it himself. This rather odd move—nobody would have thought it a step up—could not have been altogether unconnected with the fact that he had recently married a news announcer for one of the New York TV stations, a pretty and popular woman well known in the city and perfectly unknown outside it. These items, and some others, and some implications that Overstone Bruys—not an intellectual man, but a sufficiently shrewd one—had been able to draw from them, told him that O’Driscoll had a game plan. Bruys was not sure precisely what the game plan was, but everything he knew about O’Driscoll whispered ambition.

If there had been any doubt in Overstone Bruys’s mind about this after studying O’Driscoll’s résumé, it had been dispelled at their first meeting, a few days before, at a charity function in the Metropolitan Museum. O’Driscoll was a small man with sudden, darting movements and very fast speech delivery. His best friend would not have called him handsome. He had that boyish roundness of feature and too-long too-prominent teeth that seem to be part of the genetic heritage of the Irish; but his eyes—the only part of him that did not seem to move much—and his speech showed quick intelligence and great powers of concentration, and everything he said, every brisk nod of his head, every short chop of his mobile hands, declared him to be a young man in a hurry.

Securities fraud was part of O’Driscoll’s bailiwick of course, and at that first encounter he had expressed an interest in brushing up his knowledge of the field, which was (he said) all too sketchy. Bruys had offered him a free seminar in the various kinds of misdemeanors that securities brokerage is prone to; and that was the origin of the dinner at Danielle’s. Klein, the economist, had been invited by Bruys for excellent reasons. The labor attorney had been brought along by O’Driscoll, who introduced him as an old college roommate and asked if he might sit in. Bruys had raised no objection. Just why O’Driscoll had seen fit to bring him, Bruys was unsure. That there was a reason, his estimate of O’Driscoll left him in no doubt; but he had no clue what the reason was. The labor attorney, whose name was Evan Lassis, was a big, rangy, small-featured man in his late thirties, with a fringe of good black hair at sides and back and a perfectly bald crown. His few utterances had been in that style of speech which seeks to make itself acceptable by means of unremitting profanity. Overstone Bruys himself never cursed, and regarded that way of speaking with disdain; but after many years on Wall Street he was pretty well inured to it.

When they had worked through introductions, observations on the national political scene, and some rudiments of city gossip, and soup was on the table, O’Driscoll again confessed his own ignorance of the financial services business.

“Industry,” we are supposed to say, Bruys interrupted. Everybody laughed.

“Like you turn the fucking stock certificates on lathes,” said Lassis.

“What I really want to get a feel for,” continued the U.S. attorney, “is just how much malfeasance actually occurs on Wall Street.”

Bruys nodded thoughtfully. “Depends what you mean by malfeasance. There are gray areas. Rather a lot of them.”

“I’m thinking of those kinds of activities that affect ordinary investors. That impact investor confidence.”

Overstone Bruys took out a large white lawn handkerchief and blew his nose, to give himself time to consider. “Well,” he said at last, “I can truthfully say that in fifteen years at Talmadge Tucker, I never once caught even a whiff of anything improper. Now you know, Val, I have no ax to grind here. Talmadge Tucker is no more, and I am very respectably employed as a trustee of the Broderick Foundation. While I wait for a cabinet post.”

Everybody laughed at this last. O’Driscoll laughed a little too eagerly, showing all his numerous teeth—every one of which, Bruys felt sure, he was ready to give to attain his goal, whatever it was.

“On the other hand,” Bruys added, “I would not speak so confidently of some of the more, ah, aggressive trading firms. Especially since this buyout fever came up. The profits are so huge, people are naturally tempted.”

“The profits are obscene, is what they are,” said Klein the economist. “Nobody should make that much money.”

Overstone Bruys knew Benny Klein very well. A decent sort, with economic views that were fundamentally sensible—the Presidents he had been adviser to were Republicans—but in his heart, in his bones, he was an old-school Jewish socialist who hated the rich. No, not the rich; that would have required him to hate himself and all his friends. He hated the abstract idea of wealth, or of inequality. The Jews (Bruys reflected), prohibited for two millennia from owning land, had never developed an aristocracy, had perforce considered themselves all equal in subjection. And there was the original conceit too, of course: God’s chosen, the conscience of the world.

“What are we talking about here?” asked O’Driscoll. “Neglect of due diligence?”

Due diligence. Clearly the man had been brushing up on his terms of art. A good boy, always did his homework. You could see that in him. The class grind, the class snitch. Oh, he would make a fine Senator, or Governor, or whatever it was he was aiming for.

“Never mind due diligence. There’s stuff done with no documentation at all, I believe.”

“Insider trading?”

Overstone Bruys laughed. “I’m sure you know ITSA better then I do, Val. Our nation’s Congress, assembled in all its wisdom, declined to define the term ‘insider trading.’”

“Didn’t stop them passing a law against it,” said Klein. He was referring to the Insider Trading Sanctions Act of 1984, known on the Street as ITSA.

“Indeed. A law against an offense they chose not to define.”

O’Driscoll shrugged, spreading his hands. “Fair enough. Once you define an offense like that you’re giving people a road map for fraud. Once it’s defined and nailed down, smart guys are going to start figuring out ways round it. Best to leave ’em in doubt and trust to the discretion of the courts.”

“’Sright,” said Lassis. “You don’t tell a little kid: I’ll smack your ass if you mess with the VCR. He’ll just go and mess with the fucking hi-fi. You tell him: I’ll smack your ass if you mess with my stuff.”

Overstone Bruys indulged himself in some brief speculations about Lassis’s home life; but O’Driscoll was pursuing the main topic.

“Nobody cares about the niceties of legislative language. The law exists to serve society, to maintain balance in our relations with each other and with society at large. You can’t always spell out what’s required for that. Lots of statutes are vague. That’s why we have a judiciary to interpret them. People will stand for vagueness in their laws. What they won’t stand for is the spectacle of young guys, guys who contribute nothing to society, moving whole companies—whole industries—around like pieces on a chess board, and making obscene sums of money doing it. As if the nation’s economy were just a big playroom set up for their amusement and enrichment. As if ordinary people’s jobs, and lives, and families, were not involved at all.”

What a politician! thought Overstone Bruys. Got his speeches all ready. Everything else in place, too: the media-smart wife, the Washington experience (just enough to confer gravitas, not so much as to make him a Beltway Baron), the humble origins (O’Driscoll was a working-class boy from Brooklyn, son of a bricklayer, graduated from NYU Law School). Everything in place. Now all he needed for the booster stage was some good populist headlines about being the scourge of Wall Street, friend of the common people. Of the working people—ah, that accounted for the presence of the labor lawyer. Of course. This corporate restructuring frenzy—companies shedding workers because they needed the money to pay the coupons on all those exotic bonds the Wall Street racketeers had been peddling. Ah. Smart cookie, smart, smart.

“You spoke of the more aggressive firms,” said O’Driscoll. “Which are they? Are these the guys we should be looking at?”

“I’m not sure what you’re looking for. But if corners are being cut, why yes, it would be in the bolder firms. Stieglitz, Hall & Klemper are big players. Wechsel Cassidy Bruno. Some of the smaller specialist outfits. Now, I don’t say these guys are involved in hanky-panky. The Street is pretty good at policing itself, you know. The SEC does a good job of course.”

“Wechsel Cassidy Bruno, yeah.” Lassis nodded. “What’s his name, William Loong, that Chink faggot. He pushed through that Teaneck deal. Eight thousand jobs down the fucking tubes.”

Overstone Bruys raised his eyebrows. “Is that true?”

“Sure. Two hundred of my own people …”

“No, the first part. Is our oriental friend gay?”

Lassis shrugged, backing off a little. He privately thought Overstone Bruys a bit limp-wristed himself. You could never be too sure nowadays. They used to put fruits in jail. Then it was legal and they were everywhere. The way things were going, pretty soon it would be compulsory. He regretted the remark.

“You hear stuff. Never been seen with a woman, anyway. Hey, you’re the Street insider, you tell us.”

“I never pay attention to gossip.” Overstone Bruys blew his nose again, pleased with himself for having scored off the uncouth Lassis.

“Very repressed, the Chinese,” said Klein. “I wouldn’t deduce anything from his somewhat solitary habits.”

“The man’s a nerd, isn’t he?” asked O’Driscoll. “Likes hanging out in front of a computer screen. Some people get their satisfaction that way.”

“The money he’s made, he could go looking for satisfaction anywhere he liked.”

Another round of laughter. When it was over, Bruys could not help asking: “Don’t you have to have evidence of a violation before you begin an investigation?”

O’Driscoll nodded. “Yes indeed. But not necessarily evidence in a courtroom sense. Look: a certain gentleman has no visible means of support. He lists himself on his passport as an importer of olive oil. He declares $15,000 a year of taxable income. Yet he rides a chauffeured limousine and sends his kids to tony private schools. None of those things is a criminal offense; put them together and they tell you this is a guy you should be looking closely at if you want to run a crackdown on organized crime. Same with securities fraud. You know it exists, where are you going to look for it? Why, these thirty-year-old guys in red suspenders pulling down eight-figure bonuses for deals nobody can understand. Can you make that kind of money honestly?” O’Driscoll looked across at Klein, putting the question.

The old Jew shrugged. “You probably can. Whether you should be allowed to—that’s a different question. Personally I think it’s gotten out of hand. If there is malfeasance, a few salutary and well-publicized prosecutions might restore sanity.”

“Well,” said Overstone Bruys, smiling at them all through the beginnings of a sneeze. “We’re all for sanity, aren’t we?” He sneezed.

*

This little conference was known only to those who took part; but the arrests of Bobby Plotznik and Morrey DiSantangelo six months later were in all the papers. William was as shocked as anyone, though he saw no larger implications in the arrests. A memo went round the firm advising all employees to observe due diligence in all transactions and to guard against improprieties and indiscretions.

“Most particularly,” said Theo Falconer at the meeting in which the Managing Directors drafted the memo, “don’t allow yourself to be seen hanging around the lobby of the Plaza with a shopping bag full of twenties.”

The MDs all laughed at that; but two weeks later Theo resigned.

Everybody at WCB was surprised at Theo’s resigning, William no less than the others. Theo had gone before William heard about it. Departures are abrupt on Wall Street, a tradition carried up from the trading floor, where an employee no longer committed to the firm, or actively hostile to it, could do great damage in a very short time. Calls to Theo’s home number got no response, not even from an answering machine. It turned out Theo had taken his family up to the place in Maine, where the answering machine was turned on, though there was never any response to messages left on it. William felt hurt that Theo had gone without a word to him. He had considered Theo the closest thing he had to an American friend. But he accepted the reason Theo had given—“to spend more time with my family”—as more or less in character.

As weeks went by and there was no news of Theo taking up any other job on Wall Street (there were those who suggested he had been lured away by another firm) or indeed leaving the estate in Maine for any reason, his retreat into family life became more and more plausible. He got tired of the game, people said. Made enough to retire on. Bailed out at the top of his career. Might do the same myself. Street players often talked about bailing out at the tops of their careers, but it was very rarely anyone actually did it.

*

Following the modest success of I Capuleti in the 1985-86 season the Met had decided to revive Bellini’s La sonnambula for the fall of 1987. They had an old production they could use; stage sets for it had been languishing in containers at the company’s storage depot in Hoboken, New Jersey for eleven years. Colman, who always knew everything, had learned of the plan at once, and secured the lead soprano role for Margaret fifteen months in advance. The tenor, booked at the same time, was to be Vinnie Cinelli—it would be his first appearance at the Met for two years, and was sure to draw enthusiastic houses.

Quite apart from the prospect of singing with Vinnie again, Margaret felt intimidated by the role, which had been sung to within a millimeter of perfection thirty years before by a great soprano of the previous generation, and rarely attempted since. She therefore approached the part with respect, paring down her summer schedule so that she would have plenty of time to give it.

She relaxed as much as she could, resting her voice. In the heat of summer she began going out to the Long Island beaches with Johnny Liu and his new girlfriend. The girlfriend was a small, cheery Shanghainese, a student at St John’s University, on a student visa. She called herself Maisie, an approximation to her Chinese name. Margaret hit it off with her at once, and they made a running joke of ganging up against Johnny, mocking his little conceits, deflating his boastfulness. Margaret wondered if the girl knew about Johnny and herself, but there seemed no way to ask her, and she thought it might be insensitive to ask Johnny.

For the third or fourth of these beach excursions Margaret bought herself a bikini, the first she had ever had. She was growing her hair long and straight, hoping the Met would let her play the Sonnambula role—it was an innocent peasant girl—without a wig. Wigs irked her in performance, and the fitting of them wasted a great deal of time when preparing for a role. Emerging from her clothes in the bikini the first time, the sea breeze trifling with her long black hair, she made a striking figure on the beach. Johnny Liu’s eyes told her this, and made her feel a little ashamed of the way she had used him. She saw the reaction of other men on the beach, too, staring from all directions at her trim, sturdy body and somewhat over-developed singer’s chest and the flat, toned muscles of her belly. It was an odd feeling, not altogether a comfortable one, and stirred something in her, something unwelcome to her. Now she regretted the bikini.

After that she suggested that the three of them ride bicycles in Central Park, as Johnny and she had used to do, instead of going to the beach. Sometimes the others agreed to this; sometimes not. She was always glad when they did, always loved the motion of the bicycle, the wind on her face and through her hair streaming out behind, the simple clean action of pedaling in the dappled sunlight under the trees. Baoyu came to stay with her on the first leg of a North American tour; she took him cycling in the Park and watched him speeding off ahead of her whooping with glee, her singer’s lungs no match for his dancer’s legs.

Returning from Europe that spring, Margaret had taken a proper apartment at last. It was the second floor of a house in Rego Park, Queens, with its own kitchen and bathroom and fine polished wooden floors. The house belonged to an elderly Italian couple. It was immaculate, with a garden which, as spring progressed into summer, the old boy filled up with tomatoes, beans, squash, cucumbers, berries, fruits and flowers. The old couple were not really opera fans, but were deeply respectful of the art which they knew their country of birth had given to the world, and let Margaret exercise her voice as much as she liked. The apartment was seven hundred dollars a month, which nearly bankrupted her; but it was a cheap taxi ride from two airports—she did five out-of-town engagements that summer—and very quiet, and Margaret found that rising in the morning to look down from her window at the old boy tending his vegetables was immensely restful to her spirit.

Between the leafy tranquillity of Rego Park and the rehearsal rooms of the Met, she worked on her Sonnambula, familiarizing herself with every note, every word, every turn and step. There was a scene in the opera where she had to take a walk, supposedly while asleep [La sonnambula means “The Sleepwalker”], across a rickety bridge over a mill race. Baoyu, in time off from his own rehearsals, went through the scene with her, showing her how to move to make the scene suspenseful, to convey the peril and drama of it.

“You have a big advantage over the other singers,” said Baoyu. “When I go to the opera they all look very clumsy, all except you. I think only people who have trained as dancers should be allowed to act on the stage.”

“One art is quite enough for anyone to master,” said Margaret. “Your standards are too high.”

There was no sign of William all summer. At every engagement she expected him, but he never appeared. Perhaps, she thought, he had given up on her after all. Or perhaps business affairs were pressing on him; she saw his name in one of the New York Chinese newspapers in connection with some financial scandals on Wall Street. She could not follow the details; but though it seemed he was not directly involved in whatever it was that was being investigated, she supposed he must be more than normally attentive to his work at such a time.

She most expected him at the Denver concert, which was well promoted and which boasted, as well as herself and four other second or third-rank singers, the leading tenor of the world after Vinnie (who was doing the open-air summer productions in Europe) and the greatest living American mezzo. This concert was itself in the open air, at a huge sports stadium. The clear thin air of the Rockies took Margaret back to her lonely vocalizing on the mountain above Nakri, and she found she was coping with it much better than the others.

Deep into Sonnambula now, she tried out her first public song from that opera, “Ah! Non credea mirarti”: a deceptive aria, straightforward at a first pass but possessing dark depths of subtlety and two vicious little traps for the unwary voice, with an exceptionally long legato line that would have made demands on her breath control in any setting, but was especially challenging up here. The audience loved it, and storms of applause rolled down on her from the tiered seats all around. The world’s second tenor and the greatest living American mezzo each embraced her quite spontaneously, murmuring congratulations.

Margaret’s fee was twenty thousand dollars, more than she had ever earned for an appearance before, nearly twice as much as the Met’s absolute upper limit. It would have been absurd to look for William in that crowd, but Margaret would not have been surprised to see him at the reception afterwards. He was not there. It was a relief to Margaret to have done with him, and she enjoyed her triumph, and the glowing thought of her great fat fee, without distraction. Yet still, oddly, in some way she could not account for, the relief was mixed with something else, something bitter she did not know a name for.

It was Bellini who brought him to her again, as if the three of them—the long-dead Sicilian, the hermit of the Pierre, and the rising young soprano—were joined in some strange metaphysical dance.

*

Margaret saw him in his box when the lights came down at the end of the first performance of Sonnambula. Afterwards he came to her dressing room.

“You really can’t say I’m harassing you,” he said by way of introduction. “It’s been nine months since Catania.”

“‘A day in Heaven is a year on Earth,’” quoted Margaret, not much to the point. Having half expected him after seeing him in the box, she had settled on the manner she would use to him: cool friendliness. The knowledge that he had been the cause of her exile no longer pained her. It was a thing of the past, and after Denver she had begun to believe what so many commentators had said, what William himself had once said: that the experience of that rarefied air in Qinghai might have contributed to the unusual color of her voice. At any rate, her initial resentment at discovering she had been the victim of his vengefulness had gone. There remained only some residual uneasiness at the thought that he would use wealth and power in such a way, and mild regret at the part she had played in his father’s destruction. On the other side of the balance, he was good-looking, stupendously rich, and a fellow-countryman she had known since childhood. If he wanted to be friends, she had no objection.

They exchanged some words about Sonnambula and its composer. William inspected the dressing room, and wondered that it should have a window opening onto the street. This (Margaret told him) had been designed in when the new Met was built twenty years before, at the insistence of a great Wagnerian soprano who was also a fresh air fanatic. Conversation flagged for a moment or two, and Margaret wished Vinnie would come in again, as he usually did before leaving. He had seen her to her dressing room and praised her performance, then gone to his own to change and take a shower. She thought it would be fun to introduce William to Vinnie. My friend the world’s greatest tenor … My friend the world’s youngest billionaire … To keep the conversation alive, she asked about the week’s big news story: the arrest and handcuffing of two senior Wall Street traders at their desks by federal agents. Did William know the firm in question?

“It’s my firm,” said William. “Wechsel Cassidy Bruno. I’m a managing director.”

“I didn’t realize that,” said Margaret, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. These guys, I guess you know them.”

“Yes,” said William. “I’ve known Jeffrey since I came to New York. Lenny not quite as long.” He frowned and shook his head in vexation. “It’s a peculiar business.”

“What exactly was it they did?”

“Nobody knows. ‘Insider trading’ is the charge, but nobody really knows what that means. All trading is insider trading to some degree. I’m not aware of anything they were doing that the rest of us don’t do every day of the week. But we’ll see. The firm’s got an internal investigation going on, we’ll see what it turns up. Perhaps they really were breaking the law. But even so, to lead them off in handcuffs like that—across the trading floor, in front of all their colleagues. That wasn’t necessary. It was like …” William made an uncertain little laugh, looking at her. “It was like something that would happen in China. You know, if you pissed off some powerful official and he wanted to humiliate you. But surely things like that don’t happen in America.”

At this point Vinnie actually did come in, and Margaret had the opportunity to make her introduction; though she gave them to each other merely as names and as “old friend” and “colleague.” William clearly knew Vinnie; Vinnie, whose interest in financial services was slight, just as clearly did not know William. They talked about the performance for a few minutes. Then William, ill at ease with the two professionals, bowed and left. After he had gone, Margaret said: “One of the richest people in the world.”

Vinnie was startled. “So? But ’e looks so young.”

“Six months older than me. We come from the same town.”

“A millionaire and a great diva. The water in that town must be very hexcellent.”

Margaret laughed. “I’m not great yet.”

Chapter 54

A Rare, Illegal Delicacy Proves Disappointing

The Lotus is Broken but the Threads Still Connect

Rather to Margaret’s surprise, William was in his box for the second Sonnambula, too. She expected him in the dressing room afterwards, but instead of himself he sent a huge basket of flowers, rare fragrant orchids and exquisite ferns, and a card with an odd rhyming couplet in Chinese:

Those watching us assume our plots are deep.

They do not know we’re walking in our sleep.

He was there at the third performance, too. This was a Saturday matinée, broadcast on the radio all over the country. This time he came to her afterwards and proposed a dinner date that evening. Margaret had nothing fixed, as it happened, and had been contemplating an evening in her flat resting her voice, looking over her summer schedule and trying to finish a letter to her mother. William was diffident and charming, or as close to charming as he ever got, and there had been the flowers after the previous performance, and Margaret had a terrific appetite from singing. Dinner at (she did not doubt) a very expensive restaurant easily trumped rice and vegetables in Rego Park, and a couple of hours quiet talk would do her voice no harm.

William took her to Chinatown, to an upstairs room in an ordinary-looking Cantonese restaurant. While the main part of the restaurant—such as Margaret had been able to see as they passed the open door—was unexceptional, this section was clearly exclusive. The half-dozen tables were placed far apart and each was set off from the others with lacquered screens. The room was decorated in the Imperial style, but plainly, and the waiters wore spotless tunics and moved to and fro silently in white-soled slippers.

“Bear paw,” said William. “I knew you wanted some so I ordered it specially. But it’s illegal, of course, so don’t say anything to other people.”

“How did you know I’d accept the invitation?”

