Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

Mao again. It was as if his face were beaming out there in the darkness. He knew what would happen, she thought. The future is never assured, once and for all. He repeated that wisdom, over and over again, but we didn’t listen. New groups would always emerge and seize privileges for themselves, new revolutions would constantly take place.

She sat on the veranda and let her thoughts come and go. Dozed off. She was woken by a noise. She listened. There it was again. Somebody was knocking on her door. She checked her watch. Midnight. Who would want to visit her this late? She wondered whether she should open the door. There was another knock. Somebody knows that I’m awake, she thought; somebody has seen me on the veranda. She went inside and peered through the peephole. An African was standing outside. He was wearing the hotel uniform. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened the door. The young man handed over a letter. She could see from her name on the envelope that it was Ya Ru’s handwriting. She gave the boy a few Zimbabwe dollars, unsure if it was too much or too little, and went back to the veranda. She read the short message.

Hong Qiu

We ought to keep the peace, for the sake of the family, of the nation. I apologise for the rudeness of which I am sometimes guilty. Let us look one another in the eye again. During the last few days before we return home, please let me invite you to accompany me into the bush, to see the primitive nature and animals. We can talk there.

She checked the text carefully, as if she expected to find a hidden message between the lines. She found none, nor could she fathom why he had sent her this message in the middle of the night.

She gazed out into the darkness and thought about the predators who have their prey in their sight, without the victims having the slightest idea of what is about to happen.

‘I can see you,’ she whispered. ‘No matter where you come from, I shall discover you in time. Never again will you be able to sit down beside me without my having seen you coming.’

Hong Qiu woke up early the next morning. She had slept fitfully, dreaming about shadows creeping up on her, menacing, faceless. Now she was on the veranda, watching the brief African dawn, the sun rising over the endless bush. A colourful kingfisher with its long beak landed on the veranda rail, then flew off immediately. The dew from the damp night glittered in the grass. From somewhere in the distance came African voices, somebody shouting, laughing. She was surrounded by strong aromas. She thought about the letter that had reached her in the middle of the night and urged herself to be alert. She somehow felt even more wary of Ya Ru in this foreign country.

At eight o’clock a specially selected group of delegates, headed by a trade minister and the mayors of Shanghai and Beijing, had gathered in a conference room off the hotel foyer. Mugabe’s face looked down from several walls with a smile that Hong Qiu couldn’t quite place: Was it friendly or scornful? In a loud voice the trade minister’s state secretary called the assembly to attention.

‘We shall now meet President Mugabe. The president will receive us in his palace. We shall enter in a single file, the usual distance between ministers and mayors and other delegates. We shall greet one another, listen to our national anthems, then sit down at a table in assigned seats. President Mugabe and our ministers will exchange greetings via interpreters, after which President Mugabe will deliver a short speech. We have not been given an advance copy. It could be anything from twenty minutes to three hours. Advance visits to the toilets are strongly advised. The speech will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Those of you who have been given prepared questions will raise your hands, introduce yourselves when called to speak and remain standing while President Mugabe answers. No follow-up questions are allowed, nor is anybody else in the delegation permitted to speak. After the meeting with the president, most of the delegation will visit a copper mine called Wandlana while the minister and selected delegates will continue their discussion with President Mugabe and an unknown number of his ministers.’

Hong Qiu looked at Ya Ru, who was leaning with half-closed eyes against a column at the back of the conference room. It was only when they left the room that they established eye contact. Ya Ru smiled at her before clambering into one of the cars intended for ministers, mayors and specially selected delegates. Hong Qiu sat down in one of the buses waiting outside the hotel.

Her apprehension was growing all the time. I must speak to somebody, she thought, somebody who will understand my fear. She looked around the bus. She had known many of the older delegates for a long time. Most of them shared her view of political developments in China. But they are tired, she thought. They are now so old that they no longer react when danger threatens.

She continued searching, but in vain. There was nobody there she felt she could confide in. After the meeting with President Mugabe she would work once more through the whole list of participants. Surely there must be someone whom she could trust.

The bus headed for Harare at high speed. Through the window Hong Qiu could see the red soil stirred up by the people walking by the side of the road.

The bus suddenly stopped. A man sitting on the other side of the aisle explained to her.

‘We can’t all arrive at the same time,’ he said. ‘The cars with the most important people must arrive first. Then we will arrive, the political and economic ballet to make up the pretty background.’

Hong Qiu smiled. She had forgotten the name of the man who had spoken, but she knew that during the Cultural Revolution he had been a hard-pressed professor of physics. When he returned from his many privations in the country, he had immediately been put in charge of what was to become China’s space research institute. Hong Qiu suspected that he shared her views about the direction China ought to be taking. He was one of the old school still managing to keep going, not one of the youngsters who have never understood what it means to live a life in which something is more important than they are.

They had stopped close to a little marketplace running along both sides of the road. Hong Qiu knew that Zimbabwe was close to economic collapse. That was one of the reasons that their large delegation was visiting the country. Although this would never be made public, it was in fact President Mugabe who had begged the Chinese government to make a contribution towards helping Zimbabwe out of the country’s severe economic depression. The sanctions imposed by the West meant that the basic infrastructure of the country was close to collapse. Only a few days before leaving Beijing, Hong Qiu had read in a newspaper that inflation in Zimbabwe was now approaching 5,000 per cent. People tramping along by the edge of the road were moving very slowly. It seemed to Hong Qiu that they were either hungry or tired.

Hong Qiu suddenly noticed a woman kneeling down. She had a child in a carrier on her back and a head ring made from folded cloth for supporting heavy loads. Two men by her side helped each other to lift up a heavy sack of cement and balance it on her head. Then they helped her to stand up. Hong Qiu watched her stagger away. Without a second thought she stood up, hurried down the aisle and spoke to the interpreter.

‘Please come with me.’

The interpreter, who was a young woman, opened her mouth to protest, but Hong Qiu prevented her from speaking. The driver had opened the front door to allow a flow of air into the bus, which had already started to become stuffy, as the air conditioning wasn’t working. Hong Qiu dragged along the interpreter to the other side of the road where the two men had settled down in the shade and were sharing a cigarette. The woman with the heavy burden on her head had already disappeared into the haze.