Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘Ma Li? What are you doing here?’

‘I came as a substitute for old Zu. He’s been struck down with thrombosis and couldn’t make it. I was called in to replace him. That’s why I’m not on the list of participants.’

‘I didn’t notice you on the way here this morning.’

‘Somebody pointed out to me rather sternly that I’d sat myself in one of the cars, which protocol forbade me to do. Now I’m where I ought to be.’

Hong Qiu reached out and grasped hold of Ma Li’s wrists. She was exactly what Hong Qiu had been hoping for. Somebody she could talk to. Ma Li had been a friend ever since her student days, after the Cultural Revolution. Hong Qiu recalled an occasion early one morning, in one of the university’s day rooms, when she had found Ma Li asleep on a chair. When she woke up, they started talking.

It seemed to be preordained that they should be friends. Hong Qiu could still remember one of the first conversations they’d had. Ma Li had said that it was now time to stop ‘bombarding headquarters’. That had been one of the things Mao had urged the cultural revolutionaries to do. Not even the very top officials in the Communist Party should be spared the necessary criticism. Ma Li maintained that, instead, it was now necessary for her to ‘bombard the vacuum inside my head, all the lack of knowledge that I have to fight against’.

Ma Li trained to become an economic analyst and was employed by the Ministry of Trade as one of a group of experts whose job it was to keep a constant check on currency variations throughout the world. Hong Qiu had become an adviser to the minister responsible for homeland security, for coordinating the top military leaders’ views on the country’s internal and external defence, especially protection for the political leaders. Hong Qiu had been at Ma Li’s wedding, but after the birth of Ma Li’s two children their meetings had been irregular.

But now they had met once again, on a bus behind Robert Mugabe’s palace. They spoke non-stop during the journey back to the camp. Hong Qiu noticed that Ma Li was at least as pleased as she was at their reunion. When they reached the hotel, they decided to take a walk to the big veranda with the magnificent views over the river. Neither of them had any important engagements until the following day, when Ma Li was due to visit an experimental farm and Hong Qiu was supposed to attend a discussion with a group of Zimbabwean military leaders at Victoria Falls.

The heat was oppressive as they walked down to the river. They could see flashes of lightning in the distance and hear faint rumbles of thunder. There was no sign of animal life. It seemed that the whole place had suddenly been deserted. When Ma Li took hold of Hong Qiu’s arm, she gave a start.

‘Did you see that?’ asked Ma Li, pointing.

Hong Qiu looked but couldn’t see any sign of movement in the thick bushes that lined the riverbank.

‘Behind that tree where the bark has been peeled off by elephants, next to the rock sticking up out of the ground like a spear.’

Now Hong Qiu saw it. The lion’s tail was swinging slowly, whipping against the red earth. Its eyes and mane were occasionally visible through the leaves.

‘You’ve got very good eyes,’ said Hong Qiu.

‘I’ve learned to notice things. Otherwise your surroundings can be dangerous. Even in a city, or a conference room, there can be traps to stumble into, if you’re not careful.’

In silence, almost reverentially, they watched the lion venture down to the river and begin lapping up the water. Out in the middle of the river, a few hippos’ heads bobbed up and down. A kingfisher just as colourful as the one on Hong Qiu’s veranda alighted on the rail, with a dragonfly in its beak.

‘Peace and quiet,’ said Ma Li. ‘I long for it more and more, the older I become. Perhaps it’s the first sign of getting old? Nobody wants to die surrounded by the noise from machines and radios. The progress we make costs us a lot in the way of silence. Can a person really live without the kind of quiet we are experiencing right now?’

‘You’re right,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘But what about the invisible threats to our lives? What do we do about them?’

‘I suppose you are thinking about pollution? Poisons? Plagues that are constantly mutating and changing their appearance?’

‘According to the World Health Organisation, Beijing is currently the dirtiest city in the world. Recent measurements recorded up to one hundred and forty-two micrograms of dirt particles per cubic metre of air. The equivalent figure in New York is twenty-seven, in Paris twenty-two. As we know only too well, the devil is always in the details.’

‘Just think of all the people who discover that for the first time in their lives it’s possible for them to buy a moped. How can you persuade them not to?’

‘By strengthening the party’s control over developments. What is produced by goods, and what is produced by thoughts.’

Ma Li stroked Hong Qiu’s cheek gently.

‘I’m so pleased every time I realise that I’m not alone. I’m not ashamed to maintain that baoxian yundong is what can rescue our country from disintegration and decay.’

‘A campaign to preserve the Communist Party’s right to lead,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘I agree with you. But at the same time we both know that the danger threatens to come from within. Once upon a time it was Mao’s wife who was the mole for the new upper class, despite the fact that she waved her red flag more ardently than anybody else. Today there are others hiding within the party who want nothing more than to undermine it and replace the stability we enjoy with a sort of capitalist freedom that nobody will be able to control.’

‘The stability has been lost already,’ said Ma Li. ‘As I’m an analyst who knows the way in which money flows in our country, I know much that neither you nor anybody else is aware of. But, of course, I’m not allowed to say anything.’

‘We are alone. The lion isn’t listening.’

Ma Li eyed her up and down. Hong Qiu knew exactly what she was thinking — can I trust her or can’t I?

‘Don’t say anything if you are in doubt,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘If you make the wrong choice when it comes to people you can rely on, you are both defenceless and helpless. That is insight we were given by Confucius.’

‘I trust you,’ said Ma Li. ‘Nevertheless, you can’t get away from the fact that one’s natural instincts for self-preservation always encourage caution.’

Hong Qiu pointed to the riverbank.

‘The lion has gone now. We didn’t notice when he left.’

Ma Li nodded.

‘This year the government has increased military expenditure by almost fifteen per cent,’ Hong Qiu continued. ‘In view of the fact that China doesn’t have any real enemies close at hand, naturally enough the Pentagon and the Kremlin wonder what is going on. Their analysts can see without too much of an effort that the state and the armed forces are preparing to cope with an inner rebellion. In addition, we are spending almost ten billion yuan on our Internet surveillance systems. These are figures impossible to conceal. But there’s another statistic that very few people know about. How many riots and mass protests do you think took place in our country during the past year?’

Ma Li thought for a moment before answering. ‘Five thousand, perhaps?’

Hong Qiu shook her head. ‘Nearly ninety thousand. Work out how many that is every day. It’s a figure that casts a shadow over everything the politburo undertakes. What Deng did fifteen years ago, when he liberalised the economy, was enough to tamp down most of the unrest in the country. But not any more, it isn’t. Especially when the cities are no longer able to find space and work for the hundreds of millions of peasants who are waiting impatiently for their turn to enjoy the good life we all dream about.’