William shrugged. “If you hadn’t, someone else would have got the bear paw. They can always sell stuff like that. We’ll have some dog meat, too—also illegal, of course, but very good for you in this cold weather.”

The bear paw was disappointing, greasy and gamy, but the dog meat delicious. Margaret had always liked dog, which is eaten in winter in southwest China, but during her childhood had been considered an expensive delicacy, able to pass beneath her father’s puritan eye only when recommended for reasons of health.

“Now I am going to say you’re harassing me,” said Margaret when they had settled with the food. “You’ve been to all three performances so far.”

“I shall be at the other five, too,” said William. “It’s a lovely opera. Why shouldn’t I take in every performance? Suppose I couldn’t afford to go to the Met. Suppose I could only buy a recording of this opera. Wouldn’t I listen to the recording eight times, at least? Well, I have the time and money, I can see the real thing eight times.”

Margaret laughed at him. “Are you really an opera lover? Do you harass other singers? Or is it only me?”

“So far as opera is concerned: yes, I love it. It’s very beautiful. But your voice has the strongest effect on me. It’s had an effect on me ever since I’ve known you, even before you started training it.”

“You shouldn’t get too obsessed by one voice. There are many different styles, you know. Even for a single opera, there are many ways to sing it.”

“Yes. Before I came to the first Sonnambula I listened to the Callas recording. Quite a different approach from yours. Callas is a bit too steely when her lover has rejected her. Your singing catches the pathos and injustice of it much better. And the way you move around the stage is beautiful to watch. Easy to see you were once a dancer.”

“So much flattery! To tell the truth, I’ve never heard the Callas recording.”

“What?” William stared at her in surprise. “You’re singing this opera at the New York Met, yet you’ve never heard the most famous recording? That doesn’t make sense. Don’t you use recordings to prepare?”

“Me personally, no. I read the score, have a pianist go through it with me, and try to hear the music in my head. Then I decide how I think it should be sung. If I listened to someone else’s recording, it might influence me away from my own interpretation. I’d end up with something that wasn’t truly me. Something part me and part the other person. When I’m through with this part I may listen to Callas, out of curiosity. But not till I’ve established my Sonnambula clearly in my mind. MY Sonnambula—mine, not anybody else’s. When I’m quite sure of mine I shall compare hers to mine. Not mine to hers.”

Now William laughed. “Such a perfectionist.”

“Art is a quest for perfection. That’s all it is.”

“And such an idealist! ‘Art exists to serve the people.’ Don’t you remember Chairman Mao’s famous essay on this topic?”

“Oh, nobody believes that stuff any more.” Margaret laughed. “Chairman Mao! It seems old-fashioned just to say it. Like something from one of the dynasties. What wouldn’t we have done for Chairman Mao? And now, ten years in the grave, he’s almost forgotten.”

William was looking at his food. “I won’t forget him,” he said.

“I’m sorry. Weilin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to allude to those things.”

Margaret reached over and covered his hand with hers. As soon as she touched him he looked up, smiling. The smile startled her with its radiance. His entire spirit, his soul, was in the smile, shining out through his eyes.

“I think that’s the first time you’ve touched me since we were children,” he said.

Margaret pulled her hand away. “For comfort, that was all.”

“You don’t have to be so cold with me, Yuezhu. We’ve set aside the past, haven’t we?”

“I guess.”

“You guess? ‘The superior person bears no resentment against Heaven, holds no grudges against his fellow men.’” [Quoting Mencius.]

“All right, Weilin, we have set aside the past.”

“Then let’s be friends in a normal way.”

“Is that what you want, Weilin? To be friends with me?”

“I have very few friends. It would be nice to have more.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

William set down his chopsticks again and looked across at her, serious now. “You want me to speak clearly? All right, I’ll speak clearly. I want to marry you, Yuezhu.”

Margaret laughed, more because she was shocked by his frankness and at the absurdity of what he had said than because she found anything amusing in it. “In your dreams!” she said.

“In my dreams we are already married,” he said quietly, returning to his food.

Embarrassed now by his sincerity, Margaret could think of nothing to say. William himself did not seem inclined to pursue the issue. They ate in silence for a moment.

“Perhaps we should change the subject,” she said at last.

“All right. Your subject.”

“We were talking very pleasantly about opera.”

“Yes. Tell me about this Bellini. You said he is your guiren.”

“Maybe. I love to sing his music. It seems to come naturally to me, though most singers think it very difficult.”

“Yes. The music suits your voice. Especially this one, this Sonnambula. Is this his masterpiece?”

“No. His masterpiece is called Norma.”

“Have you sung that?”

“No. It’s not often performed.”

“Why not, if it’s a masterpiece?”

“Singers don’t want to do it. It’s supposed to be fearsomely difficult. Among singers the saying is that we’re lucky to get one good Norma per generation.”

“Who is the Norma for this generation?”

“I don’t think there is one. Barbara Bacon did it at La Scala—but that was twenty years ago.”

“There we are, then. You will be the Norma for this generation.”

“First I’d have to persuade a house to put it on. I’m not a very important singer. Nobody would do a Norma just for me.”

“Why not? What if I paid them to?”

Margaret laughed. “You know, Weilin, you’re a terrible materialist. You think money can just buy anything.”

“No. But I bet it can buy an opera. If I went to the management of the Met and offered to finance a Norma—sets, costumes, singers’ fees, the whole thing from beginning to end—would they really refuse?”

“I don’t know. Are you serious?”

“Perfectly serious. I’m going to call tomorrow and ask them.”

“Oh, Weilin. Is this a play for my favor?”

“Of course it is. Will you marry me?”

“No, never.”

“I don’t care. I’ll raise a Norma for you anyway.”

*

This year’s WCB Christmas party was a subdued affair. There had been a major market correction (the newspapers said “crash”) in October. Its real effects had been small, and the market was recovering nicely; but with the arrests of Jeffrey Duggan and Lenny Goldfarb, WCB’s two leading arbitrageurs, soon afterwards, people felt nervous and depressed. This year there was no ice sculpture, no China and France, only a generalized buffet table and waiters circulating with glasses of wine and trays of canapés.

The waiters were kept moving briskly. In the universal air of despondency and apprehension, a quite surprising number of people were taking refuge in drink. William himself was constitutionally unable to drink much, and so was consigned to the unhappy condition of standing sober while all around him voices rose and faces flushed. He was thinking of leaving when Sal Albergo came over. Sal ran the government desk—trading US Treasury securities, that is—and was a great fount of Street gossip.

“Saw your pal Theo the other day,” said Sal, who was just starting to glow.

“What, Theo Falconer? I lost track of him after he took himself off to Maine.”

“Well, he’s back. Met him at the newsstand in Rock Center. He looks good. Put on some weight.”

“Is he working?”

“No. Living at the house out on Long Island. Asked to be remembered to you.”

“That’s nice, but why doesn’t he call me? What was that all about, anyway, his resigning like that?”

Sal laughed. “Very cautious man, old Theo. Smelled something in the wind. Wanted to get out before the solids hit the air conditioning.”

Sal Albergo proceeded to retail the latest rumors about what Jeffrey and Lenny had told the Feds. William listened impatiently.

“It’s all nonsense,” he said. “WCB hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Sal laughed. “The feds wants to get us, they’ll get us. See you in jail.” (A common valediction among WCB people at that time.)

Left to himself and his glass of tonic water, William brooded on the arrests. Jeffrey and Lenny had been charged with offenses which seemed to him petty and technical: stock parking, insider trading. Things everybody did, which no-one thought wrong. They were decent men, he knew them both well from his early days in New York. Where was the sense in it?

These thoughts were interrupted by the awareness of a girl standing a few feet away. Clearly one of those who had consoled themselves for the firm’s woes with drink, the girl was looking at him slightly cross-eyed, and swaying perceptibly from side to side. William thought she would probably fall over before the evening was through. He recognized the girl. She rejoiced in the very mellifluous name of Mindy Gallone, and she was a trading assistant on the Mortgage desk. Twenty-two or -three, Mindy was pretty, in a domestic rather than glamorous way. Her skin was creamy and unmarked, her features regular under a tumble of blonde hair. She had a trim body and long slender legs that she showed to advantage by wearing miniskirts all the time. William had never heard anything bad of her, and had the impression, from occasional encounters, that she was demure and respectable. But now, seeing him take notice of her, she giggled and blushed.

“Hello. Mr Leung.”

“Hello, Mindy. You look as if you’ve drunk too much.”

“Yes. I probably have. It’s all right.” Mindy giggled again.

“Would you like me to call a car so you can go home?”

“No. It’s all right.”

William had for some days been nursing an idea, without coming to any definite resolution about it. He felt certain that matters would come to a head soon with Margaret, and wanted to feel quite sure of himself. He had thought of enlisting the services of a high-class call-girl agency for the purpose; but the sight of Mindy—pretty, drunk, and obviously thrilled to be talking to a Managing Director with a net worth approaching that of Africa—reminded him how easy things were for him.

“You really don’t look too steady on your feet,” he said. “Would you like to go to my office and sit down a while?”

The top floor was quite empty. By the time they got to William’s office the girl really did need support. He lifted her bodily and set her on the couch.

“You’re very strong,” she murmured.

William took the wineglass from her hand, then kissed her on the lips. She made no complaint. He kissed her bare shoulders, looking down at the cleft of her breasts.

“Oh, Mr Leung,” sighed the girl, letting her head fall back.

He raised her with one arm and unzipped her dress at the back with the other. Then he unfastened her bra and pulled down the dress to expose her breasts. They were very acceptable, neat and firm, the same creamy skin. He kissed them several times, sucked at the nipples and felt his jiba stiffening. The girl had her arms around him now, but began slithering off the couch, mumbling dreamily as she went.

William turned her over and got her more or less stable, kneeling across the couch with her rear end in the air. He lifted her dress and pulled down her tights and panties. Her bottom was as smooth and firm as the rest of her. Very much to William’s surprise, her private parts were shaven quite hairless. Was she an amateur gymnast? Or was it some whim of her boyfriend’s? He pushed down his own pants and saw with satisfaction that his jiba was very hard. Mindy’s head was turned on one side, resting on the sofa cushion, eyes closed and mouth open in anticipated ecstasy, or the simulation thereof. The pink pucker of her bottom hole was looking right at him; but William was intent on proving himself to himself in precise particulars.

When the deed was done and the proof accomplished, William washed up in his private bathroom. By the time he got back the girl was asleep, lying on her side on the floor in a fetal position, snoring faintly. He cleaned her up with hand towels from the bathroom and got her clothes back in position. Settling her pretty white breasts back into the bra, William noted with satisfaction a mild retumescence. Everything fine. I havnae made a bugger out of ye. I wouldnae want that on my conscience. There seemed no question of her walking unaided, so he called his car service, who were very efficient and very discreet, and explained the situation. They came with two extra guys, square grave Slavs in black turtleneck sweaters and suits, who carried her down in the elevator, got her bag and coat somehow, and took her to the Westchester address William had looked up on his employee database. The following Monday Mindy called him on his private line, which one of the mortgage traders knew.

“Mr Leung, did that really happen?” asked Mindy.

“I’m afraid so,” said William. “I’m really sorry.”

The girl laughed. “No need to be sorry. I guess I let myself in for it. But flowers would have been nice.”

William went over to Tiffany’s at lunch time and bought an exquisite threaded-gold necklace with diamonds at intervals on it and a diamond pendant, twenty-eight thousand dollars, and sent it to her by inter-office mail. “I don’t believe it,” the girl breathed, calling him back. “Don’t believe it. Thank you, thank you, oh thank you.”

*

On an impulse William had himself driven over to Lloyds Neck that Saturday morning. There had been snow—people were talking of a white Christmas—and Theo was loading up skis on the roof rack of his car, watched by two small children bundled in winter jackets and boots.

“Taking the kids over to Caumsett for some cross-country skiing,” Theo explained, tightening a strap, his back to William. “Caumsett’s great for cross-country.”

“I need to talk to you, Theo,” said William, standing there in the cold, to Theo’s back. The children watched him with frank suspicion. “I thought you might give me some insight into what’s going on. Since you seem to have seen it coming. The arrests, I mean.”

Theo turned from his straps and spiders. “I’m sorry, William,” he said. “I’d really like to ask you in, but I don’t think I can afford it.”

“Afford it? I’m not an expensive house guest, Theo.”

Theo smiled, then made a little laugh, his breath puffing out in a cloud. He looked down at the black surface of his driveway, cleared of snow, then back up. “Do you know what’s going to happen, William?”

“No. What’s going to happen?”

“They’re going to destroy Wechsel Cassidy Bruno. It’s a big operation, but they’ll do it.”

“They? Who’s ‘they’?”

“The government, of course. With a little help from their friends—the white-shoe firms, the tenured blowhards who write pompous op-ed pieces for the Journal, the labor racketeers, the academic lefties and the media dimwits. But mainly the politicians. Politicians hate commerce, William, don’t you know that? They hate it, all of them, and they’ll destroy it any chance they get. They’ll destroy Wechsel, they’ll destroy you, they’d destroy me if I hadn’t got out. They’ll still waste a great deal of my time and money if they know I’m standing here talking to you. Which is why I’d like you to go away. Sorry, William, it’s nothing personal, as they say—just business.” Theo turned back to his roof rack.

“Destroy me? Why would anybody want to destroy me? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“The hell you say. This is nothing to do with right and wrong. It’s politics.”

Theo turned back to him. He contemplated him for a moment, then addressed the kids: “Go play.” They scampered off across the snow-covered lawn. Then to William: “Let’s take a walk.”

The only place to walk was down the driveway, everything else being inches deep in snow. They walked in silence to the gate. There was a stone pillar on each side of the gate with a stone ball on top. “Infangthief and Outfangthief,” said Theo.

“What?”

“The names of the stone balls. In the old Saxon law, a petty lord had the right to execute his own people if they committed crimes. A major lord could not only execute his own people, he could execute your people, too, if they committed crimes on his property. The lesser right was called Infangthief, the greater one Outfangthief. A lord who had both rights would advertise the fact by displaying the heads of two executed felons at the gate of his manor. Then rotting heads went out of fashion for some reason and they substituted stone balls.”

“Fascinating. Why did we have to take a walk, Theo?”

“Because walls have ears, and so does your driver. Look, William, I’m sorry to be so callous about it. I just don’t want involvement at any level in what’s going to happen. For my wife and kids’ sake.”

“But this is terrible. ‘Walls have ears’? You sound like somebody in China. This is America, isn’t it? Doesn’t everything have to proceed according to the law?”

“Oh, it will, it will. The charges against Jeff and Lenny, for example—there’s no way the government could make them stick. But they don’t have to, you see? They are the government. You’ve got a lawyer? They’ve got ten lawyers. You’ve got ten? They’ve got a hundred. So what if their case all comes to nothing? They can still drag it out for years. Jeff and Lenny will go bankrupt paying their lawyers. Nobody on the Street will give them a job ever again. They’ll be forty years old, broke and unemployable, and there’ll be no place they can go to get their reputations back. The government doesn’t have a department for that. When they understand these things, they’ll cave. They’ll plead guilty to some chickenshit offense, do three months in jail, implicate a couple of other people, and thank their lucky stars they got through it all with their gonads still attached.”

“But what’s the point? Why would the government do that?”

“Politics, dear William, politics. Quantity becomes quality. You know the old saying: owe your bank a thousand dollars, you’ve got a problem. Owe your bank a million dollars, they’ve got a problem. Same thing. Make a million dollars on the Street, you’re a financial wizard. Make a hundred million, you’re a criminal.”

“But we’re not breaking any laws.”

“I’ve already explained that.”

“But don’t they need some evidence of crime before they can arrest you?”

“Oh, they can always make something up. Look at what they hit Jeff and Lenny with. Insider trading. Stock parking. Stock parking!” Theo laughed.

“We all know that’s bullshit.”

“Sure. Of course it’s bullshit. Stock parking? Hey. You’re known as a big player in the market. If you’re seen to be buying up a slab of some company’s shares, that’s an event in itself. People will assume you’re setting up a deal. So you ask your pal at WCB, a guy nobody ever heard of, to buy them and hold them for you for later exchange and payment. He’s your cover. No different from what happens in the auction houses. Big buyers don’t show themselves at an art auction, they send agents, for exactly the same reasons. But when we do it the government says it’s stock parking, a regulatory offense. Of course it’s bullshit. Same with insider trading. Trading on the basis of ‘material information,’ according to ITSA. What a pile of dogshit! Without material information, who’d bother to trade? What, we’re supposed to wait for a firm’s quarterly report, that’s the only information we’re allowed? Whose numbers are cooked nine ways to Sunday anyway? And what about not trading on material information? I learn something that tells me to stay clear of a stock—don’t buy, don’t sell, too unpredictable, too much volatility. This saves me a ton of money. Is that an offense? Insider not-trading?” Theo laughed again. “We’re not talking about reason, here, Willy. We’re not talking about legality, or equity, or justice, or sense. We’re talking about politics.”

“But who’s hurt by what we do? Where are the victims?”

“Oh, come on, Willy. You can figure that out. All those restructuring deals we’ve put together. What does a company do once it’s been restructured? Lay off workers, that’s what.”

“They’ll get new jobs.”

“Of course they will. And the firm would have gone bust from inefficiency and uncompetitiveness if we hadn’t restructured it. You know that, I know that, and all those overpaid company execs we let go know that, as they float away on their golden parachutes. But being fired and going looking for a new job, that’s a major inconvenience in a person’s life. He may have to move to another town, take his kids out of school, put his wife to work, cash in his life insurance. I mean, it’s disruptive. People don’t like disruption. They like security and continuity. Politicians know that. They say to those people: Hey, you had a good job. You lost it because these Wall Street hyenas bought out your firm and saddled it with a bagload of debt dressed up in fancy bonds some bean curd Asiatic computer geek thought up. Your job? Forget it. It’s gone to Mexico, some flat-nose greaser’s doing it for a dollar a day. That’s how politicians make a living. Stoke up resentment. Race resentment, class resentment, those are their meat and drink—the fuel of politics, the very goddam fuel.”

“That’s terrible. I thought this was a free country.”

“So it is, comparatively. In China, Jeff and Lenny would have been shot by now, and WCB would have been looted by the nephews and nieces of some Party boss. You know that. In this country there are things the government dare not do, which is not true where you come from. Civilization advances, slowly, and it’s more advanced here than elsewhere. But that’s a philosophical consolation, William—not much comfort when the elephant has decided it’s your flower patch he wants to crap in.”

“So what should I do? Run for cover?”

“I’d advise it. But it’s probably too late.”

William contemplated the two stone balls. Infangthief and Outfangthief. Rights and privileges, law and justice, handed down from Saxon times, what? a thousand, fifteen hundred years ago. That didn’t count for nothing, surely. It couldn’t. Theo was exaggerating, he had to be.

“No,” he said at last. “I won’t run. I’ll fight. If I don’t fight, I might as well have stayed in China.”

*

The night before the penultimate performance of Sonnambula, William took Margaret to a very small, very discreet Italian restaurant in a basement on West 46th Street. He was full of his negotiations with the Met over Norma.

“They have someone under contract to design the sets already. It won’t be next season but the season after, they tell me, the 89-90 season. They’ll have some exact dates soon. Then they’ll book you. I told them I’ll only do it if they book you. They’re going to try to get Mr Cinelli, too. He’s booked three years ahead, they told me, but depending on his schedules it may be possible.”

“How much have you spent so far?”

“It’s not really a question of ‘spent.’ I gave them an even million to show good faith and get them started. I don’t suppose they’ve used more than a few thousand, but the money’s theirs anyway. They’re embarrassingly grateful. Keep calling me up—would I like to meet with the designer? The conductor? This one, that one? Do I have any suggestions? Would I like to be more closely involved in the production? I told them no, they should just get on with it, I don’t know anything about opera production, I only want to see the thing performed, with Margaret Han singing lead soprano.”

Margaret laughed. “Opera companies are always short of money, even the grandest ones. Especially the grandest ones, I think. Yes, I don’t doubt they’re grateful.”

“I think it’s a great way to spend money. I wouldn’t mind making a habit of it. Not to be pushy, but … perhaps one opera every three or four years.”

“It’s a marvelous thing to do. Gives a good example to other people with more money than they know how to spend.”

Her words pleased William, she could see. He was gazing at her very tenderly. Now she could see clearly her childhood companion. This was how he had looked at her when listening to her family stories in the bamboo grove, when watching her dancing, when seeing her waiting for him outside the barracks. His eyes so clear and watchful, his mouth seeming always about to smile but rarely going all the way.

“Yuezhu, have I made up for sending you into exile?”

“Oh … Let’s not talk about those things.”

“You were so mad that time in Pamplemousse. I can still see your face. And your language—oh, dear!”

“So far as wrecking each other’s lives is concerned, I think we’re about equal. It just took me by surprise that time.”

“To tell the truth, I’m not sure you weren’t justified. My cruelty was adult cruelty; yours was the cruelty of a child.”

Margaret reached across the table and covered his hand with her own. “It’s all right, Weilin. Let’s forget it all.”

William held her eyes with his. “When you’ve been very close in childhood, you can never really be estranged.”

Margaret could think of no reply. There was a moment’s silence, just long enough to be uncomfortable. Then: “Oh!” William lowered his face in embarrassment. “You know what I want to ask you.”

“Weilin …”

“It’s not a condition, the opera I mean. Truly it’s not. I’m going to do it anyway.” Now he looked at her eyes again. “But I do so want to marry you.”

“I don’t know, Weilin.”

“Because of the past?”

“No, I meant what I said about that.”

“You’d be wealthy beyond your dreams. Perfect freedom. You could sing what you wanted, and waive your fees.”

