Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘Hello, Xinxin,’ Margaret said. And she held out her hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

If it was possible, Xinxin’s eyes widened further, and she recoiled from Margaret’s outstretched hand and looked at Li with something like fear in her eyes. ‘I don’t know what she is saying,’ she said. ‘Is it a different kind of Chinese, like you and Mei Yuan speak sometimes?’

‘No, Xinxin,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘It is another language. She has different words to describe the things you and I have the same words for. Sometimes Chinese people learn their words, too. And sometimes they learn ours.’

Li thought how good Mei Yuan was with the child.

‘What’s an American?’ Xinxin asked.

‘The name of your country is China,’ Mei Yuan explained. ‘So you are called Chinese. An American is someone who comes from the country of America.’

Margaret smiled apprehensively, feeling shut out of the conversation. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

Li said, ‘Xinxin’s getting a lesson in geography and linguistics.’

‘Can I touch her hair?’ Xinxin asked.

Li looked at Margaret. ‘She wants to touch your hair.’

‘Sure.’ Margaret remembered with a jolt that it had been in the Muslim quarter in Xi’an with Michael that she had been asked the same thing by the waitresses.

Xinxin tentatively reached out to run her fingers through the silky gold of Margaret’s curls. Her face broke into a wide, and completely disarming smile. ‘It’s so soft,’ she said. ‘Is it real?’

‘Of course it’s real,’ Li said.

‘Can … what did you say her name was?’

‘Margaret.’

‘Can Mar-ga-ret help us make dumplings?’

Li looked doubtful. ‘We can’t really stay long, Xinxin. We have to get you home to bed.’

‘Oh, please …’ She widened her eyes to try to look her most appealing.

Li said to Margaret. ‘She wants you to help make dumplings.’

Margaret smiled, delighted. ‘I’d like that.’

For twenty minutes or more they sat drinking green tea and rolling round thin pancakes from pieces of dough cut off a roll. Xinxin showed Margaret how to spoon a little of the dumpling mixture into the centre of the pancake, fold it over and then crimp it around the edges, so that it looked a little like a seashell. The secret of the perfect dumpling was to finish it off by squeezing the mixture into the very centre by applying pressure with both thumbs and forefingers. The first few times Margaret made a mess of it, and the mixture came squirting out over the table, to Xinxin’s endless mirth and delight. Her giggling was infectious, and finally Li and Mei Yuan and Margaret were all reduced to helpless laughter, too.

Oblivious to the fact that Margaret could not understand a word, Xinxin chided her for getting it wrong and explained how it should be done, demonstrating as she went and producing perfect dumplings every time. Eventually, Margaret, too, was producing dumplings that were passable, if not perfect.

Xinxin nodded her satisfaction and began counting the dumplings they had made, making Margaret count with her. Mei Yuan helped with the numbers, and Margaret very quickly discovered that you only had to learn to count to ten to make almost any number. Ten-five was fifteen, five-ten was fifty. Fifty-nine was five-ten-nine. They had made ninety-five dumplings, so she never got to learn what a hundred was.

‘You will stay and have dumplings before you go,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘They will cook in ten minutes.’

But Li became suddenly self-conscious. ‘Another time, Mei Yuan,’ he said. ‘I must get Xinxin home. And I don’t want to keep Margaret back any longer.’

Xinxin said, ‘Is Mar-ga-ret coming, too?’

‘I’m afraid not, little one,’ Li said. ‘We have to drop her off at her hotel.’

A black cloud cast a shadow over Xinxin’s face and her mouth turned down in a sulky temper. ‘Won’t go without Mar-ga-ret,’ she said.

Li sighed.

‘What’s wrong?’ Margaret asked.

‘The Little Emperor syndrome,’ Li said. ‘She won’t go unless you come with us.’

Margaret shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll go back with you.’ For a moment their eyes met and she felt strangely uncomfortable, and flushed with embarrassment. To his annoyance Li blushed too, and he turned to find Mei Yuan watching them appraisingly.

Xinxin’s good humour returned immediately she learned the good news. Mei Yuan gathered her things together and put them in a bag along with the books she had brought the other night. ‘A book is like a garden carried in the pocket,’ Xinxin told Li.

Li frowned his surprise and looked at Mei Yuan who smiled. ‘I’ve been teaching her old Chinese proverbs,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably hear a few more of them.’

‘That reminds me,’ Li said. ‘I have the solution to your riddle.’

Mei Yuan smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘You do?’

‘You deliberately misled me,’ Li said. ‘You planted a whole set of figures in my head that did not make sense. You had me wasting my time trying to make them work.’

‘What was the riddle?’ Margaret asked.

Mei Yuan told her. ‘That’s easy,’ said Margaret. ‘Your arithmetic doesn’t add up.’

‘I just told you that,’ Li protested.

But Margaret gave them the solution anyway. Starting with the twenty-five and adding the three and the two to make thirty. Mei Yuan clapped her hands in delight. She said, ‘I give you a stone, you give me back jade.’

‘What about me?’ Li said. ‘I got the answer, too.’

‘But you took so long,’ Mei Yuan said, ‘the stone I gave you turned to stone.’

Margaret laughed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here’s one for both of you.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It is National Day in Beijing. The middle of the day. Everyone is out in the streets. Li Yan walks from Xidamochang Street to Beijing Railway Station, and yet not a soul sees him. How is this possible?’

Both Li and Mei Yuan were silent for a moment as they considered the puzzle. Mei Yuan shook her head. ‘This I will need to think about.’ She opened the door and ruffled Xinxin’s head, turning to Li. ‘You have a very clever lady, Li Yan. Take care not to let her go.’

And they both blushed fiercely.

*

Xinxin’s face was relaxed and beautiful in the repose of sleep. Margaret sat on the edge of the bed and brushed a few stray strands of hair from her cheek and gazed down on her innocence. Xinxin had ‘read’ to her from her picture book when they got back to the apartment. And although she could not really read, she had been read the story so often by Mei Yuan in the last couple of days that she knew it off by heart. She still did not fully grasp that Margaret could not understand what she said, and gabbled to her constantly, tutting with irritation whenever Margaret responded in English. ‘You must teach her to speak Chinese,’ she had said to Li in annoyance.

*

Now, as she lay sleeping, Margaret’s heart went out to her. Abandoned by her mother, rejected by her father, landed on an uncle who had not the first idea of how to look after her. And she felt for Li, too. It was an awesome responsibility, the life of another person. Particularly one so young and utterly dependent. And it was not a responsibility for which he had asked. Somewhere, Margaret became aware, deep inside of her there was a latent desire to share in that responsibility. Something hormonal, she supposed. That chemical spark that fired a woman’s desire to have children. She was thirty-one years old, and she had never once felt the desire to have children. Until now. Absurdly. Inappropriately. Impossibly. And yet, as she gazed on the sleeping child, some primeval instinct was conjuring a longing to hold her to her breast, to protect her from all the dreadful slings and arrows that life would throw at her.