Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘But Yuan Tao wasn’t a Red Guard. Couldn’t have been. He wasn’t even in the country,’ Chen said.

‘No,’ Li agreed. ‘But they were all classmates, and they were all taught by his father, and maybe something else, Chief. Something we’re not seeing yet. But we’re looking in the right place now, and if we look hard enough, and keep on looking, we will. I’m sure of it.’

‘And I’m sure,’ Chen said glumly, ‘that the situation with your niece cannot continue like this.’ He waved a hand around his office. ‘Look at this place!’

Li stifled a smile. ‘I thought it looked like you and Xinxin were getting on like a house on fire, chief.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ Chen snapped. He paused and took a breath, then, ‘I phoned the police chief at Zigong and he spoke to Xinxin’s father.’ He paused again.

‘And?’ asked Li.

Chen said grimly, ‘He says that as far as he’s concerned his wife has left him and taken the little girl with her. He doesn’t want anything to do with either of them.’

*

Li wheeled his bike through the afternoon heat, dodging the traffic on Dongzhimennei Street. Xinxin sat in a huff on the rack over the rear wheel, clutching her satchel and panda to her as if she expected someone to try and tear them away. She was distinctly displeased with Li for removing her from all the attention she was getting at Section One, and she was becoming increasingly aware now of how much she was missing her mom. Her lower lip was petted, and tears were welling in her eyes.

Li felt sick. How could Xinxin’s father expect him to look after her? Li was single, working long hours for a very modest salary. He would have to employ someone full time to look after the child until he could straighten things out with the man. And God knew where her mother was! It was so unfair. There was too much in his head to deal with, without having to cope with this.

Mei Yuan spotted him crossing the street, and her face lit up when she saw Xinxin on the back of the bike. Xinxin was just as delighted to see Mei Yuan, and she jumped down and ran into the open arms of the street vendor, and burst into tears.

‘Uncle Yan won’t let me play,’ she sobbed. ‘And my mommy’s not well, and I want to go home.’

Mei Yuan squatted down and held the child tightly to her, looking up over her shoulder to see Li’s helpless expression. He shrugged and shook his head. ‘You know what?’ Mei Yuan said suddenly, holding Xinxin at arm’s length and brushing the tears from her face. ‘I bet you could go a jian bing right now.’

Xinxin frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a big pancake.’ She looked at Li. ‘Without the chilli?’

Li smiled. ‘She comes from Sichuan, remember.’

‘Of course.’ Mei Yuan grinned and stood up, taking Xinxin’s hand. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you watch me make it.’ And Xinxin, for the moment, forgot her tears as she watched Mei Yuan spread the liquid mix over her hotplate and then break an egg on to it and smear it over the bubbling pancake as it formed. ‘My cousin said you came earlier,’ Mei Yuan said to Li. ‘I’m sorry I was not here.’

‘I have a problem, Mei Yuan. But it is not easy for me to tell you right now.’

She nodded. ‘How is your Cantonese?’

‘Rusty,’ he said. Six months in Hong Kong had provided him with the basics, but he had not used it in a long time.

‘Mine, too,’ she said, in Cantonese. ‘So where is her mother?’

‘Pregnant,’ Li said. ‘She had a … I don’t know the word for it in Cantonese.’ He thought hard for another way to say it. ‘They made a picture of the baby with sound. She knows it’s a boy. She’s gone to stay with some friend somewhere in the south to have it. I don’t know where. And Xinxin’s father doesn’t want to know.’

Mei Yuan finished the jian bing and wrapped it carefully to give to Xinxin. ‘There we are, little one. Careful. It’s hot.’

Xinxin bit into it. ‘Hmm,’ she said, her face brightening up immediately. ‘It’s good.’ And she took another big mouthful. ‘How come I don’t know what you’re saying?’ She gazed up at Mei Yuan, a perplexed look in her eyes.

Mei Yuan smiled. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we were just practising another kind of Chinese. I’ll teach you some of the words tonight if you like.’

‘Tonight?’ Xinxin’s face lit up. ‘Are you coming to Uncle Yan’s house again?’

‘No,’ said Mei Yuan. ‘You’re coming to stay with me for a day or two. Would you like that?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Xinxin said, all the sparkle back in her eyes now. ‘That would be brilliant.’

Mei Yuan looked at Li. ‘My cousin will look after the jian bing for a while.’ She paused. ‘Until things get sorted out.’

Li found his eyes filling with tears, and he had to blink them back hard. He reached out and squeezed Mei Yuan’s hand.

‘So, have you worked out my riddle yet?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I still haven’t had a chance to think it through.’

‘OK, but you only get one more day,’ she chided him. She paused to think, then added, ‘But the answer is staring you in the face, if only you will stop believing what I tell you.’

A warm breeze drifted across the green water of the Nine Dragons Pond, rippling its surface. Beyond it, high above the Sunset Glow Pavilion, ski lifts carried tourists to the summit of a tree-clad mountain.

‘The water remains a constant forty-three degrees centigrade all year round,’ Michael told Margaret. They were walking slowly along the water’s edge towards a white marble statue of a semi-naked woman at the centre of a fountain. On their left a huge green-roofed pavilion rose up on rust-red pillars. ‘In the depths of winter, when the wind blows across the water from the south, it gathers heat and lifts the frost from the roof of the pavilion. And if the sun is shining the air above the roof sparkles and dances with tiny particles of coruscating light. They call it the Frost Flying Pavilion.’

They had arrived here at the hot springs after a short drive along a highway punctuated by peasants selling pomegranates from big bamboo baskets. Margaret had spent more than an hour with the archaeologists excavating warriors, before Michael had returned and taken her on a tour of the other two pits. She had been flushed from the power of her experience of excavation, and her enthusiasm had amused him.

‘What was it you said the other night?’ he had reminded her. ‘ Can’t say I’d be riveted by the prospect of looking at a lot of tombs ? Something like that?’

She punched his arm playfully. ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’

He grinned. ‘Do I have to try?’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘So I was wrong.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘I guess I just spend too much time with the dead. I had no idea that archaeology could be such a … such a living thing.’ She looked at him very directly. ‘I envy you, you know.’

‘Why?’ he laughed.

‘Because you can do that. You can bring things to life. Reanimate history. I can’t do that for the people who end up on my table. All I can do is cut them up and say how they died. Not very constructive.’

He had suggested that on their way back to town they stop off at the Huaqing Hot Springs, the winter playground of the emperors who had made their capital at Xi’an. It would be quiet there, he had said, after the crowds in the exhibition halls of the Terracotta Warriors, and the feeding frenzy of touts and tourists surrounding the market stalls outside.

And it was. In the weeks before the national holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the Liberation, tourism dipped to its lowest point of the season. Only a few souls wandered among the paths and terraces of these centuries-old gardens that climbed into the foothills of Li mountain.