Margaret giggled. “The other singers would kill me if I did that.”

“You could have a house in every country of the world.”

“Think of the heating bills!”

They both fell to giggling. William reached out now and took her hand.

“Really, Yuezhu, why not? Is it just me?”

“Yes, it’s you. Your personality. You are a little strange, Weilin, you must admit. Living alone in a hotel with all those computers. Millions of dollars in the bank you have no idea how to spend.”

“I’m strange just exactly because I’ve lived alone too long. Marriage will normalize me.”

“Will it? ‘Rivers and mountains change more easily than a man’s nature.’”

“You won’t find that with me. You know my nature. I’m not fundamentally bad, am I, Yuezhu? It’s the circumstances of my life, that’s all. I’m doing my best to improve myself. I’m sponsoring an opera, you see. Coming out of my shell.”

“Such a very thick shell.”

“There is a way out. I need a little help, that’s all.”

Margaret sat silent. It was true what he had said—whether generally true or not, certainly true in their case—that that original childhood intimacy had made them known to each other in some way that defied all attempts at severance. Ou duan si lian—you could snap a lotus root, but a myriad silk-like threads still connected the two parts. And Weilin was handsome and fantastically rich. Odd, certainly—but who didn’t have some perversities and eccentricities when you got to know them?

“Should we have to sign one of those pre-nuptial agreements they talk about in the American newspapers?”

“If you want to do that, I have no objection. You can choose your own lawyers and I’ll even pay for them.”

He saw her surrender before she spoke it, cracked a beautiful broad smile and squeezed her hand, which he was still holding.

“You will, won’t you, Yuezhu?”

“Yes, Weilin.” Margaret laughed, looking at his eyes, without reserve now. “Yes, I guess I will.”

Chapter 55

Johnny Liu Mates Expedience with Sincerity

A Chivalrous Gentleman Performs a Second Rescue

The first person Margaret told was Vinnie, the second was Old Shi, and the third was Johnny Liu.

She told Vinnie in his dressing-room before the final Sonnambula. In opera, as in all the performing arts, and also in war, a very great deal of time is spent standing (or sitting) around waiting for things to happen. Opera singers in general like to be at a house early to practice vocalizing, in case there is any peculiarity of the indoor air their voices need to get used to. This is particularly true at the New York Met, which makes extensive use of humidifiers to settle the dust raised by moving huge stage sets around twice a day. Humid air is better for singers than dry air, but it still needs adjusting to. The stage manager of the Met at this time was in any case rather stern about performers being in costume and made up in good time; and so Margaret and Vinnie were sitting in Vinnie’s dressing room twenty minutes before curtain, for an opera which in any case did not require either of them until the third scene.

Vinnie’s expression of surprise and delight was exaggerated by the heavy makeup he was wearing. “So, my Perlinetta? Who is the fortunato?”

Margaret told him. Vinnie’s forehead puckered for a moment, then he recalled.

“The one who is giving us Norma, yes?”

“San ju hua bu li ben hang,” said Margaret, laughing.

“Ohimè, my little pearl, I cannot understand Chinese.”

“It’s an idiom. Means your thoughts never stray far from your profession.”

“But is that one, yes? Very ’andsome fellow, was ’ere the first performance.”

“Yes. That one.”

Vinnie raised himself from his dressing chair and came over to hers. He kneeled down beside her, took her hand and kissed it.

“My blessings, sweet Perlina.” Vinnie raised his face and hands to Heaven. “Dio vi benedica! Voi e lui! Dio vi feliciti!” He stood, beaming down at her. “’E is very rich, is ’e not?”

“Yes, very.” She laughed gaily. “Perhaps we shall buy a house next to yours in Pesaro.”

Vinnie laughed too, loud and happy. “Yes, Perlina, I ’ope you will. We shall feast together on the beach and sing duetti to the seagulls.”

The five minute buzzer sounded. Vinnie was still standing by her, beaming down at her.

“Tonight you will sing ‘Ah! non giunge’ with true feeling,” he said, referring to a famous aria at the end of the opera, in which the heroine, going off to the church to be wed after many tribulations and misunderstandings, sings “human thought cannot conceive the happiness that fills me …”

“I think our path to this marriage has been even more difficult than Amina’s,” said Margaret, naming that heroine.

“But now all will be smooth, ‘sempre uniti in una speme’ [united for ever in one hope] sweet Margherita.” Taking her hands, Vinnie lifted her to her feet and embraced her, folding her against his huge bulk and yet, with the instinct of a professional, keeping her makeup away from his costume, and his from hers.

“I will kiss the bride,” he said, “hafter the opera, when we are abito civile [in plain clothes] again. Now let us go and do our work!”

*

She told Old Shi two days later, calling on him to discuss some minor weaknesses in her chest register that he felt had been revealed by the Sonnambula performances—two of which he had attended.

Old Shi took the news in perfect silence, just sitting and blinking at her for thirty seconds.

“You don’t seem very happy for me,” said Margaret.

“What is the necessity for it?” asked Old Shi.

“Necessity? What an odd thing to say! There’s no necessity. He’s rich and handsome and we’ve known each other since childhood. He’s asked me several times and each time I’ve come closer to accepting. He just wore me down, I guess.”

“You told me he was going to sponsor a Norma for you to sing. Was this a condition?”

“No, of course not. I must say, Old Shi, you might offer me some congratulations.”

“What about all that bitterness between you?”

“Oh, those are things in the past. What’s the use of fretting over them? Human beings have to cope with the present and the future. We shouldn’t be trapped by our past.”

“But knowledge of a person’s past behavior can show us his character.”

“There’s nothing seriously wrong with his character. What he did to me was the kind of thing anybody might do if they had the money to do it.”

“Qin Shi Huang murdered a thousand scholars,” said Old Shi, referring to an evil emperor in ancient times. “But anybody might have done that if they’d been emperor.”

“Really,” said Margaret, somewhat irritated by her teacher’s perfect lack of enthusiasm, “I’m quite old enough to know what I’m doing.”

Old Shi shook his head suddenly several times, as if to clear it after receiving a blow. Then he laughed his odd high laugh and came up from his piano stool to shake her hand.

“Of course, my dear Yuezhu, of course. Forgive me … I’ve had some business matters on my mind. I wish you happiness! Ha ha ha! And since you are to be the wife of a rich man, I am now going to start charging you full rate for your lessons. A hundred dollars an hour! He he he he he!”

*

It was as a matter of principle—the feeling that it would have been wrong for him to find out in any other way—that she sought out Johnny Liu and told him. She called him that Saturday evening and they met for dim sum the next morning, at a restaurant in Flushing. It was some months since she had seen him, so that half an hour was spent catching up on each other’s doings. Johnny had developed an entirely new strategy for getting a Green Card. He had joined a little nest of Chinese dissidents in Flushing. They put out a Chinese-language magazine titled Bitter Herbs, arguing for democracy and freedom in China. There were many small groups of that sort (Johnny told her) all over the western world. It was a movement.

Margaret laughed. “Haven’t the Chinese people had enough of movements?”

“This is a movement against movements, Little Sister, a movement to end movements. This is a movement for freedom and democracy in China, so that China can be a normal country, a peaceful country like the countries of the West, with no more upheavals, no more movements.”

Johnny Liu was quite in earnest. His plan was that when his activities in the movement were sufficiently well known and documented, he could claim political asylum. Since the authorities in China would certainly torture and kill anyone involved in one of these organizations, should the person be foolish enough to go back to China, the claim would be a true one. Yet still, though he had embarked on this course from expediency, Johnny really seemed to have found a kind of home in the group he had joined. He had always hated the communists, Margaret knew; now he had the opportunity to express his hatred in a way that was advantageous to himself. The perfect marriage of expedience and sincerity—entirely suitable to Johnny’s character, she could not help but reflect.

Margaret understood all this very well, yet she could not resist poking fun at him. “What a stinking opportunist!” she mocked, using one of the propaganda phrases from their childhood. “Advancing your own interests under cover of patriotism!”

“Why not, Little Sister? There’s no dishonesty about it. I’d really like to see democracy in our motherland. Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know. I really don’t care about those things. I have my own life, which I try to live as best I can. Why get mixed up in ‘large matters under Heaven’? It’s only making trouble for yourself and your family.”

Margaret told him about her engagement. Johnny knew the name Liang Weilin, of course—every Chinese person in New York knew it—but Margaret had never spoken to Johnny of her ties with William. He was, therefore, perfectly astounded. He sat there frozen for a full half minute, his mouth open loose like an idiot’s, hand poised above the table with a morsel of siu mai in his chopsticks. “Wa!” was all he could say, when he was able to speak. “Wa! Little Sister! One of the richest men in America! How ever did you … Wa!” He laughed. “Oh, I can’t believe it. Is it true?”

“It’s true. We’ve known each other since childhood, actually. I never told you.”

“That’s right, you both come from the same district. I never thought of that. And you’ve been seeing him?”

“Yes.”

“Wa! Waaaaa! Oh, Little Sister, I’m so happy for you!”

This was clearly true. Setting down the siu mai at last, Johnny Liu rose from his seat and reached over to shake her hand, grinning wildly. “Such a rich guy! Oh!—think what it means for your career!You can sing just what you like now.”

“Better than that. He’s going to pay the Met to do an opera for me. Bellini’s Norma.”

“Oh, Heaven, Little Sister, you are the luckiest person alive. I am really happy for you. Hey!—will your husband give some money to our movement? We are very hard up, you know. He could be the next Song Yaoru.” [Referring to a Chinese businessman who had bankrolled Sun Yatsen’s revolution at the beginning of the century, and whose family had then risen to great power and wealth.]

“I don’t think he wants to be a Song Yaoru. But I could make the suggestion.”

Johnny Liu called over the manager and ordered two cups of white liquor. When they arrived, he raised a solemn toast, looking into Margaret’s eyes as he spoke the words.

“To the union of art and wealth, of beauty and enterprise, for the happiness of all and the glory of our motherland, which will one day be prosperous and free, through the efforts and sacrifices of our generation. Ganbei!” [Drain your cup!]

“What a complicated toast!” laughed Margaret. “I’d prefer just to say: To my future happiness, and also to yours, dear Johnny, wherever you may find it. Ganbei!”

*

After Sonnambula Margaret had two back-to-back engagements on the West Coast: a Mozart recital in Los Angeles and a Violetta with San Francisco City Opera. She called William at the Pierre suite when she got back to New York. She assumed he was making some preparations for their wedding, and wanted to ask him; but his voice on the phone sounded small and hesitant, oddly reserved. He asked her to come over that evening, and hung up rather abruptly, without mentioning any arrangement to send a car for her, as she expected. Margaret put it down to his odd, solitary habit of life, and took a radio cab to the Pierre.

When she saw his face she knew something was wrong. He had the look of a man who has not been sleeping much. Margaret had had a vague plan, developed on the plane from San Francisco, to embrace and kiss him when they met. There had never been any physical intimacy between them at all, and if they were to be married the ice must be broken somehow. When she saw him, however, something deterred her. She sat on the sofa in the main room with a glass of tea he brought her; but William seemed not to want to look at her. He sat for a moment and seemed about to say something, then got up and paced across the room.

“Weilin, is something the matter?” Watching him, Margaret felt a shiver of apprehension. Had he changed his mind? But the approaches had all been his, and over a long period. Surely it could not be. But then what?

William sat down again at last in the chair opposite her. “Yuezhu, Yuezhu …” he began—then burst into tears.

Margaret jumped up and went to him. She knelt on the carpet in front of him and put her hand on his arm. “Weilin …”

“No, no.” William stood up and walked away, shaking his head. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and stood there with his back to her, dabbing at his face and snuffling. Margaret had gone from apprehension to alarm. She did not know what to do. She stood up, watching him.

William blew his nose, then turned to face her.

“Yuezhu, you don’t really know me very well. There’s something … Oh, Heaven.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“It’s all right, Weilin. Just tell me. What is it? What is it?”

“I wanted … I want so much to marry you, Yuezhu. You know that.”

“Yes. Of course I know.”

“And I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Put you in danger. I’m sure you know that, too.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.”

“Well … There was something. Something in my life … I didn’t tell you about. Something I hoped I would never have to tell you about. But … Well, there is a guy I know. Knew. He was … I don’t know, I don’t know how to tell you.”

Margaret had not a clue what he was talking about, but was experiencing rising horror just from the sheer force of his own distress, as if a black chasm had opened in the floor between them.

“While you were on the west coast,” William continued, “I saw this guy by chance. I went downtown on business, and I saw him there by the World Trade Center. He looked terrible. Oh! terrible—like a dead man. And when I knew him he was so … healthy and strong. When I saw him I was scared. Scared for me, scared for you.”

William stopped, his mouth too dry for talk. He gathered his thoughts in silence, Margaret looking at him with widening eyes. Millstones; soon to be like the Round Tower. He wished he were dead. Perhaps he soon would be. He remembered Lionel’s ravaged face and taunting words. Yeah, I’ve got it, faggot. Chances are you’ve got it, too, and we’re going to die. Bummer, hey? And walking to his next meeting, walking to try to clear his head, across town through St Paul’s churchyard, that headstone with its artless rhyme:

In Memory of Adam Vandenburgh
Who Departed this Life
October 15th 1798
in the 45th Year of His Age
***
Oh mortal man as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now soon you will be.
Prepare for death and follow me.

“Of course, I had to find out. So I went to see a doctor. A specialist doctor, a hematologist.”

“Hematologist? Have you got a problem with your blood, Weilin?”

“Yes, I … Yes. Yes, I have. Yuezhu, I’m in what they call a high-risk group. That’s why I wanted the test. And Yuezhu …” he turned away from her again, looking away and up, speaking with difficulty, “… it was positive.”

“What? What are you talking about? What was positive?”

“The test. The blood test. It was positive. I hadn’t really thought it would be, hadn’t thought it possible. I wasn’t that … I wasn’t as active … But, yes, it was positive.”

The penny dropped. Margaret stepped back involuntarily, stunned. “You … you’ve got … that disease?”

“I was very foolish. All those years you thought I was living alone, like a hermit. Well, I wasn’t always alone.”

Margaret stared at him. She knew about the disease, of course—had read about it in the Chinese newspapers. It was contagious and fatal. Most of the people who got it were same-sexers, and they got it by doing filthy, unnatural things with each other. You could catch it from a same-sexer, though, by tongfang or even just kissing. This was pretty much the extent of her knowledge. Margaret had never known anyone with the disease, nor had any direct experience of it at all. Now, seeing William in front of her, eyes wild and voice cracking, the thought of the disease in him, of its deadliness and proximity, filled her with terror. Smooth, handsome, well-shaped William; and beneath his clear golden skin this terrible sickness, creeping and growing, destroying him from within. Margaret’s senses, her very reason, were flooded with shock and fear.

“You … you’re like that? And yet you asked me to … Oh! Oh!”

She ran across the room, snatched her coat and bag from the little lobby. While she was fumbling with the door locks, William approached her.

“Yuezhu! Yuezhu! You don’t understand! Don’t leave me, Yuezhu! You’re the only one … Only you know me! Only you can help me! Oh, don’t go, don’t go!”

Margaret got the door open and ran to the private elevator. The security man stepped forward, but she had pressed the button before he could reach it. While she stood waiting for the elevator William came out into the corridor. He did not approach her closely, stopping a few feet away. He spoke in English, presumably so that the bodyguard wouldn’t understand.

“Margaret, you must help me. Now I need you. You’re the only person in the world who knows me well. The only person I feel close to. Please, Margaret, please.”

The elevator would not come. At one end of the short corridor was a fire door. Margaret ran to it and pushed it open. Beyond were stairs—she ran down them. The stairs were endless: down and down, round and round, making her dizzy. She stumbled, falling against the wall, twisting her knee; but the unreasoning fear still had her in its grip, and she righted herself and staggered down, down, down, her calves beginning to ache, blood roaring in her ears.

There was another fire door where the stairs came to an end, and beyond it a corridor that turned and branched. Now there were kitchen noises ahead, and people talking in Spanish. Margaret backtracked, but got lost in a maze of corridors.

Suddenly she was in a large hall where some kind of party or reception was under way. It was a very grand affair, gowns and tuxedos, the glitter of jewelry, seventy or eighty people. Peals of laughter came from a group nearby: a short, fat, white-haired man with a florid Irish face telling something to three slender, beautiful young women. The women lifted their heads up, up at the glittering crystal chandeliers, to laugh, showing all their perfect dentition.

Margaret had come in from some kind of service corridor. The main entrance, big double doors standing open to a wide upward staircase, was at the other end of the room. She began making her way through the elegant crowd, feeling conspicuous in her slacks and sweater even through the fog of fear and confusion.

“Miss Han! Margaret!”

Startled, she stopped. It was an American voice, not William. Someone smiling at her; an oldish man with close-trimmed gray hair and beard and a big hooked nose. She thought he was familiar, but could not place him. Now he was in front of her, and his smile of recognition had turned to a frown of solicitude.

“Miss Han. It is Miss Han, isn’t it?”

“I … I’m sorry … I’m in a big hurry … I don’t know …”

“Jake Robbins. I took you home from the Met Christmas party two years ago. Remember?”

Yes, she remembered; but the remembrance—William’s accusing face, his bitter words, and all that had gone after, down to this very moment—were too much for Margaret. The room tilted, and she fell.

Her swoon lasted only a few seconds. Now she could see a circle of faces above her. People were murmuring concern: “Who is she?” “Give her air!” “Are you all right, honey?”

The man named Jake Robbins was very close, bending over her. He lifted her up in his arms. The smell of him was very pleasant: an attractive aftershave, slight harmonics of gin and sweat. He was surprisingly strong for one she had thought old, carrying her without apparent effort.

“The lady needs a glass of water!” he was calling out, as the cream stuccoed ceiling passed from left to right across Margaret’s field of vision. “Señorita necessidar de un, un what, for Christ’s sake? un vaso di agua, por favor. It’s all right Gerry, I’ll take care of it. I know her. Here, young lady, just lie down here.”

She was lying on a couch, Jake sitting beside her holding her hand and rubbing it gently. “It’s all right,” he kept saying, “it’s all right.” Partygoers were all around, old men and young women, holding glasses and cigarettes, murmuring.

“Do you need a doctor?” asked Jake.

“No, no. I’m … I’ve had a shock, that’s all. Then I got lost … No, I’m all right, really.”

Margaret struggled up, sitting upright on the couch now, her head still dizzy. She wanted to stand, but did not dare try it.

“Seems I shall have to escort you home again,” said Jake, smiling.

“No. It’s all right. I … I’ll be … Oh!” Margaret covered her face with her hands, suddenly overwhelmed by the embarrassment of her position, all the eyes watching her.

“Joe, gimme a hand here, would you? You take that side, I’ll take this. Better put her coat on first.”

Once in the car Margaret was clear-headed. “I don’t want to go home,” she said to Jake. “Don’t want to be alone. I want to be with people.”

“No problem.” Jake said something to the driver, then sat back in the seat. “Place I know,” he said. “There’ll be people around, but it’s quiet.”

“Thank you. Mr … Jake. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Jake’s face looked younger in the random lights of the city coming in through the limo windows. His skin was quite smooth. Not much more than fifty, perhaps.

“It seems my mission in life is to rescue you from distressing situations. Is it something you want to talk about?”

“No. Forgive me, but no. I really don’t. It’s a very private thing.”

“Enough said. I saw your Sonnambula. You were terrific. That lovely aria at the end—oh! so beautiful. And you played your part to perfection. An innocent country girl—you were the heart and soul of injured innocence.”

“It’s not so difficult. You just have to study the music, try to see what was in the composer’s mind. That’s what a good librettist does, and Bellini had the greatest of all librettists. Well, as a singer you do the same. Then everything comes naturally.”

“Yes, I know. The music carries everything.”

Margaret was struggling to remember what Jake did for a living. He had told her, she recalled, on their previous drive together, but whatever he had said was lost to her, if she had ever grasped it at all. Hazarding a guess from his last remark, she said: “You’re in show business, aren’t you?”

Jake laughed easily. “I don’t know about ‘are.’ Unless you count royalties from student productions in Juneau, Alaska. I made my name as a songwriter thirty years ago. Broadway shows. I was the Robbins in Robbins and Schimmer—Harry Schimmer mostly did the music, rest his soul, I mostly did the words. Broadway shows—we had some big hits. Buffalo Bound, did you ever hear of that? Cold Feet?”

“No. I’m sorry. I’ve only been in America three years. I really don’t know anything about popular culture.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I’d be lucky to get a better answer from the average American girl your age. Every dog has his day, and I had mine. The older generation has to step aside and make way for the younger, I believe that. Here, the Carlyle. They have a nice lounge we can sit and talk. Do a little celebrity-spotting, if you like that.”

*

It took Margaret some time to grasp that Jake was courting her. He took her home to Rego Park that first evening, walking her from the car to the door with his hand on her elbow for support and many expressions of concern and encouragement. Next morning a colossal display of flowers was delivered, with a card attached. The card said only: Peace of mind—J.R.

Three days later he appeared in her dressing room after a recital at Brooklyn Academy of Music. The bunch of flowers was much smaller this time; but each one was a perfect, peeping red rose. He chatted with her a few minutes, then, perceiving her exhaustion and discomfort, he left gracefully, though not before he had learned her schedule for the following weeks. At Chicago Opera, where she had a Don Carlo, he appeared before the performance while she was vocalizing in a rehearsal room, and invited her to dinner with him the following evening. Caught unawares, and with no alternative at hand but the four walls and TV set of a room at Ramada Inn, Margaret accepted. They dined at the Everest, overlooking the city, and he told her show business jokes till she laughed too much to go on eating. Still she did not grasp his strategy. He was fifty-four years old, she had learned—he had told her frankly—and it seemed impossible to her that a serious attachment could develop between a man of fifty-four and a woman of twenty-nine. Because she thought it so obviously impossible, she supposed that the rest of the world, including Jake Robbins, saw it the same way.

