Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘Yes,’ the teller broke in eagerly. ‘He had glasses. I remember that. Like sunglasses, only not as dark. You know, like they react to the sunlight, but the lenses never go really black.’

‘Do you remember what kind of glasses?’

She shook her head.

‘Think. Did they have heavy frames? Or were they silver or gold? Steel frames like your boss?’

She glanced at the manager who scowled silently at her. She shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t remember. But he was clean shaven. I’m pretty sure about that. I would have noticed if he had whiskers.’

‘What about his accent?’ Li said. ‘Was there anything unusual about his voice?’

He could see the concentration on her face. There was nothing that concentrated the mind so well as fear, and the instinct for self-preservation. But to her own and their frustration, she genuinely could not remember.

Li looked at the monitor. He was right there in front of them. Li could reach out and touch the screen. But they were no nearer to catching him than before. He was taunting, torturing them, of that Li was certain. He plotted and planned his every move, anticipating what they would do at every stage so that he was always one step ahead of them.

‘We’ll need both those tapes,’ Wu said to the head of security, and the security man punched a button and the picture froze on the screen. Li had a sudden inspiration.

‘Take a statement from the teller,’ he said to Wu, and turned to the manager. ‘I want you to come down to the floor with me. And I’ll need a tape measure. I want to take a few measurements.’

It had been an awkward half hour. Both Margaret and Li’s father had paid lip service to the thought that Li might turn up any at moment. But neither really believed it. The old man had sat in the apartment with his coat and hat on, a fur hat with fold-up earmuffs pulled down over thin, grey hair, his gloves folded neatly on his knees. He had spent all of five minutes half-heartedly bouncing Li Jon on them before becoming bored with the child and handing him back to Margaret. He had accepted an offer of tea, taken two sips and then left it to grow cold on a low table beside the settee.

Margaret knew that he disapproved of her. That he would have preferred a Chinese girl to have been the mother of his grandson. Just one more grudge to bear his son. And so she had made no attempt to engage him in conversation. Neither of them considered it worth making the effort.

Finally she stood up. ‘Normally I take Li Jon out for a walk at this time. In his buggy. You’re welcome to join us if you want. Or you can wait here in case Li Yan arrives.’ She was determined not to sit on in this atmosphere. To her disappointment he stood up, almost eagerly, clutching his gloves.

‘I will come with you.’

A girl carved in pewter played a Chinese zither. Another, chiselled from white marble, sat reading a book in the dappled shade of the trees. There were occasional small squares set off the path through the gardens which separated the two sides of Zhengyi Road. Old men in baseball caps sat smoking on the benches that lined them. An old woman in a quilted purple jacket sat gazing into space, her bobbed hair the colour of brushed steel. Couples strolled arm in arm, mothers with children, school kids with pink jackets and jogpants.

Margaret pushed Li’s buggy north at a leisurely rate, wind rustling the leaves overhead. The buggy was blue, punctuated by the odd coloured square, and had small yellow wheels. There was a support for his feet, and a plastic tray in front of him for toys. A hood, folded away now, could extend from back to front if it rained. A bag which hung from the back of the pushbar, and a tray under the seat, held extra clothes and toys and a flask of warm milk if it was needed. This was a walk she had taken often in the last few months. An escape from the apartment, and in the cold autumn air a chance to breathe again after the suffocating heat of the summer. But now she resented the silent presence of Li’s father as they headed towards the traffic on Changan Avenue.

‘Why do you bother?’ she said eventually and turned to look at him.

He kept his eyes straight ahead. He was not a stupid man. He knew what she meant. ‘Because he is family,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Margaret said. ‘He’s your son. And yet you treat him as if somehow everything bad that’s ever happened in your life is his fault.’

‘He must bear responsibility for his shortcomings. He has been less than diligent in his filial responsibilities.’

‘And maybe you haven’t been such a good father.’ He flicked her a glance. ‘You were so obsessed with the loss of your wife, you forgot that your son had lost his mother. If ever a boy needed his father, it was then. But, no, you couldn’t see past yourself, past your own hurt. You couldn’t reach out to a kid who was hurting just as badly, maybe worse.’

‘What would you know about it?’ he said defensively.

‘I know what Li has told me. What happened, what he felt. Things he probably hasn’t told another living being. Certainly not you. And I know that the Cultural Revolution wasn’t his fault. That it wasn’t his fault his mother was persecuted for being an intellectual. He didn’t invent the Red Guards. He wasn’t even old enough to be one.’

‘You know nothing of these things. You are an American.’

‘I’m an American who has spent most of the last five years in China. I have talked to a lot of people, listened to their stories, read a great many books. In fact,’ she added bitterly, ‘I haven’t had much else to do with my life this last year, raising your grandson. I think I know a little about what the Cultural Revolution was, what it meant to those who survived it. And those who didn’t.’

The old man held his own counsel for several minutes as they reached the top of the road and turned west towards the ramp to the underground walkway. As they passed into the darkness of the tunnel beneath Changan Avenue he said, ‘In China we treasure a son, because it is his duty to look after us in our old age. He and his wife, and their children, will look after his parents when they can no longer look after themselves.’ His voice echoed back at them off the roof and the walls.

‘Yeah,’ Margaret said unsympathetically. ‘That’s why the orphanages are full of little girls, dumped by their parents, abandoned on doorsteps. Great system.’

‘I did not invent the One Child Policy,’ Li’s father said bitterly. ‘I only thank God I had a daughter before they thought of it. She, at least, has taken her responsibility to her father seriously.’

Margaret forced herself to remain silent. Xiao Ling, she knew, had been anything but the dutiful daughter.

‘But Li Yan? The moment he is old enough, he is off to Beijing to live with his Uncle Yifu and train to be the great policeman. Never a second thought for the family he left behind in Sichuan.’

They emerged into the bright sunlight on the north side of Changan, and a shady path led off towards Tiananmen, the trees that hid it from the road casting their long shadows against the high red wall that bounded the gardens outside the Forbidden City. Margaret bumped the buggy into Nanheyan Street and swung hard left into the gardens. Anger forced her to break her silence.

‘That’s what really sticks in your craw, isn’t it? That he came to live with his Uncle Yifu. Your brother. Who was more of a father to him than you ever were.’ She barely stopped to draw breath. ‘And don’t give me that crap about how Li Yan was responsible for his uncle’s death. We both know that isn’t true. Even if he still feels guilty about it. But you never fail to play the guilt card, do you. Never miss a chance to turn the knife in all his emotional wounds. Because you know it works every time. I think you must take pleasure in his pain.’