Peter May - Snakehead

‘Not to Xiao Xu?’ Li said, concerned suddenly. He had always disliked his brother-in-law, from the first time Xiao Ling had brought him home. ‘You know he’s living with someone else now.’

She shrugged. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘And, no, I would never have gone back to him. He was part of the madness, a part of what drove me away in the first place.’ She hesitated for a long moment. ‘When I told him I was pregnant again, he beat me.’

Li felt his hackles rising. Had he known that, he would have been on the first train to Sichuan to deal with his brother-in-law himself.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ she said, ‘because I knew what your reaction would be. You’re like all men, Li Yan. You think the only way to settle a problem is with your fists.’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘Not always,’ he defended himself. But he knew that in this instance she was right. His smile faded. ‘So where would you go?’

She tipped her eyebrows back on her head and made a face. ‘I don’t know. Beijing maybe. I’ll need to find a job.’

And he understood then that his destiny had been decided for him. He could not let Xiao Ling and Xinxin go back to China on their own. His sister was carrying the flu virus. She would need special care. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘You will stay with me. Both of you.’

‘But your job…’

‘I will ask to be reassigned,’ he said. ‘Back to Section One. In the circumstances, I don’t think they will refuse me.’

She leaned forward and removed his sunglasses, and gazed into his eyes for a long time. She knew the sacrifice he was making. ‘I love you, Li Yan,’ she said, and she kissed him on the cheek.

Margaret sat up on the bed in the small isolation room. Her sealed window unit looked out over the lushly watered Hermann Park. The midday sun had long since burned off all the dew, and she saw joggers plugged into Walkmans pounding their red-legged circuits around the park. She felt as if she were watching a movie, something unreal and unreachable. She had never had the least desire to go jogging, but suddenly it seemed like the most desirable thing in the world. Just to feel the sun on your skin, the air in your lungs, the ground under your feet. To be free simply to live.

She had been in a daze when they wired her up to the monitor and took her blood samples. She remembered a doctor in a space suit telling her that her temperature was normal, but they weren’t taking any risks. They had stuck a needle in her left arm and connected her to a bag of lactated Ringer’s solution — salt and water to counteract the effects of any dehydration. Like Steve, they had also put her on a course of rimantadine antiviral drugs. The thought of Steve conjured pictures in her mind of his last moments, writhing and manic, vomiting green bile. And the cold, steel fingers of her own fear closed around her heart.

She had been aware from time to time of people coming up to the observation window in the corridor and peering in at her, but she hadn’t paid much attention. A near hysterical Lucy and a very subdued Jack were in rooms further along the corridor. She had heard Lucy’s plaintive appeals to God as they wheeled her away. But Margaret had no faith that even if there was a God, He could or would do anything to change things.

There was a phone by the bed which she was told she could use to make calls through the switchboard. But she couldn’t think of anyone to phone. She had wondered if they had caught Li at the airport in Washington, but when she asked, no one appeared to know.

She felt like an animal caught in headlights, frozen by her own fear, unable to move, unable to change or influence her own destiny. And something dark behind the lights was waiting to crush her.

The strangest thing was, she felt fine now. Physically. No more hot flushes or cold sweats. No more nausea. In fact, she was almost hungry.

She looked up as a doctor came through the ‘airlock’. There was something very strange about him. His white coat hung open, a stethoscope dangling from his neck, dark, baggy pants belted at the waist, a pair of scuffed loafers on size ten feet. Everyman’s cliché of a hospital doctor. For a moment, Margaret looked at him, puzzled, before she realised what was wrong. He wasn’t wearing a spacesuit. She wasn’t even sure if he was the doctor who had spoken to her earlier. He was about forty, sandy hair flopping across his forehead. And he was leaving the doors open behind him. His loafers squeaked on the linoleum as he crossed to the bed and disconnected her from the drip. He pressed a small bandage on her arm and drew out the needle from beneath it. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her curiously.

He said, ‘Good news and…well, other news. I’ll let you decide if it’s good or bad.’ He paused. ‘You don’t have the flu, Doctor.’

She stared at him, hardly daring to believe it. Other news, he said he had. Other news. What other news? ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked, and her voice caught in her throat.

He raised one eyebrow. ‘You’re pregnant.’

She sat for a long time in her office watching the sun sinking toward the western skyline, a great orange orb enlarged and distorted by the pollution that hung above the city, starting to turn pink as it tilted at the horizon.

Lucy had gone home. She had told Margaret that she would not be in the next day and that Margaret could expect to receive her resignation in the post. Jack had also gone home but said he would be in tomorrow. He said he was glad Margaret was okay. He was glad they were all okay.

Margaret hadn’t known what she felt. Numb. Scared. Confused. How could she be pregnant? She had blurted to the doctor that it wasn’t possible. That it had only been a matter of days…He had just shrugged. If she was ovulating at the time, sperm and egg would have combined within minutes, or hours. Her body was simply reacting to that. Earlier than usual, but it wasn’t unheard of.

Margaret ran her hand softly over her lower abdomen. She had Li’s child in her. A tiny, fertilised egg that in the next weeks and months would take shape and grow in her womb. It would develop little fingers and toes, a mouth, nose, eyes…She wondered if it would have her fair hair, or Li’s strong, black Chinese thatch, if it would have those beautiful slanted almond eyes, whether they would be dark like Li’s or blue like hers. Would it be a boy or a girl? It had taken a long time, several hours, but all the pain and anxiety and uncertainty had slowly but surely ebbed away, and she found herself suffused now with an almost unbearable happiness. This changed everything.

Li and Xiao Ling and Xinxin were laughing together as they came up the path to the front door of Li’s townhouse in Georgetown, Li chasing and catching Xinxin by the door. He wrapped his arms around her and tickled her feverishly. She squealed, laughing uncontrollably, and wriggled to try and get away. But he held her firm and breathed in the smell of fresh baked bread from her hair. But it wasn’t bread. It was just her own distinctive smell, sweet and clean and fresh. Bread Head, Margaret had nicknamed her in Beijing, but the translation had not worked in Chinese, so they had stuck to the English — and the nickname had stuck to Xinxin. The scent, and the thought, brought Margaret flooding back to his mind, and for a moment his happiness was touched by regret.

The sound of the telephone ringing on the other side of the door snapped him out of his dream, and he released Xinxin to run giggling to her mother. He hurriedly fished the keys from his pocket.

He had spent two hours at the Embassy in the early afternoon. They told him that there had been some sort of scare over the flu and that the US authorities had been looking for him earlier. But apparently it was no longer an issue. He had spent an hour with the ambassador, briefing him on developments in Houston. And then he had requested a transfer back to Beijing. The request had caused some consternation, and several other high ranking officials were brought into the meeting. Li had been asked to explain his position, and he told them about Xiao Ling and Xinxin. He had been left waiting on his own in an ante-room for some time while, he suspected, the embassy conferred with Beijing. Eventually he had been summoned again to the ambassador’s office and told that he had been granted leave to return to Beijing. A decision on his future would be taken there in the next few weeks. But Li suspected that the PR value of Xiao Ling’s high profile return to China was irresistible. The American Dream, Beijing would tell the world, was not all it was cracked up to be. Li didn’t give a damn about the politics. He just wanted to take his sister home.