Jake charmed and soothed her. He was the most worldly person she had ever met. He knew everybody, and was a bottomless well of gossip. He had had dinner with the Kennedys in the White House, and spoke of them as close acquaintances. He knew movie stars and tycoons, writers and artists.

Jake seemed to have no secrets. He had been married, he told her, four times. The second wife had died in a freak accident—decapitated by a boat while water-skiing off one of the Greek islands—but the other three marriages had ended in divorce. Jake expressed great regret over this. Marriage, he averred, was absolutely the best and happiest state for people in general, and everyone ought to be married. He himself had been unmarried now for some years, feeling that after having failed three times he did not want to go into the married state again lightly. He was aware (he explained) that the three failures had been much more his fault than the other parties’, and he was striving to improve himself, to attain a higher level of self-knowledge, in order to live better and be a better husband.

He had divine assistance in this effort at self-redemption. Margaret discovered this at her first visit to his apartment on Fifth.

Jake seemed to have houses and apartments all over. He was very rich, having made a considerable pile from his shows thirty years ago and invested it wisely. There were two apartments just in Manhattan: the big one on Fifth, and what he called the “cozy” one—it had only two bedrooms—in Gramercy Park. This latter was currently occupied by one of his sons, a teenager preparing for college. Jake had stern views on childraising, often declaring that he would leave nothing to his children and do nothing for them once they had graduated college—that they should fend for themselves, as he had had to, and make their own ways in the world.

“To be born poor and then get rich—that’s the greatest thing that can happen to a person,” said Jake. “To be born rich and never have to struggle—that’s one of the worst.”

The apartment on Fifth was spacious and airy, with a grand piano in the largest room at which Jake sat and played numbers from his shows to her, singing the libretto—the lyrics—himself in a creaky baritone. He asked her to sing for him; but Margaret had acquired the instinctive reluctance many professional singers share, for performing impromptu and unpaid. By way of compensation, and with her reluctance in mind, she told him one of the few opera anecdotes she knew.

The Kidnapped Diva

Once a famous soprano was traveling around Italy when she was captured by bandits while crossing the Appenines. The bandits took her to their cave deep in the mountains, where she revealed to them that she was an opera singer. Being Italian, the bandits were of course opera lovers, so there was a general feeling that they should let her go.

Then one of the bandit captains protested: “How do we know she’s an opera singer? We only have her word. Perhaps she’s just playing on our feelings.” Some of the other bandits murmured agreement.

“All right,” said the leader of the bandits, “she will sing for us. Then we shall know whether she’s really a Diva.” Turning to the lady, he ordered her to sing.

The Diva went purple with rage. “Sing here?” she exploded. “In this filthy damp cave? With these terrible acoustics? To a gang of smelly bandits, none of whom has shaved for a month, by all appearances! With no orchestra or conductor or prompt, no costumes or wigs, no makeup? With no box office? I’d rather die! Go ahead, kill me!” Flinging her arms wide in a dramatic gesture, raising her face to Heaven and closing her eyes, she prepared to die.

“Oh, let her go,” said the bandit chief. “Anyone can see she’s an opera singer.”

Jake laughed long and loud at this, and was still chuckling when they sat down to dinner. There was a small bowl of white flowers on the dinner table, and four or five odd little medallions set around. The medallions were all identical. They seemed to be made of wood, and each had impressed on it somehow a colored, varnished photographic image of a bald man in saffron robes. When she saw this, something stirred deep inside Margaret, something she was unwilling to allow into her thoughts. “Who is it?” she inquired.

“That’s the Rinpoche,” said Jake quietly. “My spiritual guide.”

“I thought you were Jewish.”

“By origin, yes. But I haven’t been to temple since Lindy’s wedding.” (Lindy being a daughter from his second marriage.) “This is the man who speaks to my soul.”

The Rinpoche Thigpen (Jake explained) was a holy man with a monastery in the mountains of northern India. He had a small following in the West, and occasionally traveled abroad. Shortly after his last marriage fell apart, Jake had endured a series of painful operations on his throat to remove what might well have been malignancies but turned out not to be. In the despair and depression ensuing from his double misfortune, one of his friends had taken him to hear a talk given by this Rinpoche.

“At first” (Jake continued) “I was bored. Then I got more bored. Here was this middle-aged fat guy in a robe, rumbling on in bad English about the unity of all sentient beings. I was ready to walk out from sheer boredom. Then he said something that caught me. He said—I can still recall the words—he said: ‘We the living are only dead souls on vacation. We are tourists here on earth. We should show courtesy to each other, and respect the monuments and wildlife.’ Well, I thought: Hey, that’s good. I mean, the guy was saying something. After that I started listening. The more I listened, the more I felt that this guy had a message for me, for me—almost as if (though he’d scold me for saying it) he was speaking to me alone. That was in L.A., as it happened, when I was convalescing at the Malibu place. Well, the Rinpoche was just starting out on a cross-country trip, ending in New York, and I followed him all the way across country. By the time he got to New York I was ready to follow him back to India. But he said instead of bringing my life to him, I should bring him into my life, my ordinary American life. He taught me how to meditate, how to still my mind, how to concentrate my spirit on the Good. He turned my life around, Margaret. So I honor him any way I can.” Jake indicated the little wooden medallions.

Margaret listened in silence to this. Still something was tugging at her from deep, deep inside, something premonitory and terrifying, something she would not acknowledge.

“Is he Indian, then, this Rin … Rin-what?”

“Rinpoche. No, he’s Tibetan. He came out from Tibet as a young monk with the Dalai Lama.”

“Yes, the Dalai is their religious leader.”

“The Dalai Lama is the leader of their biggest sect. But they have a lot of sects. Rinpoche Thigpen leads a very small sect, one he established himself, with a message to the whole world. It’s less exclusive, less Tibetan than the others. He teaches in English, and his prayers and sutras are all in English.”

An astute businessman, thought Margaret. Not many rich Americans would go to the trouble of learning Tibetan in order to gain access to spiritual truth. It occurred to her to ask Jake how much money he had given this philosopher, but she thought better of it.

Jake, with the worldly man’s sensitivity to the signals given out by others, must have seen her disdain, though Margaret tried her best to hide it. He never, then or afterwards, tried to proselytize her or teach her anything about his newly-acquired faith. He performed his own devotions in private. When there was a meeting of the Rinpoche’s disciples, as happened every couple of months somewhere in the U.S.A., he slipped away to it almost apologetically, and on returning said nothing of what had transpired unless she asked him. When she did ask him he spoke of the proceedings slowly and carefully, frowning with concentration to try to make clear to her what meant so much to him. Mostly, it seemed, they listened to a lecture and then sat around chanting. For all Jake’s efforts at explanation, Margaret thought the Rinpoche’s teachings banal, and could never participate in Jake’s enthusiasm.

At first Margaret made a poor return to Jake’s frankness about himself, saying nothing to him about William, or for that matter Johnny Liu. So far as Johnny was concerned (she reasoned), there had been nothing but an arrangement of convenience, which could be of no interest to anyone else. The case of William was more difficult. Jake knew there was something between them, because of the incident at the party two years previously. He also knew—everybody knew—that William lived alone in the Pierre, where Margaret had appeared so suddenly in a state of such distress. Whether he had put the two things together in his mind, Margaret was not sure.

Three weeks after their meeting at the Pierre, while they were dining at a vegetarian restaurant Jake liked in Greenwich Village, William came up in conversation. Jake alluded to their first meeting, at the Met Christmas party, and said: “I guess you know who that was talking to you that time.”

“Yes. It was William Leung.”

“Seems he went out of his way to upset you. I can still see the expression on your face.”

“We … knew each other. We come from the same part of China. Our families … were enemies.”

“Enemies? What, some kind of vendetta thing?”

“Vendetta” Margaret knew from the opera librettos. “Mm, yes, something like that. There’s a lot of bitterness. It goes back a long way. Hard to explain.”

Jake put up both his hands to signal the end of his inquiries. “Deep waters for an American boy. I advise you just to stay clear of him.”

“I intend to do exactly that.”

“Rumor has it he’s a fruit.”

“What?” Margaret had not encountered this expression before.

“A fruit. A faggot, a fairy, a pansy, a queen, a queer, a poof, a feygeleh, a mo. Shirt lifter, pillow pounder, fudge tamper, brown hatter. A person of the homosexualist persuasion. A boy that likes boys, sweet Maggie.”

“Oh. I don’t know. I couldn’t say.”

“With his money, I guess he can boff the Statue of Liberty if he feels like it.”

“I really don’t feel comfortable talking about him, Jake.”

“No problem, honey. Hey, look at this—crêpes flambé. The guy’s going to set fire to them, honey. Watch!”

“Boff” was Jake’s habitual term for the act of coition. Margaret thought it the cutest of the several English words she had heard used in reference to this activity. She supposed that Jake wanted to boff her; and since she liked him more the more she saw him, and since he was always a perfect gentleman to her, and since he seemed to be honest and had no bad habits she could discover, she decided she would let him boff her as soon as he made the approach, which he was obviously going to do at some point not very distant in time.

Jake, whose instincts in such matters were infallible, boffed her the weekend after she had arrived at her decision, a month into their new acquaintance. Margaret thought of it as an act of generosity on her part, recompense to this kind and witty old songsmith for his many courtesies. She was surprised to find him an imaginative and indefatigable boffer, possessed of a supple and well-proportioned body, and as much a gentleman to her after the event as before. They were married on her thirtieth birthday in April.

Chapter 56

Moon Pearl Finds Solace at the Seashore

And Braves the Lions in an Ancient Arena

Jake had a house in Southampton, which proved to be a seaside town out at the eastern end of Long Island, two hours’ drive from the city. The house was in a private street, one of several leading down to the beach from a road named Gin Lane, and Margaret fell in love with it at once. It stood behind tall box hedges, and was surrounded by a lawn so mathematically level, green and even Margaret had difficulty believing it was made of real grass. There was a swimming pool behind the house—empty when they first arrived—and a scattering of trees and shrubs to make the lawn more interesting, and a badminton court. Inside the house everything was cool seaside white and cream, the drapes and upholstery all in green, yellow and orange. A corridor leading from the dining-room and kitchen to the bedrooms and sitting-rooms was lined with photographs and mementos from Jake’s career: Jake with President Kennedy, Jake with Marilyn Monroe, Jake with both the Nixons, Jake with a famous baseball player holding his bat, Jake with movie stars in tuxedos or golfing outfits, posters and playbills of Jake’s shows, Jake with the casts of his shows, Jake accepting awards.

Two minutes walk down the road and over some tufted dunes was the beach: clean white sand stretching away east and west, perfectly empty (this was well before Memorial Day), and of course the sea. The sea, almost as quickly as the house, captured Margaret’s heart.

Margaret had spent all her life in inland cities. Father had always meant to take them to Beidaihe, Beijing’s main seaside resort, but had never found the time. Up to this point in her life she knew nothing of the sea but the crowded public beaches Johnny Liu and Maisie patronized. The beach at the end of Ocean Drive was quite different. Here she could be alone with the sea, watch its colors, listen to its voice, stroll on the smooth shining sand between dunes and waterline out of sight of the human world altogether. And in the house, in the bright airy house, she could hear the sea still, very faintly, sighing and murmuring on the outermost edge of consciousness.

They first went to the house during a warm spell at the end of April. Margaret’s schedule—most especially a marathon recording session for a full Traviata, in which everything had gone wrong five times over—had not allowed her a proper honeymoon, but there was a two-week stretch at the end of the season when she had no engagements, and no very pressing rehearsal to do for coming engagements, and Jake took her out there one Wednesday morning when the roads were clear, driving the car he kept in a parking garage beneath the Fifth Avenue apartment. He had had servants living in the house all winter, a shy couple from one of the Central American countries, Maria officially cook, Rogelio officially chauffeur as soon as he passed his test (he had tried four times), and the two of them sharing all other duties as best they saw fit. They were dark, stocky people in the aboriginal mold, uncouth-looking at a first glance; but when the bags had been unloaded and Margaret’s tour of the house completed, they stepped out of the kitchen together with a lovely basket of flowers they had prepared for her. Rogelio had woven the basket himself using twigs taken from the bushes at the end of the lane, and his wife had grown the flowers in window-boxes on the patio outside their own apartment. Awkward in their little ceremony, they giggled and blushed, welcoming her as the new bride.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Margaret. “I know I shall be happy here. Such a beautiful house!”

This late honeymoon was brief and quite private. They walked the beach, as far as Cooper’s Neck and Flying Point. They ate lobster at the American and Long Island Duck in Le Chef. Together they sampled the latest exercise fad: rollerblading. Margaret mastered the essentials in half a day, and they cruised up and down Ocean Drive together, Jake—an irredeemably uncoordinated person when not in bed—holding on to her for balance, the two of them laughing, laughing, quaffing great gulps of the clear seaside air.

And they socialized. Southampton in the summer, Margaret learned, was full of famous and glamorous people, who all kept houses there, but few arrived before June. Those few who did, and with whom Jake was on terms, paid courtesy calls, and were called on in turn.

There were two or three parties, but they were quiet, casual affairs. The first, and therefore the one Margaret remembered most vividly, was at the house of a famous novelist named Joel Kaplan, a virile-looking but white-haired Jewish man a few years older than Jake, and most of the participants were of that heritage and generation, all old friends from Jake’s Broadway days. The principal exception was a lady pop singer lately turned movie star, and even more lately director, who had a terrifying reputation for perfectionism and the acquisition of men twenty years her junior. This person was known to everybody, to the whole world indeed, simply as Jennifer. On this occasion she was without a partner, and won Margaret quickly with her charm and plain-spokenness, and the two of them sat off on a sofa most of the evening talking about voice production and recording contracts.

*

Jake’s friends fell into two distinct categories. Margaret thought of them to herself as the White Heads and—using a phrase she had heard Jake use, though not in this context—the Air Heads.

The White Heads were almost all writers of one sort or another: playwrights, script writers for the movies, song writers, novelists. Jake had known these people for decades, since the time of his own great successes. He rarely did business with them now. Few of them were, in fact, very active. Most had made their names long ago, like Jake, and were content now to live on their royalties or investments, keeping their names alive with an occasional book review, or a piece in New Yorker, or a revival, or perhaps putting out a well-turned, well-reviewed, little-read novel every five years. They lived either in Manhattan or out at the east end of Long Island. Some lived in Manhattan year-round; some lived out on the Island year round; some summered on the Island and wintered in Manhattan; and Joel Kaplan, famously eccentric, wintered on the Island and summered in Manhattan.

Practically all of them were Jewish, though none took the religion of their ancestors very seriously, for all Margaret could see. Their houses and apartments were untidy and full of books. The men smoked pipes, or not at all, wore corduroy trousers and button-up cardigans in winter, khaki slacks and smocks in summer. The women chain-smoked Nat Sherman cigarettes and wore pants suits year-round. Men and women alike drank liquor in quantities that seemed to Margaret astounding, though they never seemed to get drunk. They all had a difficult, allusive way of speaking that Margaret often could not follow, and made jokes she had to have explained to her. For these reasons she never quite felt at ease with them, though she knew Jake liked their company for nostalgic reasons. Towards her they were courteous and considerate, often plying her with questions about her country, which they had all visited at some point, but which none of them seemed to know anything at all about. Most had a good, if not deep, knowledge of opera, and listened in to the Saturday broadcasts from the Met even if they kept up no subscription. Margaret thought any one of them could get a few lines into “Un bel di” or “Che gelida manina,” though of course with no vocal quality to speak of.

None of the men ever made himself a pest to Margaret, though she thought she often recognized the glimmer of lust when they were speaking with her. The greatest danger she experienced from them was their habit of recommending books for her to read—or, worse yet, actually lending her books. Margaret had only a slow command of written English, and it would have required several years of uninterrupted effort for her to get through all the books that she was urged to read that spring and summer in Southampton. She could not even keep clear in her mind who had pressed which book on her, and lived in fear that she might be asked out of the blue for an opinion on something someone supposed she had read on his recommendation.

“Smile sweetly, say you thought it was marvelous, and ask ’em to get you another drink,” advised Jake, himself a keen reader.

The Air Heads were a younger crowd. They were active in show business, though in most cases not at the highest levels. The men tended to be agents, producers or lounge singers; the women actresses, dancers, or assistants of various kinds, attached in some way or other to the men. Jake was involved with these people because he helped finance some of their productions. Dabbling, he called it, dabbling in show business. Keeping my hand in.

“There’s a line in one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother,” explained Jake once while they were lounging by the pool at Southampton. “Something about ‘the joy that comes over a man when he has found his work.’ Well, show business is my work and my joy. I can’t leave it alone. It doesn’t need me any more, but I still need it.”

Margaret could see that he really liked the company of the Air Heads, too, for reasons quite different from those that bound him to the White Heads. That latter was shared background, shared youth, shared humor. This was the fizz and glitter of fashion and style, being in touch (though mostly at one remove) with names that everyone knew, that were on movie posters and TV credits, that filled the gossip columns. This was what kept Jake alive, kept him young, or at any rate younger than his age.

Margaret herself found the Air Heads easier to mix with than the White Heads. Their conversation was lighter, their vocabularies smaller, and they never recommended—nor, so far as she could tell, read—any books at all. None of them went to the opera. “Bellini,” to these people, was the name of a drink—peach juice in champagne. A lot of them lived on the west coast, where Jake also kept a house, a house Margaret never saw. They all exercised constantly—several were familiar with the Iron Bride—and the younger ones all had very beautiful bodies. They lived in a cloud of easy-going eroticism, changing partners often. They touched each other all the time: stroking, patting, caressing, with what precise import Margaret could never quite calculate, such open intimacies being quite outside her experience and alien to her background. They did not drink much liquor; but when they did drink, they got helplessly drunk right away, and flushed and talked far too loud and laughed far too much and made disgraceful suggestions to her—not only the men, either.

“Takes a woman to please a woman,” breathed one young beauty into Margaret’s ear during a pool party at the Southampton house one evening in June. Margaret had a cotton jacket on over her bikini—in spite of repeated and extravagant compliments from Jake, she had always felt direly self-conscious wearing the bikini alone—and had been getting a lot of the touching and stroking, and one or two frank passes. This one took her unawares, however. The beauty was five years her junior, at least, with a sensational figure, lovely straight blonde hair, and a minor career in daytime TV.

“I’m afraid I’m not interested in that sort of thing at all,” she responded.

“Poor old Jake then,” said the girl inexplicably, staggering away.

Other than Jake himself, the only person who seemed equally at ease with both the White Heads and the Air Heads was Jennifer. Margaret thought that in fact Jennifer would be at ease anywhere at all. Jennifer’s self-assurance was as solid and indestructible as the Great Wall. She seemed to have known Jake for twenty years, and they were buddies in the American style, with many private jokes and familiar mock insults. Margaret thought at first that they must have had an affair at some time in the distant past; but both, asked separately, denied it. Jennifer had her own house in Southampton; a marvelous old folly right behind the dunes, built on a circular floor plan and rising four stories high, to look directly out over the ocean. Margaret happened to be out on tour on both the occasions Jennifer threw a party, so she was never inside Jennifer’s house, but Jennifer was at most of the parties Jake attended and soon took Margaret under her wing, showing her drink and food etiquette, teaching her how to avoid the worst nuisances among the party guests, filling her in on all relevant gossip.

After the first honeymoon excursion in April the Southampton house was in Margaret’s mind all that spring and summer when she was not in residence. She was only able to actually be there four times, and for only a few days each time. She was in Europe for much of the season, working the open-air festivals in Italy and those northern houses that gave summer performances. All the while, wherever she found herself, the airy white house behind the box hedges glowed as a cool, comforting presence in her mind. It was as well that it did; for this was the summer of the claques.

*

It happened first in the English town of Brighton. This, too, was a seaside town, though quite a different one from Southampton. It was a favorite resort of the London middle classes, with many small hotels and restaurants, a pier and a crowded beach, the pleasure palace of a nineteenth-century Prince Regent, and a municipal council always fearful that the reputation of sedate gentility the town had held on to against all odds might be overwhelmed by a proletarian tide. As part of their endless campaign to retain the affections of the southern English bourgeoisie, the city fathers had instituted an opera festival for the second week of June, and Colman had booked her in the previous summer as Mozart’s Countess. It was a part Margaret could have sung in her sleep; and Brighton was only a stopover on the way to the European festivals, so she had invested no great effort in preparation.

The first performance was routine, the inexpert, out-of-season audience applauding in the wrong places and failing to notice the singers’ errors. At the second performance, however, there was a rowdy element in the balcony of the small old theater. They seemed particularly intent on embarrassing Margaret, and in fact first made their presence known in “Porgi, amor,” her cavatina. Fortunately it was one of the first arias Margaret had ever mastered, and this was an audience she did not need to impress—most of them were sufficiently impressed to find themselves attending an opera at all—so she sang on automatic pilot, trying without success to make out the faces of the catcallers through the glare of the stage lights. They started up again each time she appeared, gaining in boldness each time, quite spoiling the first act finale. The other singers were furious.

“Bloody skinheads,” said Figaro to Margaret. “They don’t like you because you’re Chinese.” He went on to explain that there was now a public debate in Britain about giving citizenship to the people of Hong Kong, for the benefit of those of them who might not want to live under Communist rule after 1997, and that right-wing fringe groups had been demonstrating against the proposal.

“Though God knows what they’re doing in a Mozart performance,” he added.

Whatever they were doing, they were soon stopped from doing it. Responding to complaints from either the audience or the performers, management had the hooligans ejected after the second act. Margaret delivered a fine, uninterrupted “Dov’è sono” and the Count was outwitted and Susanna’s honor preserved without further incident.

Margaret would have forgotten the whole silly business—all kinds of unaccountable things occur at opera performances—had it not started up again in Europe.

It did not happen right away. She sang Gilda in Amsterdam and Mimi in Düsseldorf with no disturbance, then flew back to New York for a week, during which time she said nothing about the Brighton disturbance.

Then, at Stuttgart, the business repeated itself, even down to the position of the troublemakers in the hall. They were not so loud this time, but it was an opera Margaret was not very secure with—Rossini’s Cenerentola, one of her old mezzo parts from what she thought of as her pre-Capuleti career, with a tessitura even lower than she remembered—and she lost her place once or twice under the distraction before the rowdies were escorted out. The house was very nice about it, both the general manager and the conductor coming down to her dressing room after the performance to apologize. Neither spoke good English, but their sincerity was plain.

“So anstössig! In Italy, perhaps, but here—unverzeilich. Zere are no claques in Chermany.”

The word “claque” seemed to be international. It now began following Margaret round southern Europe. At Bregenz Festival in Austria, held on a stage built out over Lake Constance, the most spectacular setting Margaret had yet seen, the claque was relentless. Here they were up against an audience of real opera-lovers, though, who had paid top dollar for their tickets, and they met some spirited resistance. A considerable fight broke out in the audience and the performance had to be stopped while marshals came in to settle matters. Even after the fight there was still some catcalling at Margaret; but the audience had the last word, applauding her loud and long at the end—quite unjustifiably, she knew, as her singing had been below par.

Back in New York, she learned that her troubles had been in the newspapers. Jake and his friends were sympathetic, but counseled stoicism.

“That’s life on the stage,” said Jennifer at one of the Southampton parties. “That’s life with an audience. You just have to stare them down. All show business is really just lion-taming: either you win the fuckers’ hearts, or they eat you.”

*

Late summer Margaret had an Italian tour. She knew she now had a small but enthusiastic following in Italy. They had christened her “La Cinesa” [the Chinese lady], and made her first CD a considerable success in the peninsula, and even begun to send her fan mail in care of the recording company (somewhat to Margaret’s distress, as she could read handwritten Italian only with difficulty). From this she supposed that whatever grudge it was that this small minority of opera-goers in Britain and Germany might have against her would not appear in Italy; or, if it appeared, that it would not be tolerated. She therefore crossed the Alps with relief, and prepared for her first appearance at the festival in Ravenna.

The Ravenna performance was held in the open, in one of the town’s piazzas. It was a concert, herself and three other singers—mezzo, tenor, baritone—all first or second rank Italian stars. Margaret was to sing the romanza from I Capuleti, “Ah, fors’ è lui” from Traviata, “Ah! non credea mirarti” from Sonnambula and, with all three of the others together, the quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Rigoletto. In reserve for encores she had “Vissi d’arte” and the rondò “Nacqui all’affanno” from Cenerentola. The claque started up at once, in the Capuleti romanza, and gave her no peace even in the quartet. They were less obvious than they had been north of the Alps, picking on the most difficult passages to disturb her, pushing the rest of the audience just as far as they could without being ejected—almost (the thought occurred to Margaret for the first time) as if it were the same claque, honing their act.

None of the other performers took it very seriously. They were all bel canto war-horses from the Italian circuit, who had trodden every creaking board of every house from Catania to Milan, and were schooled by long custom to ignore rowdy loggionisti up to the point where their lives were actually in danger. There was not one of them who did not think a sore throat ten times more terrifying than a hostile claque.

At Spoleto it was the same: calling, hissing and slow handclapping at critical points in the performance, all from one small section of the audience. Now Margaret felt sure this was a single traveling claque; and with this came the realization that such a thing could have been organized and financed by only one person. She determined to ignore it, to sing through it, but it began to wear on her nerves none the less. Not so much the noise itself—though that was evil enough, especially the hissing—as the anticipation of it, standing waiting for one’s cue, looking out at the dim ranks of faces beyond the lights, knowing that the claque was there, judging its moment, waiting to pounce.

There were two performances at Spoleto. In the second, the claque was as bold as it had yet been in Italy, drawing some reaction from the audience, but again subsiding before any actual fighting broke out. Margaret spoke to the festival director; but this was Italy, and the director was satisfied to have got to the overture without a walkout by the orchestra, the stage hands, the electricians or dressers, and without disappointed fans having ripped out his seats because the tenor missed a high C. He shrugged big shrugs, smiled embarrassed smiles, and said there was nothing to be done, the loggionisti would always have the last word.

“But I don’t believe these are regular loggionisti,” explained Margaret. “It’s an organized claque.”

“Per’aps you should ’ire a counter claque,” suggested the director.

“Then there would just be twice as much noise from their yelling at each other. Nobody would hear me sing at all.”

The director thought this a great joke, and laughed heartily. “Ah, sì, davvero, questo è il mondo dell’opera!”

At Verona she was able to counterattack for once. This was another open-air performance, held in the dramatic ruins of the first-century coliseum. Here Margaret was singing a role completely new to her, one she had rehearsed for relentlessly before leaving New York, badgering Old Shi for extra lessons, spending hours poring over the full orchestra score. It was the title role in Cherubini’s Medea, a dismal tale of a vengeful woman in ancient Greece. The calling and slow-handclapping had begun early in the first act, been hushed down a couple of times but always started up again.

Margaret was not, in fact, singing at her best, having suffered a slight summer cold since Spoleto. At the very end of that first act Medea confronts her lover, Jason, who is preparing to marry another woman. She pleads for his love, and repeatedly accuses him of cruelty. The scene contains several dramatic high notes, one of which Margaret rather conspicuously missed. The claque, of course, seized on this. They were on their feet shouting, stamping, jabbing down with their thumbs in a gesture older than the amphitheater itself, as old as their civilization.

Since the flat note had been heard by everyone, they had the support of the regular loggionisti this time, and between them they might have torn the ancient structure apart had not the audience contained a high proportion of tourists who sat grinning through the uproar, taking it all as part of the show. Opera in Italy, they were thinking to themselves in English, German and Japanese. This is the real thing! Lions and Christians! Even so, the noise went on for some minutes.

Margaret looked appealingly to Jason, but Jason only shrugged. You dropped the note, you pay the price, said his shrug. She turned to the conductor, but he would not even look at her. Embarrassed, he was pretending to scrutinize his score. Margaret could see a vigorous argument going on offstage between King Creon and his Captain of the Guard, with much hand talk; but she could not hear the words, and this being Italy it might as well have been about performance fees or the local soccer team as the justice or otherwise of the treatment she was getting from the claque.

Margaret looked out past the stage lights, across the ancient arena, where gladiators had fought and died two thousand years before. Up above the tiered seats rising on every side she could make out the remains of the outer walls in the distance, black and majestic against the dark sky. The neutral element of the audience, the tourists, were smiling, enjoying the disturbance. It was all entertainment to them. Others, she could see, were shouting back at the claque, even shaking fists at them. The claque itself was concentrated over towards her left. They were standing, giving her the thumbs-down, shouting. Through the glare of the lights she could make out some of the nearer faces. There were women among them, she was surprised to see, and one or two who looked like orientals.

William! Now she felt certain. This was his new revenge. She had run from him when she learned his true nature, and this was his revenge. How on earth had he organized it, so far from home? But of course, travel was no problem for him—perhaps he himself was even there in the claque—and to hire a few roughs to hiss and stamp at the opera would be very little inconvenience for him. It could be done in any town. Or he could—as she believed was the case—just do it once, hire a group of bullies in one place, then fly them round Europe on a chartered plane. Round the world, if he pleased. Damn William—she could never escape him. She had been naive to think that all could be cleared between them. Of course it could not be, could not ever be. Forgiveness is more difficult for us Chinese than for any other people. So very difficult! Too difficult for William, clearly. And now this was his new revenge for the new wrong she had done him; but she did not doubt he still bore the ancient grudge too, for his father and mother. Damn him!

Cornered and helpless, Margaret retreated into cold, purposeless rage. She stepped forward to the front of the stage and stood there with her hands on her hips, peering through the glare at the claque. Jennifer’s advice came to mind: You just have to stare them down. Well, she would stare—and chastise, too. When their noise allowed it she intended to curse them—in her own language, perhaps, the language she knew best to curse in—what did it matter? They were just working for pay, they would not be deterred by anything she said. She might as well vent. At least these barbarians would learn that the daughter of a PLA man cannot have her will broken by hired mercenaries.

As it happened, however, and before the noise had sufficiently subsided, the conductor tapped his lectern, made a call to the orchestra, and the music started up again. Hearing the music, the claque subsided. The orchestra had backed off a few measures, and proceeded to play through the section Margaret had just sung, perhaps in order to give her a chance to get back into the role. By chance, the next word Medea was required to sing was crudele!—“cruel man.” Still there at stage front, arms akimbo, staring down the claque, Margaret found herself picked up by the music, carried into the libretto she knew so well, still cold with rage, but a singer, a professional, with a role to play and notes to sing. Almost without thought she uttered the word, bringing it up with full chest register, hurling it out into the shadowy mass of pale faces beyond the lights.

“Crudele!”

The reaction astonished her. Everyone seemed to stand at once, causing a peculiar visual illusion of the entire arena, the earth herself, tilting towards the stage. A mighty shouted roar rolled down the tiers of seats, striking the stage with the force of a thunderclap. For an instant Margaret was terrified; then she saw from the nearer faces that they were applauding her, clapping their hands in the air above their heads, and the roar, repeated again and again, was Brava! Brava la Cinesa! Seat cushions pattered on to the stage around her, thrown from the audience—a mark of approval in this house, she had been forewarned. Jason himself was applauding, grinning and nodding encouragement at her. Offstage the King, his daughter, and the comprimarios were all clapping and calling Brava! Brava! The conductor himself was smiling now, no longer embarrassed. Margaret’s rage all melted in the warmth, the peculiar hot rush of primitive animal love that only stage performers know. She took the rest of the performance in stride, though working carefully with her top. The claque attempted one or two more interruptions, but were at once booed down by the rest of the audience, and at the end the curtain calls (so she thought of them, though on this open stage there was no curtain) lasted half an hour.

Glowing from her vindication at Verona, Margaret supposed the claque would give no further trouble. It was with a sinking heart that she heard the hissing start up again in Venice, in Parma and in Rome. It wore her down, and in Pesaro—where Vinnie Cinelli kept a house, and Rossini had been born—it finally became too much. She heard her voice wobbling in the cavatina, even before the claque had made itself known. Straining to compensate, she began sharping her high notes; then the claque started up, and were merciless, and the loggionisti joined in, and Margaret called for her understudy at the end of the first act.

Vinnie was working the southern hemisphere but Margaret had taken up his standing invitation of hospitality at his home, on the sea coast a few miles from the town. Vinnie’s wife Nella had been at the performance. Very well accustomed to the ups and downs of operatic careers, Nella soothed and consoled.

“Barbarians,” she said, and added some more Italian words Margaret could not catch. “It is organized, you can be sure. You have an enemy. Your enemy is organizing these disturbances. You must find out who it is, this enemy, and shame him.”

“I know who it is,” said Margaret. “He has no shame. He has nothing to lose.”

Margaret was supposed to have one more engagement, in Naples, but she could not face the claque. She canceled, called Colman to tell him, and took the first flight she could find back to New York.

*

Margaret took an ordinary cab from the airport, not having thought to book a car. Halfway across Queens the cab breasted a rise and the night-time profile of Manhattan Island came into view in all its splendor. Seeing it, Margaret felt great relief. This was her home. Here were such friends as she had: Johnny Liu, Colman, Professor Shi. Here was Jake with his sharp sardonic humor and unflappable worldliness. Here was the Met, where she had first entered the broad public consciousness. The myriad lights of Manhattan seemed to be greeting her, welcoming her. She approached the city now as many another—many millions of others—had come before her: with hope and relief, putting behind her the arbitrary cruelties of the Old World.

It was past midnight when she reached the apartment on Fifth Avenue. The cab driver—who knew very well the connection between a Fifth Avenue address and the opportunity for a fat tip—and the night doorman helped unload her bags, getting them all into the elevator for her. She rode up alone, but regretted having done so almost as soon as the elevator was under way, thinking it much more likely than not—this was early September—that Jake would be at the Southampton house. She had not called to tell him she was breaking off the tour; indeed, she had not called him at all, never having acquired the American notion of social telephoning, regarding the instrument merely as a business device. Well, she could get someone to help bring the bags out of the elevator—the doormen could always find assistance for that sort of thing.

Margaret left the elevator door locked open and walked through the lobby into the living room. From the corridor at the far end she could see a light. Jake was home after all then. She felt glad, looking forward to his presence, wanting to dissolve the pain and rancor of Europe in his worldliness—hear him diminish it by telling anecdotes of hostile audiences his own shows had faced, failures he had endured.

As Margaret turned into the corridor she heard the toilet flush in the bathroom at the other end. Something, some sixth sense, made her stop. A girl came out of the bathroom. She was a black girl, slender and well-formed, not much older than twenty, and entirely naked.

*

“It’s tough for me,” Jake said. “You being away so much. I mean, hey, Maggie—I’m a social animal. Around people all the time. What am I gonna do, after being all evening at a party with wall to wall beautiful chicks? Go home and fondle my dongle? No, I’m not going to do that.”

“But you knew about my career when we got married. You knew I’d have to travel.”

“Yeah, I knew.” Jake made a little laugh and shook his head. He was standing by the living-room window looking out, hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown. This was six o’clock in the morning, the sky brightening, the city beginning to come alive below them, the Park all shrouded in mist. The black girl had dressed and gone home, crossing the apartment with great aplomb under the circumstances, not looking at Margaret at all.

“How many?” asked Margaret.

“Huh?”

“How many have there been? This summer—since we got married. Don’t tell me that was the only one.”

“I can’t help it,” Jake said. “I’m really sorry, sweetheart. Really sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But I just can’t help it. I see a pretty face, and, kerpow. I’m gone. It’s always been the same. The pattern of my life.”

“How many, Jake?”

“Oh, hell. Three, four. All right, four. That’s my life, babe. The whole pattern of my life.”

“But you told me you felt differently for me. All that stuff about ‘home is the sailor, home from sea.’ The eagle finding his nest, or whatever it was.

When he fancies he is past love,

It is then he meets his last love,

And he loves her as he’s never loved before.

What happened to all that?”

“Wow. You’re a born singer.” Jake laughed, not very authentically. “I’m sure I only played that to you once, and you remember every goddam word.”

“Remembering the words of songs is my job. Don’t change the subject. You told me all those things—so sincere, touching my heart—and then, when I’m out of the country, you’re doing tongfang with black girls.”

“Hey.” Jake had his hands up. “Blackness has nothing to do with it. We’re a multicultural society now. That’s all behind us. I’m an equal opportunity philanderer.”

“Stop trying to make a joke of everything. I was having a terrible time in Europe. Now I’ve got a full schedule in the States to prepare for. And you … you’re doing this … Oh!” Margaret began to cry, sitting down abruptly on the sofa.

Jake came to sit with her, and took up her hand in his. Margaret did not resist.

“Maggie, sweetheart. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m trying to improve myself, truly I am. Please, give me a chance. It’s the worst side of my nature, I know. I shouldn’t yield to it.”

“Yes,” snuffled Margaret. “What about Ring Poncho? How can you explain this to him?”

Jake laughed. “I don’t have to explain things to the Rinpoche. He already knows them. He’ll tell me my mind is a drunken monkey, and I have to lock up the liquor cabinet.”

“What? I don’t understand that.”

“Neither do I, honey. When I do, I’ll be a better person. But it’s a long hard road.”

“It seems it’s going to be hard on me, too.”

“No more than I can help, babe. Look: you’re in town now for a few months, right?”

“Mmm, three trips to Chicago. Concert in San Francisco. Give me a tissue, please?”

Jake went to fetch a box of tissues from the bathroom. In his absence, Margaret reflected. The horror of that first realization had ebbed, and she was beginning to think clearly. What Jake had said had some reason to it, she had to admit. He was sexually very vigorous, remarkably so for his age, and certainly it must be difficult for him when she was away. To that degree she was willing to excuse him.

Her tendency (Margaret was aware) was anyway to give him the benefit of the doubt. She could not dislike Jake, or feel any strong resentment against him. He was what he was, that was all. Those words that had charmed her so had been spoken quite sincerely, she understood that. But Jake’s sincerity was existential and momentary. Like the Air Heads he liked to be with, like all the show-business types, Jake lived by and for the zeitgeist, ever turning and twisting to catch the shifting currents of public taste, of fashion. For them there were not, could not be permanent values; only the mood of the moment. And to catch that mood they had to feel it, to feel it, or else they could not transmit and amplify it. That was the peculiar sincerity of show business. You couldn’t fake it, not if you wanted to be really successful. You had to feel, truly feel, every damn fool trivial emotion the great American public felt. And a month later, when they were feeling something different, you had to feel that with them, too.

She herself (Margaret reflected) was not part of that, and never could be. Even now, even at this turning point, when her marriage had been struck by an earthquake—even now part of her mind was thinking about her voice, about the two big new roles she had to learn for the season: Lucia at the Met, in staggered performances from October through to January, Ponchielli’s La Gioconda in Chicago, likewise spaced out from November to February. The San Francisco concert in February was all old stuff. Of the two new roles, Lucia was technically the more challenging, with a famous mad scene in which—this being bel canto—all the madness had to be expressed musically, the acting dimension requiring nothing much more than wandering around the stage abstractedly with a bloody dagger. La Gioconda was quite different, a mathematician’s opera (she wondered if William knew of it), with six precisely-balanced roles, one for each of the six vocal categories, each allotted a fine aria, and duets for all the most harmonious of the fifteen possible pairings.

That was her, that was Margaret Han: a singer, in her blood and bones, in every cell of her body, a singer of music that had endured for decades or centuries, music that owed nothing to the taste of the moment, that would never die.

Never die: like the earth itself, like the sea. Now she yearned for Southampton, for the airy quiet house, the slow movements of the sea.

When Jake returned he sat with her again and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue, though in fact her tears had already dried. Margaret herself took the responsibility for blowing her nose. When that was done she said: “I want to go to Southampton, Jake. Let’s go to Southampton. Can we go today?”

Chapter 57

Money Can Move the Gods

An Ironically-Named Heroine Comes to Grief

“A strange business to be sure,” said Colman, shaking his head. “What, are we back in the primo ottocènto, with rival singers hiring claques to disrupt our performances?” He leaned back in his big leather chair, shaking his head slowly and frowning across the desk at the tale Margaret had been telling.

“I don’t have any rival singers. It’s William Leung, I know it is.”

Margaret told Colman about William. She gave him the edited version, the one she had given Jake. The truth was too complicated for foreigners to understand, too Chinese. And she did not say anything about her last encounter with William, only that there was an ancient family grievance on his part, a vendetta, driving all his actions against her.

“Saints bless us,” said Colman, “you have a powerful enemy indeed. Powerful indeed, if he can organize claques from three thousand miles away.”

“He has a billion dollars,” said Margaret, exaggerating for simplicity. “What can’t be done, with a billion dollars?”

“Just so, just so. However, I do not think we need fear such activities here. There is no tradition of claques in America, even friendly ones. You should put it from your mind, my dear.”

“That’s all very well, Colman, but I can’t just restrict my career to America. I have to sing in Europe too, you know that.”

“Indeed you do. But you have no foreign engagements till, let me see …” Colman consulted his diary, “… February 24th, Covent Garden. Plenty of time for your man Mr, what is it? yes, Mr Leung—plenty of time for him to tire of his sport.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“Let us be optimistic, my dear. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof.”

“He won’t tire of it. He’s Chinese, I understand him. He won’t, he won’t ever.”

“If he does not, then, dear girl, you will just have to rise above it.”

“Rise above it? But he’s destroying my performances! At Bregenz and Verona they stopped the show!”

Colman shook his head and tapped impatiently on his desk with four fat fingers.

“Oh, these summer festivals, Margaret. Tourist spectacles, you know. I am sure you will not see such things in the proper season, not at all.”

“Then I can work no more summer festivals?”

Colman frowned at her across the desk. “Young lady, such things happen. Every stage performer must face them at some time or other. Those who attend your performances have paid their ticket prices, they are entitled to express their opinions. There is a rich and ancient tradition of opera-goers expressing their opinions with the utmost vigor. You must accustom yourself to it. As a matter of actual fact, the world of opera is quite genteel as these things go. At one time, you know, I represented comedians touring the working men’s clubs in England.” Colman chuckled. “Now there were performers with nerves of steel. Why, you could let a bomb off on stage, they would not miss a line, bless them. And the best of them could give as good as they got. As you did, my dear, at Verona. People will be talking of that for years. Crudele!” He laughed his wide, merry laugh, the many chins vibrating in harmony. “Now that’s the way to deal with a claque! Oderint dum metuant!”

This last was Latin, Colman explained at Margaret’s request, something one of the Roman Emperors had said: Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.

“Then there’s nothing more I can do?”

“Short of asking the managements to eject the worst trouble-makers—and I’ll be making representations in the appropriate quarters—no, there is nothing. These people are not breaking any law. If you will forgive my saying so, Margaret, you are up against cultural fundamentals here. Our society is more disorderly, perhaps, than yours. What is democracy, after all, but legitimized disorder? When you are confronted with this disorder, you must meet it face to face, come to terms with it.”

“Stare them down?”

“Precisely. As you did so well at Verona. Remember your mood at that time, remember your response. That must be your benchmark.”

Margaret sighed. “Verona was a fluke. My response was right there in the libretto.”

Colman laughed. “You’ll not be telling me you have come this far in your career without being able to fake a libretto. Now …” he returned to his multidimensional diary and began browsing. “… let us discuss your schedule for next season.”

*

At first it seemed that Colman was right.

There was a concert performance of I Capuleti at Philadelphia, and a recital at Carnegie Hall. Capuleti was so thoroughly internalized by now that Margaret thought she might fly through the romanza again. She had not experienced flying since La sonnambula the previous season, and after the stress and discord of her European experiences she yearned for that serene dissolution. Besides, she was curious to know if she could fly at a concert performance, or whether stage set and costumes were a prerequisite. Flying, however, belonged to that class of phenomena that vanish when sought, and though she acquitted herself well at Philadelphia, Margaret did not fly. Still, both appearances went off without disturbance, and Margaret went to her first Lucia at the Met full of confidence and on excellent form. William’s box was empty, and she thought this a good sign. Then, in the cavatina, which is difficult and is supposed to be very atmospheric, the calling started.

The claque was up in the gods somewhere. The rest of the audience seemed to ignore them, and there was pointedly over-enthusiastic applause at the end of the cavatina—the audience giving her their support against the claque. While the applause was going on there was shouting from the upper levels. A woman up there screamed; more shouting from several voices; murmurs of curiosity in the lower levels, heads turning in the stalls. It was impossible to figure out what was going on through the glare of the stage lights, however, and the orchestra resumed as usual after the applause died down.

Margaret was on stage for all the rest of the long first act, with two important duets to perform. There was no trouble with the first; then, in the second, the claque started up again. Their hissing and calling was relentless, and Margaret lost concentration and tempo towards the end and was happy to see the curtain come down.

Backstage everyone was talking about it. Fischel, the conductor, came to her dressing room, with the stage manager in tow.

“Fot on erd is goink on here?” demanded Fischel, the Hungarian accent out of control. “Zese people are ruinink our performance!”

“Don’t blame me!” Margaret shouted at him, close to tears. “Do you think I organized this? Do you think they are my friends?”

“Is it not you zey are hissink?”

“Of course it is! What do you suggest I do about it?”

“Do apout it? Fy, you must find out who is organizink it and PAY ZEM TO STOP!”

“Your husband’s approach, in any case, is quite the wrong one,” added the stage manager, looking disapproving.

“My husband? What approach?” Jake had been in the audience this evening, Margaret knew—had been with her in her dressing room before the performance, in fact.

“When the disturbance started, your husband went up to the third level and started fighting with one of those involved. There was a general melée, I’m afraid, and several people were ejected. Including your husband.”

“WELL, THANK GOD SOMEBODY IS STANDING UP FOR ME!” Margaret screamed; and got up, and pushed them out, and slammed the door. Afterwards she sat at her dressing table trembling. Dear old Jake! She wished he could be with her; and thought he would be if he could. But having thrown him out through the lobby, they were not likely to let him in by the stage entrance. Margaret could not quite, not altogether say that she had forgiven Jake his infidelities. It was more a case of having put them out of her mind under the press of study and rehearsals. But he had been continuously tender and solicitous to her since her unfortunate discovery, had given up long hours to sit at the piano accompanying her through voice practice, bought her small gifts, soothed and caressed her. Margaret had been telling herself she was too busy to think about her marriage problems; beneath that thought—under cover of it, as it were—she had been quietly acquiescing in Jake’s efforts to mend things.

The claque kept up their barracking all through the opera, wrecking the famous mad scene with hooting and laughing. Margaret sang on fiercely, in a rage; a state of mind not altogether opposed to the musical expression of betrayal and madness. But at the end the curtain calls were perfunctory, the audience disgruntled.

She had been home at the Fifth Avenue apartment half an hour when Jake came in. He had actually been arrested, taken to a police station and given an appearance ticket for the Manhattan Criminal Court the following Sunday. In addition to which, he sported a dull black bruise on the right side of his face.

“Thank you, dear Jake, thank you,” sobbed Margaret, falling into his arms.

*

Jake consulted attorneys, but the attorneys were unanimous that there was no legal action they could take. On this point Colman had been correct: there is no law against hooting at a stage performer, nor any civil wrong that can be tried, except possibly by the house. Jake spoke to the house. Their counsel had told them there might be injunctions that could be issued, if a definite conspiracy could be identified, or a deliberate attempt to disrupt shown; but they chose not to act at this point.

Jake decided that he would go and confront William, but could not get past the bodyguard. He camped out at the entrance to the Pierre for a whole day, from six in the morning till ten thirty at night; no William.

“He’s not going in to the office any more,” Jake reported back after some inquiries. “The Feds are on his case over some insider trading stuff they’re investigating. I understand he’s suspended his business activities. He’s just holed up in there. Nobody sees him. He doesn’t pick up his phone.”

Margaret wondered if this was the whole story. She had not told Jake anything about her last meeting with William, and had heard nothing to indicate that his condition might be publicly known. It was the kind of thing the New York Post would have reported, but there was nothing.

Margaret had begun reading the Post when she was in town, on Johnny Liu’s recommendation, when Johnny had come visiting at the Southampton house one day in June. The Times (said Johnny) was just too much if English was your second language—it would take you all day to read even if you did nothing else. The Post had all the essential news, and besides—Johnny Liu chuckled and nodded his approval—took a strong line against the communists in China. Margaret couldn’t have cared less about the paper’s editorial line, but found the gossip columns and show-business features very useful for keeping herself up to date on those topics that filled the air at parties. William’s name had appeared a couple of times that summer and fall in the business pages in connection with these Wall Street scandals, whose details she could not understand at all; but there was never anything about his private life—not in Liz Smith, not in Cindy Adams, not in the titbits scattered around the cartoon on page six, and of course not in the show-business pages.

So far as the Post was concerned, in fact, Margaret herself was more newsworthy than William. The incident at the Lucia premiere made a story of its own: FISTICUFFS AT THE MET, with a mostly-accurate account of Jake taking on someone for booing at his wife’s performance and being arrested for his trouble. The story was slanted humorously, poking fun at this lapse into street behavior on the part of the opera-going classes, not a very significant proportion of whom, it seemed, were Post readers.

By the time Margaret completed her fourth performance of Lucia the Post had DIVA PLAGUED BY HOSTILE CLAQUES set permanently in type. Someone had gone through the notices of her European appearances that summer and learned of those earlier troubles.

The claque had appeared again at the second, third and fourth Lucias; and as in Europe Margaret thought she could see an improvement in their skills—they were learning just how much annoyance they could cause her without actually stopping the show. It was as if a new claque had been hired for the American season, and had had to find its way into the role. Probably (she thought) that was what had happened.

Most hurtful to Margaret was the attitude of her colleagues. It was not that anyone actually blamed her, only that they treated her as one might the carrier of a painful and highly contagious illness: with sympathy, but with a proper concern for one’s own well-being. A singer who brought trouble into her performances, however unwillingly, was bringing trouble for everyone concerned. Matters were not improved by the fact that by her third Lucia everyone—including Margaret herself—knew that her voice was suffering under the strain.

“He is your xiaoren,” said Old Shi, at a coaching session in his new loft—still in the Village, but twice as big as the other. “Bellini is your guiren, this Liang Weilin is your xiaoren.” [A xiaoren is a personal demon, the opposite of a guiren.] “You must find out how to neutralize his power.”

“To neutralize a billion dollars I shall need a billion dollars,” said Margaret in despair.

*

Vinnie Cinelli was in town in early November, to sing Rodolfo at the Met. Margaret learned of his arrival from Colman, and at once called him at his hotel to invite him to dinner. She took the opportunity to swear him to secrecy, as she had Johnny Liu before his visit to Southampton, on the matter of her engagement to William. There had never been any public announcement, and so far as she knew the only people in the world who knew of it, other than William and herself, were Johnny Liu, Old Shi and Vinnie. She had never told Jake about it. Even the three who knew she and William had planned to marry did not know why the engagement had been so abruptly broken. “We had a disagreement,” was all Margaret had said to any of them.

Vinnie came to dinner accompanied by the lugubrious Rocco, looking more than ever like an unsuccessful mortician. Nella rarely traveled with Vinnie on tour. Vinnie was full of sympathy for Margaret’s difficulties—disinterested sympathy, as they were not scheduled to sing together until the following season.

“’E is a swine to take ’is revenge so,” said Vinnie. “We should go to his ’ouse, we men, and ’orse-whip ’im!”

“He doesn’t live in a house, he lives in a hotel,” said Margaret glumly. “And he has bodyguards.”

“Does the Met not discipline these hooligans?” asked Rocco.

“If people complain, ushers will come and eject them. But getting somebody out from the middle of a row is disruptive in itself,” explained Jake. “And there seems to be a good supply of these characters. Twenty or thirty at each performance, I think. And they have it down to an art, I must say. They know just how far to push the audience and the management.”

“But who actually are they?” asked Rocco, who had a way of getting to the heart of things. “You, Signor Robbins, you have actually tangled with one of these claqueurs, these hired loggionisti. What kind of person was it?”

“A student, I should say. Young, well-dressed. Nothing you would notice in a crowd of opera-goers. I guess that’s the point. He wants them to blend in.”

“’As our friend been hattending the performances ’imself?” askedVinnie.

“He hasn’t been seen anywhere for months,” said Jake. “Retreated deep into his shell, up there in the Pierre. God knows how he’s been organizing it all. People come and go, but no-one knows who they are. The front desk, the doormen—he’s got them all conscripted. Probably tips a thousand bucks a time—they’re not going to say anything.”

“’Ave you been to see ’im, Perlina?” asked Vinnie, turning his dark, searching eyes on her face. Margaret looked down.

“No. No, I won’t. I’d rather face the claque.”

“I suggested she write him, but she won’t even do that.”

“It’s old business. Chinese business. You can’t understand.” Margaret could feel Vinnie’s eyes still on her. “You westerners can’t understand.” She looked up, into Vinnie’s eyes; and could not meet them, and looked over to Jake. Jake gave her a tender smile.

“To write to him,” said Jake, “what can happen? The worst is, he won’t read it.”

Margaret forked at her food in silence.

“When I was a child in Modena,” said Vinnie out of the blue, “I ’eard three things of your Chinese civilization: that it was old, wise and cruel. Of the first two I know nothing and cannot speak, but the cruelty is happarent.”

*

In the second week of November Margaret went to Chicago for La Gioconda. It was a new opera for her, and a new production for the house, so for several days she had not a moment to herself. She was to play the soprano role, La Gioconda herself, “the joyful woman”—a very ironic appellation, as the character endures unrelieved misfortune throughout the opera, eventually sacrificing her life to save that of her lover, only to see him go off with her rival, and preserving her own honor at last by an act of suicide. It is a long and complex opera which needs the singers’ full attention, especially on a first performance.

The claque, with a sensitivity to the structure of the opera that seemed to Margaret, the more she thought about it afterwards, to be truly sadistic, was silent until the last of the four acts. They started up in her great tragic aria, the Suicidio, at the beginning of that act, and systematically destroyed her performance. The audience was spineless, letting the claque do their work with almost none of the angry counter-calling there had been at the Met, and even some laughter at the absurd deflating sallies hurled down from the loge at the most dramatic moments. Poke ’er while she’s warm! urged a distinctly British voice, as the villain stood over La Gioconda’s lifeless body at the very end. When the curtain fell, and Margaret rose, she saw that the villain himself was smiling at this specimen of loggionisti wit.

“How can you think that’s funny?” she screamed at him, in tones that must have been heard through the curtain and over the tepid applause halfway up the stalls. “They’re destroying our opera, and you’re laughing with them!”

“Oh, come on. Don’t we sometimes take ourselves too seriously?” said the offending baritone.

“It’s supposed to be serious! IT’S A TRAGIC OPERA, YOU DAMN FOOL TURTLE EGG DOG FUCKER!” shrieked Margaret, lapsing into Chinese under the stress. She marched off the stage, refusing to take curtain calls to an audience which, she felt, had failed her.

The second performance was not as bad as the first. The house management had apparently been less indulgent than their audience. Ushers had identified some of the troublemakers and refused to admit them for the second performance. There were still enough, though, to break the opera’s dramatic spell and throw Margaret off her carefully-rehearsed notes, and she returned to New York with her nerves frayed and her voice off form.

“You should not become so upset,” said Old Shi. “Until modern times, audiences were always this way. At Mr Shakespeare’s plays young noblemen sat on the stage itself and threw nuts at the players.”

“It’s not the disturbance so much,” said Margaret. “It’s knowing it’s him. I wronged him, wronged him terribly, and this is his revenge. If it were a random thing, without reason, I could endure it. But it’s not without reason.”

She stopped there, having already said more than she really wanted Old Shi to know; and Old Shi, who was sensitive to such things, only looked at her a long moment from his position on the piano stool, and nodded silently, and turned back to his score.

At the two further Lucias in New York the claque was subdued, though still enough of a nuisance to rattle her and displease the audience. In mid-December Margaret flew back to Chicago for two more Giocondas; and here they were loud and obnoxious, coming in now in the first act duet and maintaining a drizzle of distraction all through. The audiences lost patience both times, and there were many empty seats by Act Four. Between the two performances Margaret was called to a conference with the house management, where she got the definite impression they were scolding her for having subjected them to these indignities. Margaret first lost her temper, telling them if they had any idea about running an opera house they would not allow such disturbances. Then she began crying uncontrollably, and the conference broke up in an atmosphere of inconclusive embarrassment.

Chapter 58

Technology Holds Many Traps for the Sly Man

A Mountain of Troubles Turns the Thoughts to Home

The fourth performance of La Gioconda was the day before Jake’s Christmas party. Margaret stayed the night in Chicago and flew back to New York the next day; but her flight was delayed by a snowstorm, and by the time she reached the apartment on Fifth Avenue the party was well under way. Jake came to greet her as soon as he saw her in the living room, taking her in his arms and kissing her on the lips in front of everybody.

“Missed you, baby.” Looking into her eyes.

“Oh, Jake. I’ve had such a bad time.”

“I know, sweetie, it was in the papers.”

“Oh, dear. ‘Diva Plagued by Hostile Claques’?”

Jake laughed. “They’ve moved on. Big ponderous essays about the decline of civility. Forget it. Come on, party! I’ll have Rogelio get your bags. Here’s Jennifer.”

Jennifer had come over as soon as she saw Margaret. She kissed Margaret on the cheek—a real kiss, not the Air Head air kiss Jake liked to make fun of—lifted up one of Margaret’s hands and patted it.

“Those bastards,” she said, “giving you such a hard time. What is it? Is it because you’re Chinese? Some racist thing? I really wonder which way this country’s going.”

Jennifer knew nothing about William. Nobody outside Margaret’s immediate circle knew those things. Jennifer was, in addition to her show business activities, politically involved somehow, and spent a lot of time doing what Jake called “fund raising,” apparently in opposition to the current leadership of the country, toward which she was bitterly hostile.

“It’s one of these right wing racist groups, I’m sure,” repeated Jennifer. “Why else would they pick on you?”

“They don’t pick on the black singers,” pointed out Margaret.

“Oh, then it’s an anti-immigrant thing. Who knows how their sick little minds work, out there on the lunatic fringe? Never mind, honey. Have a drink. How about a Bellini? That’s your fach, isn’t it?” Jennifer squeezed her hand and pealed laughter, pleased to have shown she had absorbed some of the opera jargon Margaret had taught her in Southampton.

Jake had invited Johnny Liu, who was standing at one side with Maisie, looking a little out of it. Margaret took Jennifer over to them.

“Dear old friends of mine,” she introduced. “Johnny and I were voice students together in Beijing. Before I married Jake the three of us used to go bicycle riding in Central Park. Now Johnny’s a dissident. Trying to bring down the Chinese government.” She laughed, to show Jennifer this was not to be taken too seriously. Jennifer, however, could never take politics less than seriously.

“Me too!” She yelled delightedly, clapping her hands together and favoring Johnny with a big smile. “We’re fellow spirits! I’m a dissident myself!”

Maisie didn’t quite get this. “Are you trying to bring down the Chinese government, too?” she asked.

At this point Margaret saw Jake over in one corner. He was in conversation with one of the Air Heads, a pretty young girl with Jewish or Italian looks, referred to in her occasional appearances in the gossip columns of the Post as a “singer-songwriter.” They were too far away and the room too full of voices for Margaret to hear what they were saying, but the girl seemed upset, and Jake seemed to be trying to pacify her. A small group shifted left to let one of the waiters go by, and obscured Margaret’s view. When she could get away from Jennifer and Johnny (Johnny had found his conversational stride and was trying to get a donation out of Jennifer for the Bitter Herbs movement) Jake was alone, and the singer-songwriter girl seemed to have left. Troubled suddenly by dark thoughts, Margaret wanted to ask Jake about the girl, but Jake swept her away to a group that included a famous Austrian conductor, who bowed and kissed her hand and lavished endless heavily-accented praise on her fioritura.

*

The fifth performance of Lucia, at the beginning of January, was a disaster of unusual comprehensiveness. It was not so much the claque, though they made themselves known every time Margaret opened her mouth, as a general systemic failure of the kind that sometimes afflicts large, complex operations—house-movings, product launches, battles.

Fischel had taken ill and the replacement conductor had not properly rehearsed his orchestra. They first played much too loud, so that the singers had to yell over the music; then, realizing his error, the conductor instructed them to play piano, a thing it is very difficult for an orchestra to do without long and careful rehearsal. The strings wobbled, the horns cracked, the woodwinds went flat and the harpist could not be heard at all. Everything that could go wrong did. Spots wandered, curtains got stuck, doors failed to open, and the prompt had a noisy sneezing fit. The little TV screens set in the wings out of sight of the audience, whose purpose was to make the movements of the conductor’s baton visible from any position on stage, went out of commission, and the singers, terrified of losing tempo with an unknown conductor and incapacitated prompt, sang the whole of Acts Two and Three standing square-on to the orchestra, hardly bothering to act.

Nobody was very surprised when, in the melancholy final scene, as the death bell tolled for Lucia while Edgardo was wandering broken-hearted among the graves of his ancestors, he knocked over two different tombstones, the loud thumps of their falling precisely in counter-time with the tolling of the bell. The audience only tittered embarrassedly at the first one; they laughed out loud at the second.

“Post-holidays hangover,” said Arturo, shaking his head as the cast scattered after the lone curtain call.

“Leo’ll have a screaming fit,” commented Alisa, heading for her dressing room.

Whether Fischel had a fit of any kind, Margaret did not discover. That there were grave conferences, at which matters of moment were discussed, was soon apparent. Colman called Margaret at home with the astonishing news.

“Canceling me?” she wailed into the phone. “What do you mean, canceling me?”

“Dear girl, dear girl, don’t take it so badly. I’m sure this is something we can sort out.”

“But they can’t do that! I’m under contract, aren’t I? Seven performances. We’ve only done five. They can’t cancel me!”

“I’ll be going over the contract today with Kevin. They’re saying you have voice problems.” (Kevin was Colman’s lawyer.)

“Of course I have voice problems! It’s these damn claques. This, I mean—there’s only one, I’m sure. Why don’t they do something about the claque?”

“Well, in their own way, they are, my dear, do you not see? The claque is following you, that’s clear to everybody. The management feels: no Margaret, no claque. That’s the real reason they’re canceling you, I’m sure.”

“But they can’t do that! Where is the reason in it? It’s not my fault this damn claque is following me! Why should I be the one to suffer? This is just blaming the victim!”

“My dear Margaret, pray do not panic. I’m sure we can sort it out. Let me get Kevin’s opinion. I’m sure the law must be on your side here. Then we can go to the Met and show them that, and they will reinstate you, so they will. I have no doubt of it. Patience, my dear, patience.”

Margaret practiced patience all that afternoon, never straying far from the phone, wanting to hear what the learned Kevin had to say. Jake was in Miami at some gathering of the Rinpoche’s followers for three days, Rogelio was sitting the Southampton house. Maria spoke only a primitive utilitarian English and with the best will in the world was poor company. Patience exhausted, Margaret called Colman’s number, but got only his answering machine.

Jake was something of a technophobe. He even hated to drive, and had spent a small fortune on driving lessons for Rogelio, eventually getting him through the test on his fifth attempt. He had owned an answering machine when they were first married, but had consigned it to the top shelf of a closet in the master bedroom, claiming he could not operate it. Now Margaret fished it out. After much fiddling she got it hooked up, in case Colman called back, and then left the apartment to pay a call on Old Shi.

Old Shi was out. Margaret made a mental note—one in a long series—to phone ahead, like an American, before going to see people. She walked the streets of Greenwich Village aimlessly for twenty minutes, but a bitter continental wind was blowing across the river from New Jersey, assaulting her ears, face and ankles, and she took a cab over to Chinatown and ate a glum solitary dinner at Gao Hwa, a Shanghainese place favored by Johnny Liu.

Back at the apartment the answering machine was blinking. Margaret pressed PLAY MESSAGES.

“Hi, Jakey. It’s Lucy. It’s official, you knocked me up. Guess my diaphragm sprang a leak. Sorry I guess, but I want you to deal with it, Jake. Somebody decent, Jewish of course, with a clinic I can stay a couple of days, picture window with a view of the Poconos kind of thing. Call me for Christ’s sake, I want you to DEAL WITH IT! Asap. Call me, Jake. Don’t fuck me over on this one, PUR-LEEZE. Okay?”

*

“What happens now?” Margaret asked thirty-six hours later, when all had been exposed and all confessed, and she had demanded what, she knew, she should have demanded the previous September.

“Oh …” Jake shrugged. “… The attorneys move in with brooms and shovels.”

“Attorneys? It sounds awful.”

“It is. But they work most of it out between themselves. We don’t have to get too much involved.”

Margaret looked out across the park. The bitter wind had brought a snowfall in its wake, and all the contours seemed to be emphasized by the snow, by the play of the dull sunshine on their slopes and curves. Some hardy joggers were pounding along on the circuit road. Margaret felt as inwardly cold as the scene beyond the window, and as tired as Jake himself looked.

“I suppose this is what they call an amicable divorce.”

“That’s entirely up to us,” said Jake softly, and a little carefully.

Margaret turned to him. He was sitting in a relaxed position—both arms up on the back of the sofa, rucking up the shoulders of his jacket and spreading it wide around him—but did not actually look relaxed. She considered. She understood nothing of the mechanics of divorce, but was aware that she had a momentary advantage over him somehow.

“Did you really love me, Jake?”

“Yes, honey, I really did.”

“I can’t understand that. Now you say you really loved me. And yes, I can see it’s true. Then, a few months later, you love somebody else.”

“I didn’t love her, Maggie. It was while you were in Chicago the first time. I just needed some relief.”

“Self-control’s really not your strong suit, is it, Jake?”

Not your strong suit. In spite of all the desperation and hopelessness, Margaret could still find herself pleased at having deployed a newly-learned English idiom. Though this particular one had an edge: she had read it in the Post, in a gossip-column piece about Lucy Melton, the singer-songwriter whose voice she had heard on the answering machine. “Nobody ever said money management was her strong suit …” But Jake was discreet, at least—Lucy’s episode with him had not come to the Post’s attention, though her previous one, with an elderly rock star, had received several notices. What a slut! Margaret thought she might not have minded so much if it had been someone with class, though she thought she would still have wanted the divorce. What is marriage without fidelity? Especially now, when she had needed him so much.

Yet still she could not dislike Jake. Seeing him pretending to be at ease there on the sofa, looking as if, in fact, he was all tensed up for her to start screaming at any moment, Margaret thought of what he had said about Kennedy when she had asked him, over one of those restaurant meals early in their courtship, what the President had been like.

“Why, he was a rogue, same as his father. If you knew Jack was going to come calling you locked up the silverware. And your wives and daughters, too. Especially your wives and daughters. But, oh, he was the sweetest rogue you ever met. I never knew a man so hard to dislike, never mind how much you thought you should dislike him. I cried for a week after Jack was shot.”

She felt the same about Jake, in spite of everything. She ought to hate him at this point, she knew she ought; but she could not. He was just what he was, that was all. The whole marriage was a silly mistake, made on the rebound, when she was lonely and disoriented. It had been more her fault than his. Still she felt her advantage, and determined to seize it.

“I want the Southampton House, Jake. I don’t want anything else. I don’t want your money—I can make my own living. I don’t want this place. I don’t want anything else. But I want the Southampton house.”

“Honey, all that stuff we have to set before the attorneys.”

“Fuck the attorneys!” Margaret was shocked, hearing herself curse. She had muttered that American word to herself once or twice, in moments of stress, but did not think she had ever spoken it in conversation. “I’m telling you now,” (she went on) “I want the Southampton house.”

She had startled Jake with her rough speech. He had pulled his head right back against the sofa, and widened his eyes. Now he smiled, and raised his hands an inch from the sofa back, spreading the fingers in surrender.

“You’ve got it, honey. I won’t fight that.”

“And the car,” she said on impulse, seeing how far she could go. Southampton was a long way out, after all.

“Sweetheart, you can’t drive.”

“I’ll learn,” said Margaret. “I’ll damn well learn.”

*

Lunar New Year fell on a Monday in early February. On the Sunday Margaret went to Old Shi’s for the New Year’s Eve feast. Old Shi’s boyfriend was there, and Johnny Liu and Maisie, and someone Johnny had brought along, a dissident recently out of China.

The dissident’s name was Zheng. He was an intellectual, of course: shabbily-dressed and spectacled, but with a cheerful expression. He had held a minor teaching position at Fudan University in Shanghai but had got in trouble with the authorities over an attempt to help the students start their own newspaper. Visiting the States, he had been one of a group of expatriates who had called a news conference in New York to repudiate the Chinese Communist Party, of which all had been members. Granted political asylum, afraid to return to China, but with little English (his field had been Chinese literature), he now faced thirty years of selling life insurance to computer programmers. He did not seem depressed by the prospect, though, and in fact would not admit the possibility that his exile was permanent.

“There are great changes coming in China,” he said, over Old Shi’s Peking duck. “This communist system will not last. The people will not stand for it.”

“Do the people really have a choice?” wondered Old Shi. “The Communist Party may be corrupt, and it may have lost its moral authority, but it still controls the army. ‘Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.’” [Quoting Mao Zedong.]

“‘When the people no longer respect the rulers, how can government be carried on?’” dissident Zheng countered, quoting one of the ancient sages. “Moral authority has always been at the heart of our system. In the West, everything is done by law. In our culture, everything depends on moral relationships. America has seven lawyers for every engineer; in Japan the ratio is exactly opposite. That is the difference between a western democracy and an eastern one. We don’t need so many laws, or so many lawyers. We expect our leaders to give a good example. When they don’t, we discard them—as Americans do when their leaders break the law.”

Old Shi shook his head. “This discarding is not such a neat business. It can last more than a hundred years and produce a mountain of corpses. The fall of a dynasty has always been a terrible disaster. I do not think we should hope for that.”

There was a pause while Old Shi translated the gist of their conversation for the boyfriend, who still spoke no Chinese. Margaret lapsed into her own thoughts. The talk about politics had bored her; but hearing of events in the home country stirred a vague nostalgia. She thought of skating with Baoyu on North Lake, walking up the drive to the Dance Academy early one ice-misted Beijing morning, a hillside flushed with yellow.

“I would like to go back to the ancestor country for a visit,” she said to Johnny Liu, while Old Shi was still translating. “It’s been, oh! more than four years.”

Johnny nodded. “I think it’s a good idea. Take your mind off things.”

Margaret had told Johnny Liu all her troubles, marital and professional. Neither category had improved in the twelfth lunar month. Chicago had canceled her, too, using the same excuse as the Met—“voice problems.” Jake had gone to the west coast while the attorneys began their negotiations, leaving her in the Fifth Avenue apartment with Maria. Colman’s efforts to sound optimistic on the telephone were less and less convincing. Why not go to China? She owed it to Mother, at the very least.

“See this recent change of Presidents here,” Old Shi was saying to dissident Zheng (the Inauguration had been held a few days previously). “One fellow moves out, they hold a little public ceremony, the new fellow moves in. Now: can you imagine such a thing in China? He he he he! Impossible! Nobody would ever move out so quietly. He would have sandbags all round the White House, machine gun nests on the roof, and his own regiment of troops there, and he would say: ‘If you want me out, come and get me out!’ He he he he he he! We Chinese are a mad, jealous people. We can never have democracy. We have not got the democratic temperament. We are a wild, unruly, vengeful people. Democracy was invented by the English, a famously cold race.”

Zheng frowned. “You do an injustice to our people. When have we had the opportunity to practice democracy? Give Old Hundred Names” [i.e. the common people of China] “the right to supervise their leaders, they will behave wisely, I’m sure.”

Old Shi shook his head again. “No. Old Hundred Names has been making koutou to despots and warlords for five thousand years. They have accustomed themselves to it. You might even say they like it. Without a dictator, our country will disintegrate. Every Chinese person, in his bones, wants a dictator, and is ready to worship a dictator. I myself, I confess it, loved Chairman Mao for many years. Didn’t we all?”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “I loved Chairman Mao with all my heart. I still believe he was a great man, a great leader.”

“But your position was privileged,” said Johnny Liu. “You can’t be taken as representative of Old Hundred Names. Army people were shielded from the worst excesses. Nobody in your family was ever struggled, I am sure. You are Ivy League, Little Sister.” Johnny Liu chuckled, pleased with himself for knowing this American idiom. “Ivy League,” he repeated, to augment his satisfaction.

There was another pause for translation. Zheng and Johnny Liu fell to arguing about tactics. Margaret had China clearly in her thoughts, now. Not only her personal China—ice mist and coal smoke, terraced fields and groves of bamboo, snow on the Qinling peaks seen from a train window, skating North Lake beneath the great white stupa—but China in the abstract, the pot-bellied dragon shape that had been on every school-room wall all through her childhood, the sages and poets, emperors in their glory, the bones of her ancestors for ten thousand generations dwelling in the mud, the soil, the coal dust, the fruits of the earth. At some point in the evening she had decided—in the way we often do, without there having been any one moment of decision—to go back to China for a vacation.

“Oh!” said the boyfriend, glowing with enthusiasm, “I should love to see China! The Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the buried army. I do so want to go, but he just won’t.” (He made a mock grimace at Old Shi.) “Says he’s had enough of China to last several lifetimes.”

Old Shi nodded. “Dead place,” he said in English. “Museum culture, no living culture. All living culture copied from America. May as well stay in America. This the original, that the photocopy. China dead place, dead, dead. Creation—what? Adjective? Yes, creative. Creative thinking only in West. Most in America. America creating for whole world, dreaming for whole world. In China, dreams only of past. He he he he he!”

*

Margaret went to see Colman at his office, to tell him of her decision.

“It’s giving in, I know. But with the divorce and all, I really can’t face things right now.”

“My dear Margaret, I beg you to reconsider. At this point in your career …”

“My career? What career? This madman is wrecking my career! And the houses are letting him do it! Why don’t they call the police and arrest these claques? Why don’t they …?” Margaret could not help herself; she began to weep.

Colman came out from behind his desk and stood by her, patting uneasily at her shoulder. “There, my dear, there, there. Won’t you think of going to speak to him? If he sees you …”

“No, no, no,” sobbed Margaret. “No, I won’t.”

“There now, there, and of course you won’t. It’s all right. In any case, I’m sure your Mr Leung cannot continue this nonsense for long. His own circumstances are more and more pressing. I understand a grand jury is to be empaneled. Sure I have no idea what that means, but it sounds mighty forbidding, does it not? If you could only be patient a while.”

Margaret took a tissue from her pocketbook and blew her nose. “I’m all right. All right.” She looked up at him and tried a smile. “Please, Colman. I’m all right now. Sit down, please.”

Colman went back to his desk. Probably just from discomfort, he opened his mighty cathedral of a diary and absently turned some leaves.

“How long is it now since you were back home in China?” he asked, still turning.

“Four, four and a half years.”

“You haven’t seen your family for so long?”

“No. My mother, my brother … No.”

Colman left off fiddling with the diary and looked across the desk at her. His fat pink face wore a frown, the small pale eyes reproving her. At last he looked down, tapped the flat of his hand on the desk once or twice, and sighed.

“Well, if you must, you must, I suppose. Perhaps it is for the best, after all. How long are you planning to be out of circulation?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few months. Let’s say until the fall. I’m sure things will have sorted themselves out by the fall season.”

Colman nodded, apparently reconciled. “I hope so, my dear. I do hope so. But you must keep in touch, let me know.”

“I’m sorry, Colman. It seems so ungrateful. After all you’ve done for me.”

Now Colman laughed, his pink chins wobbling. “Think no more of it, my dear. Singers cancel all the time, so they do. You get poorly, you get pregnant. It’s a feature of our lives. Not altogether a bad one, either. It rolls the dice, you see. Gives young singers an opening. Your own career, my dear—and I mean no slight on your undoubted abilities—was much accelerated when Anna canceled that time in, what was it? Puritani?”

“Capuleti.”

“Ah yes. The houses will manage without you for a while. But not too long, please.”

“It won’t be too long. I just need to get away from these troubles for a while. Recharge my batteries.”

“Just so. Please, do not worry about Mr Leung. I shall do my best to have it put in the papers what he has been doing. We shall shame him out of it, if the G-men don’t keep him busy enough. And relax, dear Margaret. Put these troubles out of your mind.”

“That’s what I want to do, Colman.”

“With my blessing, dear girl.” Colman stood up and reached across the desk for her hand, nodding gently. “With my blessing.”

Chapter 59

Teacher Zou Makes an Attractive Offer

The Students of Beijing Petition the Emperor

Mother had moved back to the southwest after Father died—to Chengdu, her hometown. At first she had lived with her brother, Uncle Fish. Eventually, as the widow of a senior serving officer, and stepmother of another, and with a daughter abroad, she had been given a decent apartment in the inner suburbs, with a separate bedroom and kitchen.

“It’s you being married to an American that counts for most,” she said to Margaret. “It’s government policy now. People who have close relatives married to foreigners are given extra accommodation points so that foreign visitors get a good impression. Different from twenty years ago!” she chuckled. “Then, if you had any connection with foreigners they called you a spy and put you in jail …” Mother stopped herself and dropped her eyes awkwardly, flustered, remembering Margaret’s earlier disgrace.

Mother believed, Margaret knew, that the fuss over Mr Powell had hastened Father’s end. Perhaps it was true. Certainly Mother did not trust herself near the topic; and when she strayed into it accidentally, she showed more distress than the subsequent outcome really justified. Whether that distress was simply because of Father’s death, or from her inability directly to express her blame of Margaret, or through the guilt she felt for nursing that blame, Margaret could not tell.

Mother was more forthright on Margaret’s current situation, when it was explained to her. She strongly disapproved of Margaret’s divorcing Jake.

“Never mind that he likes to play with other women,” she said. “You’re his wife, those other women are not. You have a special position and special responsibilities. In olden times a Chinese gentleman could have several wives. Nobody thought anything of it. To be the main wife was an honor. This chasing after other women—it’s nothing. It’s men’s nature, that’s all. So far as the private thing is concerned, they are like wild beasts, they just can’t control themselves. This American, he’s kept you well provided, hasn’t he? Well, then. ‘Marry a chicken, follow the chicken; marry a dog, follow the dog.’” [Quoting an old saw.]

But it was Mother’s frank way of talking about public things that was most striking to Margaret. They called you a spy and put you in jail. Mother would never have passed such a remark before. She might have thought it, but a lifetime of self-discipline would have told her to keep it well concealed, even from her family. Everybody else was just as loose-tongued. It must (Margaret thought) be something in the air. She had brought a refrigerator for Mother, an American model. She had had to spend half a day at air freight customs in Shanghai, checking it in. When it arrived at Mother’s apartment in Chengdu they called in an electrician to connect it up. The electrician walked slowly round the refrigerator, stroking the gleaming white surface, tapping at the exposed pipes in the back.

“Wa! A real American model! Beautiful! It’ll last you all your lives—not like our Chinese junk!”

And this was said among perfect strangers!

It was the same with the Fish family. No sooner were they together round a table, it seemed, than everyone was grumbling about the country’s problems: the housing problem, the inflation problem, and corruption, corruption, corruption.

“We’re going back to the Old Society,” said Uncle Fish. “The officials can’t live on their salaries, so they’re all taking bribes.”

This was at the banquet. As a well-off foreign relative, Margaret was obliged to stand them all a banquet at Fragrant From Afar, Chengdu’s best restaurant. Margaret had supposed there would be only Mother and Aunt and Uncle Fish and their twin daughters, presumably with husbands. In fact more than twenty adults turned up, with half-a-dozen children of various ages. Margaret was introduced to all of them, but could not keep the relationships in mind. The Fish daughters’ husbands had brought their own siblings and parents; and there seemed to be a collateral branch of the family she had not been aware of, descended from Mother’s father’s brother and on friendly terms with the Fishes. Margaret did not mind. It was good to see so many enjoying themselves, good so easily to give so much pleasure.

Midway through the appetizers, Half Brother walked in. He was stationed in the far northeast, at the other end of the country. Mother had written to tell him of Margaret’s visit, but it had not been clear whether or when he would be able to come to Chengdu. He had never cared for Mother’s side of the family—never truly, in his heart, reconciled himself to Father’s remarriage. Mother grumbled that he did not do as much for her as he undoubtedly could, with his rank and connections. It was therefore doubly surprising, and doubly wonderful, that he should suddenly appear at a gathering of Mother’s clan.

The timing was chance, he insisted as the introductions were being made. He had just flown in, gone to Mother’s apartment, been told by a neighbor where they were. Margaret got up and went to embrace him, tears in her eyes. She had not seen Half Brother in over six years, since Father’s funeral. Though well into his thirties then, his appearance had been of a continuum with all her previous awareness of him: a handsome, fine-looking young man in a military uniform without insignia of rank, his hair cropped as it had been when he was a recruit. Now, at forty, he was quite changed. Middle age showed clearly now, in a thickening at the neck and waist, a fullness of face. His hair was longer, though not of course long, very neatly cut and smoothed down with oil. There had been some change in the uniform regulations; Half Brother was actually wearing a shirt of a very pale military color and neatly-knotted khaki tie with his exceptionally well-cut Soviet-style jacket. The greatest change of all was in his manner—a still sobriety far beyond his youthful bumptiousness or the breezy self-confidence of his early career. Half Brother had acquired gravitas.

Half Brother had brought his wife with him, along with even clearer evidence of middle age: his son, whom Margaret had not met before. The wife, now in her mid thirties, was still a fine-looking woman, with an elegant figure and hair pinned up in a most attractive style. Her outfit—a coral-pink trouser suit with patent-leather black sling-backs and a silk scarf loose at the neck—might have come from Lord and Taylor. Indeed (Margaret thought, taking her cool, narrow hand) she would not have looked out of place at one of Jake’s Southampton parties. Here in provincial China, even at the best restaurant in the capital of the province, she was a sensation. In the screened-off area where Margaret’s party were sitting at three big circular tables, all conversation stopped. Everyone stared at Half Brother’s wife.

Margaret had retained a slight negative impression of Half Brother’s wife from their previous meeting at Father’s funeral. At that time Margaret had been an exile in disgrace. Such slender hopes as she dared have were pinned to Half Brother’s powers of intercession. There is, of course, nothing more irksome to the wife of a man of consequence than the endless demands made on him by less fortunate relatives; and in that spirit, Half Brother’s wife’s attitude to Margaret (so it seemed to Margaret) had been one of reserve, lightly frosted with suspicion. Now the situation was quite different. Margaret was known all over the world, and was married to a rich man. Sister-in-Law’s manner was adjusted accordingly.

“Dear sister!” She actually embraced Margaret, like a westerner. “We have both your CDs. Such a wonderful voice! And your brother tells me you are friends with Xineili.”

“Xineili has been very kind to me,” said Margaret. “Without him I would have no career.” Thinking, though of course not saying: If I still do have a career.

Half Brother and his wife were seated at the main table with Mother and the main contingent of Fishes. The boy, seven years old, went to the kids’ table, where he was greeted with the same silent awe accorded to his parents.

Uncle Fish did not seem inclined to pursue his complaints of corruption in the presence of a military officer, but it did not matter—there was no shortage of conversation. Half Brother was entirely at ease, beaming across at Margaret.

“My little sister! Famous across the world!”

No-one here seemed to have heard anything of her recent professional troubles. Mother would certainly have said something if she knew. Half Brother’s manner showed no reservation or unease. What had loomed so large to Margaret was unknown here, even among those most likely to have been paying attention. So small are our troubles in the busyness of the world; so little space do we occupy in the minds of others.

“Are you in China for a singing engagement?” asked Half Brother’s wife. “We should very much like to get tickets.”

“No. I am taking a break from singing.”

“Your husband is not here with you?”

“I am taking a break from him, too.”

The wife laughed easily, but flicking a glance at Half Brother. Half Brother glanced at Mother, and Aunt and Uncle Fish at each other, and everybody at everybody else. No-one but Mother knew her plans, and Margaret didn’t feel this was the place to broadcast them.

“I just want to have a break,” she repeated. “Do some sightseeing. I hardly know my own country. I’ve never been to Xi’an, for example.”

Half Brother nodded. “There’s a lot to see now. We’re developing very fast. We shall soon be the first power in the world.”

“Do you think so, Half Brother? Ahead even of Russia and America?”

“Russia? Tsei! They’re all washed up. The people are starving. The Party is completely degenerate. The armed forces have lost all discipline, except in a few elite units. America?” He laughed. “If Vietnam defeated them, who can’t defeat them? No, these were the twentieth-century powers. We shall be the power of the next century.”

“I hope it’s true,” said Margaret. “We’ve been poor and backward too long.”

The banquet was a great success, though the collaterals were perhaps overawed by the combined grandeur of a relative from abroad, another who dressed as if she were, and a full colonel in walking-out uniform. Margaret found herself liking Half Brother’s wife, whose name was Huang Li. She was bright and charming, and laughed easily. They were planning to send the boy to college in America, and hoped to go on a visit themselves.

“We would have gone sooner,” said Half Brother. “But you never seemed to stay in one place for long. Now you’re married, we’re hoping you’ll settle.”

*

Half Brother and his family stayed in one of the new hotels—there was no room for them all in Mother’s apartment. They were in Chengdu only three days, then flew back to the northeast, after extracting a promise from Margaret that she would call on them before going back to the States.

The day after Half Brother left Margaret went shopping with Mother in the city center. She had never known Chengdu well. In her childhood it had been a place they went to once or twice a year, to visit with Mother’s relatives. Outside those three or four loci, the city had been unknown to her until this trip. Now she could see that it had been transformed. The market, in her childhood confined to some narrow alleys in the oldest part of the town, seemed to have taken over the entire central district. There were stores with big plate-glass windows now, displaying all kinds of household goods, TV sets and cassette players, colored fabrics, dresses and men’s suits, jewelry. There were restaurants everywhere, some with tables set out on the sidewalk, as if this were Rome or Paris, or Greenwich Village.

It was from one of these alfresco restaurants that Margaret was hailed as she walked with Mother back towards one of the grand new hotels to get a taxi home. Turning she saw a man at one of the tables waving to her. As she looked, he rose from his seat, still waving. A dark-skinned man about her own age.

“Little Sister! Little Sister Han Yuezhu! Don’t you remember me?”

Something about the voice, the line of the hair and the rough, good-natured smile stirred a remote memory.

“Is it you, Mustache?”

Mustache laughed with delight, coming up to her now. He seemed not at all embarrassed, seemed to bear no ill-will for their tearful last parting over seventeen years before, and her subsequent failure to write to him even once. He made a bai in the old-fashioned style, then reached out to shake her hand.

Margaret stifled her own embarrassment, smiled, and shook the offered hand.

“Mother, it’s Mustache, do you remember? From high school in Seven Kill Stele. Before we went to Beijing.”

“I remember.” Mother nodded, somewhat guardedly. She had never liked Mustache, Margaret remembered now. Over and above her belief that Margaret had been too young, or too old, to be making friends with boys, she just hadn’t liked him, had thought him coarse and low-class, a hooligan. Still, she smiled and showed courtesy while Mustache introduced them to his wife, a plump, round-faced woman who had been sitting at the table with him. Mustache, wife and Margaret sat down, but Mother would not join them. She excused herself, insisting she could find her way to the taxi rank at the hotel, and cover the fare.

“My father died in ’82,” said Margaret by way of explanation, when Mother had left and they were all seated again. “She’s alone now, getting a little eccentric.”

Mustache nodded sympathy. “It’s not easy for these older ones. Inflation’s eating up their savings, and they can’t adjust to the new economy.”

Margaret sat back for another session of grumbling about the state of affairs, and the impossibility of living on one’s income; but Mustache wanted to hear about her life. He had had no idea what happened to her after the family left for Beijing. Hearing of Margaret’s career abroad, he was incredulous.

“Foreign opera? I didn’t even know foreigners had opera!”

“Wa!” said the wife. “You mean you are famous in the west? Waaaa!” A hand over her mouth in awe.

Mustache himself (he told her) was a schoolteacher. Graduating from high school, he had been assigned to a clerical job in the sugar-cane processing plant. Then he had sat the college entrance examinations when the province had started them up again in ’77, and got into Chengdu Teachers’ College. Now he was teaching middle school in the city, he and his wife both.

“But looking for some opportunity to start a business,” he said. “You can’t live on a teacher’s salary nowadays.”

“It seems that everybody complains about conditions now,” observed Margaret.

“Of course they do! Nothing gets any better, prices have gone through the roof and the leaders are all fat on corruption. It’s going back to the Old Society.”

Margaret giggled. “I never used to hear Chinese people talking like that.”

“Because Chinese people were stupid,” said Mustache’s wife. “The leaders told us we were living in paradise, and we believed it. Then we got a glimpse of how people live in other countries. Now everybody knows we’ve been taken for a ride. Naturally they feel angry about it.”

“I suppose it’s worse for people like you. Intellectuals, I mean.”

Mustache nodded. “Yes. Our lives are very hard. The teachers all complain. But it’s not just us. The workers are complaining, too. Last year there was a big strike at the steel factory in Doushan.”

“A strike? Wa! Isn’t it against the law?”

“Yes. The authorities were furious. They arrested all the leading agitators and put them in prison. But then they gave the workers a pay increase. That shows they were also scared. You won’t read anything about it in your American papers. Even here, nothing was published. But everybody at the factory knows, everyone in the whole province knows.”

“When everybody’s so dissatisfied, what do you think will happen?”

Mustache laughed. “Who knows? Perhaps we need another revolution.”

His wife nodded. “To tell you the truth, Miss Han, we feel everything is hopeless. All the other countries of the world are moving forward. Only China is sliding backwards. I really think we Chinese are a stupid race. We just don’t know how to organize our society in a reasonable way. Other countries can do it, but we can’t. I sometimes think we’re barbarians, actually—not really civilized at all. If you ask me, what will happen is that China will get poorer and poorer and dirtier and dirtier, until at last a big plague will come up and wipe us all out. Or else the leaders will fall into civil war, and destroy the nation fighting each other with nuclear weapons.”

Margaret could not help but smile at these melancholy prognostications. Mustache’s wife had a round, pink face somewhat like a baby, with dimples on each side of her mouth—a most unlikely messenger for the Angel of Death. It was a warm day in mid-April, and many of the people passing to and fro in the street were in bright summer clothes. Indeed, Margaret thought the standards of dress were much better than she remembered.

“I think we are an ingenious people,” she said. “We invented just about everything, didn’t we? I’m sure we’ll find a way out of these problems.”

Mustache shrugged. “Perhaps. But you did the right thing going to America. I only wish I had the chance.”

They talked of their classmates. Everybody was married. Everybody had had one child, according to the law. Teacher Bai at Elementary School Number Three, for whom Margaret had read the Song of Endless Sorrow, had returned to the school in ’72, but soon after had gone mad and had to be locked up in an asylum. Teacher Zou, the gym instructress who had shown such sympathy to Margaret in her changes, had gone to Chengdu Teachers’ College as a mature student, and married one of the lecturers, a very brilliant man named Xing who published articles in professional journals. Soon afterwards this Xing had gone to Beijing Normal University and got an M.Ed. Then Beijing Normal had asked him to stay as a lecturer. The leaders at Chengdu Teachers’ College weren’t willing to let him go, but Xing had just told them: “Okay, you can keep my file. Keep it as long as you like. I’ll stay here, and ask them to start a new file for me.” Apparently he’d developed some good connections at Beijing Normal, through his translations and articles. They’d given him a nice apartment right in the center of Beijing. The leaders at Chengdu were furious, but there was nothing they could do. Now Teacher Xing had gone to New Zealand for a year on some sort of exchange program. His wife was in Chengdu: her mother was dying of cancer, and Teacher Zou—now Mrs Xing—was nursing her.

“You should go to visit her. I know the address. Teacher Zou was such a good teacher to us, you know. And she especially liked you.”

*

After three weeks at home Margaret felt restless. There was nothing much to do. It had been fun, the first few days, to walk out in the street in her New York outfits and feel the eyes of the people following her, but this was a pleasure that soon palled. The TV programs were awful. There were one or two good movies, but the noise and stink in the movie theaters disgusted her. The local opera had started up again when the Cultural Revolution ended, and Margaret had been twice with Uncle Fish. It was interesting, from her perspective as a seasoned performer, to see this other genre, stirring memories from her childhood, but the stagings seemed very amateurish after the Met and La Scala, the jokes coarse, the acting absurdly mannered.

It had been good to see Mother again, and even more so Half Brother; but now Half Brother had gone back to the northeast, and the narrowness and pettiness of Mother’s life was becoming more and more oppressive. Margaret turned her thoughts to traveling. She had been telling everyone she planned to go sightseeing. Well, then, she might as well do something about it. And it was true, as she had told Half Brother: she knew too little of her own country, and now had the time and the money to remedy these omissions. She thought she would like to see the clay army at Xi’an, the caves of Dunhuang, the West Lake at Hangzhou. Beijing, too—yes, she would like to be in Beijing for the spring blossoms. There was no resentment left now, no reason not to visit the capital, especially in springtime, when Beijing was at her best, neither too hot nor too cold, if you could stand the chunfeng—the spring wind—blowing dust in from the Gobi desert. Margaret procrastinated a few days, even going to the airline office once to pick up a timetable.

At last it was Teacher Zou who made up her mind for her. Margaret went to see Teacher Zou one afternoon, taking a taxi to the address Mustache had given her. It was an apartment in one of the newer blocks, by a little creek that discharged into the river a quarter mile on. There were piles of garbage rotting in the courtyard outside, washing hanging out from the windows. The creek itself was a dull purple color. A strong acid vapor rose up from it, stinging the membranes at the back of the nose. Teacher Zou came down to greet her. They climbed two flights of unlit stairs through a vile fecal stink.

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you better hospitality than this,” said Teacher Zou. “Xing and I are big fans of yours. Have both your CDs. I tell everyone you were a pupil of mine. Shining in reflected glory!”

The apartment was only one room. Teacher Zou was living there with her mother. The Xings’ little boy was staying with friends in Beijing, so as not to miss school.

“My mother’s close to death now,” explained Teacher Zou. “The hospital operated on her last year, but I think they screwed it up. Took out the wrong piece, or left some instrument inside. You know what the doctors are like, those bastards. She’s been getting worse ever since. They give me pain-killers for her and she’s pretty much comatose.”

There was an unpleasant, unfamiliar smell in the room—a sweetish smell, something like rotting pork, that made Margaret gag. The smell of cancer, she supposed. Teacher Zou’s mother was quite unconscious, lying on the lower of a pair of bunk beds against one wall. Her skin looked as though you could poke your finger through it.

“Talk softly so as not to disturb her. When she’s awake, she suffers. It’s better for her just to sleep.”

“How old is your mother?”

“Sixty-six.” Teacher Zou gazed at the sleeping figure with sad tenderness. “But she had a very hard life. She was born to a merchant family in Jiangxi, but her father lost everything in the twenties. Lived through the Japanese occupation, of course. Then all the fighting. My own father died in an industrial accident when I was a little girl, so we were very poor. Poor workers—oh, I have very good ‘origins’!” She used the expression current in the Cultural Revolution to define a person’s class background. People often spoke like this now, Margaret had noticed, making bitter little allusions to the mass campaigns of the past. Everybody seemed so cynical.

“I’m surprised at how dissatisfied everybody’s become,” she remarked. “Against the leaders, I mean. People never used to talk like that.”

“That’s because we have opened our eyes. We know the leaders aren’t selfless revolutionaries striving to improve the lives of the common people. They’re corrupt mandarins, who look on the common people with contempt. Xing told me of an English saying: ‘Cheat me once, shame on you. Cheat me twice, shame on me.’ That’s how people feel. They won’t cheat us again. We can see through them now.”

“But what will happen?”

“Heaven only knows. Another revolution, if you ask me. Xing’s an optimist. He says the Party can reform itself, but I don’t believe it. Look at our history. When has there been reform? Nothing ever changes in China except by violent revolution. If they try to reform the Party from inside, it will be the Hundred Days all over again. I tell you, Little Han, you did the right thing going to America. You’re well out of it.” [The Hundred Days was a reform movement at the end of the last Imperial dynasty. It was crushed by reactionary forces.]

She talked of Chengdu Teachers’ College, where Mr Xing had worked. The leaders at the place all hated Xing (she said) because he’d been a worker-peasant-soldier student, admitted without examination in the Cultural Revolution period. They wanted to keep him there, make him wear the tight shoe all his life. But Xing was too smart for them. They couldn’t stop him writing. They couldn’t stop him translating and publishing. When he was applying to go to New Zealand he had to make out a list of his publications. Three pages! Three pages it covered! Sooner or later his abilities were bound to be noticed. They couldn’t keep him trapped in that jail-house for ever. He was “a big talent in a small job.”

“Well, now he’s free,” Teacher Zou continued. “Beijing Normal have been very good to him. We have a lovely apartment in Haidian—you know, the academic district in Beijing. We take our boy to the Summer Palace at weekends! How many kids can just get on a bus and go to the Summer Palace? I love Beijing. Especially now. This is the best time of year in Beijing, you know—April and May—if you don’t mind the dust. Summer is too hot. Little Han, why don’t you go up to Beijing for a few days? Our apartment’s sitting there empty, you’re welcome to use it. You’d be doing us a favor, actually. You know, when people get to know an apartment’s empty there’s a chance it’ll get burgled. Go on, be our guest for a while. Xing won’t be back till August. I’ll have to stay here to see my mother off to the Yellow Spring.”

Margaret needed no persuading. One of the deterrents to travel had been the bother of booking hotel rooms. Here was a room ready-made for her—in Haidian, which she knew so well! And if she was to make a tour, Beijing was the best place to start from, with all the airline and travel offices to arrange everything. Teacher Zou gave her keys, and instructions on how to use the stove and washing machine.

“You’d better make yourself known to the block committee,” she said, “but there’s no need to formally register. They’re very easy-going about that sort of thing in Beijing nowadays.”

*

Her first morning in Beijing Margaret woke early and went out to find some breakfast. At once she was glad she had come. The day was already warm and sunny—a perfect Beijing spring morning. Blossoms were showing in the trees shading the roadside, and a chorus of cicadas was tuning up in the foliage. Street vendors were moving into position, stacking bottles of soda on big blocks of ice, wheeling ice cream carts along the pavements. Margaret went into a little food shop on a corner. The proprietor—a pot-bellied man with a bald head—was dropping batter into the deep frier. There was a scattering of customers at the tables, workers by their appearance. Pot Belly addressed her in broad Beijing dialect.

“’Allo, Little Sister! If you ain’t the prettiest girl I’ve ’ad in my shop this twelve month past! ’Ere, stand by the door and you’ll pull some more business in for me! Go on—I’ll give yer breakfast for free!” He gave Margaret a huge sweaty grin, and some of the nearer customers laughed.

“Don’t pay no attention to Old Feng,” warned one, a coarse-looking type with an unshaven upper lip. “’E’s a ’orny old bugger, that one. Wore out two wives, ’e ’as!” There was general laughter.

“Tsei! Wore ’em out? Wore meself out, keepin’ ’em! Now then, Little Sister, what’ll it be? On yer way to join the students, are yer?”

“A bowl of white rice gruel and a batter-stick. Oh, and a plain dumpling. Students? I don’t know. I’m just visiting Beijing.”

“From the sarf-west, is it?”

“Yes, the southwest. Chengdu.”

“I noo it. I can tell any accent, I can. Anywhere under ’Eaven, I can tell it. ’Ad a bloke in ’ere day ’fore yesterday from Gansu, way out west. I nailed ’im right off. Gansu, I said. ’E near fell orf ’is seat. ’E was ’ere to join the students, too. They’re comin’ from all over now.”

“D’you really think they’ll march?” asked one of the customers, apparently addressing the proprietor.

“Course they’ll march! They ain’t afraid of Old Deng! What’s ’e goin’ to do? Tell the police to shoot ’em? They won’t. I know. I get the patrolmen in ’ere. They’re just as fed up as everybody else. They can’t live orf their wages any more than the workers can. No, they won’t shoot our students. It’ll be like las’ Friday all over again. There you go, Little Sister. It’s forty, an’ don’t blame me, it’s what I ’ave to pay for oil nowadays.”

“The students have a march?” asked Margaret.

“Why, yes. Been marching this seven days past. Didn’t you ’ear about it down in the sarf-west?”

“I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to public affairs.”

“Why, they had a funeral for the old General Secretary last Sat’day, the one they give the elbow to year ’fore last. The students come out from all the universities an’ demonstrated in the Square. Thousands, there was. Best thing was, they sent three students up the steps of the Great ’All wiv a petition. The leaders were all there in the ’All for the ceremony, see. Well, when they come up the steps, the students kneeled down an’ lifted the petition over their ’eads. Petitionin’ the Emperor, see? Just like in the old times! They knew how to do it, from watchin’ the movies I suppose. You can be sure Old Deng got the message! Emperor Deng!”

“An’ Li Ximing ’is pet eunuch,” said one of the customers, making everybody laugh. Li was the Party Secretary for Beijing.

“Never mind Li Ximing,” someone else put in. “That Li Peng’s the one to watch. ’E’d fuck his grandmother for a piece of silver, that one.”

“Eh, eh, eh.” The proprietor waved his spatula in the air, perhaps feeling things were going a little too far. “Let’s show some respect to the people’s government. We’re all good citizens ’ere.”

Margaret hadn’t followed much of this. “You mean the students will march through Beijing?”

“Last I ’eard was, they’ll march.” This was the coarse-looking man. He glanced at his watch. “If it’s like last week, they’re prob’ly startin’ about now.”

“Where do they march?”

“Why, right out of Qinghua and Beijing U. Down White Stone Bridge Road to People’s U., ’ere. Then the Nationalities Institute, an’ then they turn off through West Straight Gate and down to the Square. If you go over to White Stone Bridge Road you’ll see ’em go past.”

“Is it dangerous to go and watch?”

“Nah. Lot of people go an’ show support. The people are wiv the students. We’re all fed up wiv this fuckin’ government.”

When she had finished her breakfast Margaret strolled over to White Stone Bridge Road. When the intersection came in sight she saw that the march was, in fact, already in progress. In the distance she could see the figures crossing the intersection, carrying banners and placards. She could hear them, too. At first they were chanting something she couldn’t catch; then, as she came closer, she heard them singing the National Anthem.

Arise! All ye who will not be slaves!

With our own flesh and blood

Build a new Great Wall! …

White Stone Bridge Road itself was lined with onlookers. They spilled off the sidewalk into the roadway, many holding on to bicycles, some applauding and cheering. Some teenagers had climbed up into the trees along the roadside to watch. It was all very good-natured, not at all what Margaret had expected. One of the teenagers in a nearby tree was accompanying the National Anthem on a tin flute.

The students themselves were all in cheerful high spirits. The boys were wearing open-necked shirts and slacks, the girls loose blouses and skirts. Some of the girls had wide-brimmed hats to shade them from the warm sun. The banners seemed quite innocuous: DOWN WITH CORRUPTION! said one. Another: THE PEOPLE SUPPORT US.

There seemed no end to the marchers. Margaret watched for half an hour in the shade of the trees, then began to think of her original plan, which had been to go up to the Summer Palace. The only problem was, the buses didn’t seem to be running. Perhaps the best thing would be to walk to Friendship Hotel. It was a foreigners’ hotel, and there would be a taxi rank there.

As she was thinking of this, a little group of students came by carrying a banner saying BEIJING BOTANICAL INSTITUTE. Margaret had never heard of a Botanical Institute. It must be attached to Qinghua, the main science university, she supposed. One student stood out from the others: a tall, broad-shouldered man, a mature student from the look of him, with dark skin and startling white teeth.

A red silk thread snapped taut. The great Galaxy wheeled through a trillionth of a degree, and Norbu was looking right back at her, his mouth hanging open in wonder.

Chapter 60

Importance of Showing the Correct Attitude

A Sentimental Education

His sentence had been five years, just as Old Bolmo had predicted. Since he had not actually done anything wrong, the charge was only Hooliganism, not Counter-Revolutionary Activities. This was very good luck. As a hooligan, Norbu was merely a common criminal, of no particular interest to the authorities. He was allowed to serve out his sentence in the company of other criminals—a decent enough bunch, he said, once you showed them who was boss.

“But how do you do that?” asked Margaret. The tale was being told in the Xings’ bed, on the evening of the day after the demonstration.

“By force!” Norbu grinned, and made a fist the size of a small bucket.

Had he been sentenced for Counter-Revolutionary Activities (Norbu continued) he might never have got out. Political prisoners were kept in solitary confinement a lot—sometimes for the entire length of their sentences. They were given a poor diet to weaken them, and had to write self-criticisms all the time. If they failed to show a correct attitude, they were beaten, or kept for years in a room without light, so that they went blind, or mad. Sometimes they were killed. At the end of their sentences, if their attitude was still not correct, they were just given another sentence. Not having a correct attitude was counter-revolutionary in itself, so that justified the extra sentence so far as the authorities were concerned. Even if you did get out, nobody would ever speak to you, because that would make them counter-revolutionary, too.

The Hooliganism charge had really been a lucky break. Of course, the common criminals had to do self-criticism, too, and show a correct attitude; but they all had it down pat, and taught it to new prisoners, so there was never any problem with bad attitudes. What you had to do was write stupid, bad self-criticisms at first, and perhaps do one or two mildly bad things—breaking prison property, or fighting, or talking back to the guards. You’d let them beat you a bit for that, then write a slightly better self-criticism, and so on. Give the impression of slow improvement. That’s what they liked. They liked to be able to say to their superiors: “This one was a really bad element when he came in, but he’s completely reformed now.” If you did that for them, you’d given them a precious gift, because all they cared about was making good reports to their superiors. They loved you then. They’d give you privileges, and even help you get a new unit after you left, in case your old unit wouldn’t have you back, which was usually the case. But you had to make a show of gradually seeing the light. If you said the right things immediately, they would call you insincere and beat you.

“But didn’t they know that your change of attitude was just a show?”

“Of course they knew!” Norbu laughed, his laugh rolling round the little bedroom in the last of the evening light. “They knew what we were doing, and we knew they knew. Nobody was fooling anybody. It was just a game, to make them look good to their superiors. You didn’t feel you were cheating anybody because everybody knew it was all nonsense anyway. Their superiors probably knew, too, but they looked good to their superiors, and so on. Just as everyone knows that the stuff they feed us in Political Instruction classes—Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong Thought—is all crap, but you have to pretend to believe it to get ahead.”

In spring 1987 Norbu had completed his sentence. Secretary Ma wouldn’t have him back at the station, so he had had nowhere to go. An acquaintance of his had gone to Beijing, to study at the Nationalities Institute. This was a college near Beijing University, for training cadres from the national minorities, including of course Tibetans. Norbu had never been to Beijing, so he decided to go, to visit his friend and do some sight-seeing. His friend told him that Qinghua, the main college for science and technology, was opening a new Botanical Institute, as part of the government’s program to encourage environmental studies. The new Institute was inviting applicants to enroll for an entrance examination in the winter of that year. On a whim, Norbu had enrolled. He had passed the examination, and been admitted.

“I was born a peasant; I became a worker; then I was a jailbird; now I’m an intellectual! You can really say I’m a man of experience!”

“Huh! Experienced with women, I’ve no doubt!” This was to tease him.