Peter May - The Runner

The first passengers came through the gate in ones and twos, dragging cases or pushing trolleys. And then slowly it turned into a flood, and the concourse started filling up. Passengers headed for the counters of the Agricultural Bank of China to change money, or out to the rows of taxis waiting on the ramp outside. Margaret scoured the faces, watching nervously for her mother. Finally she saw her, pale and anxious amongst a sea of Chinese faces, tall, slim, lipstick freshly applied, her coiffured grey-streaked hair still immaculate, even after a fifteen-hour flight. She was wearing a dark green suit with a cream blouse and camel-hair coat slung over her shoulders, looking for all the world like a model in a clothes catalogue for the elderly. She had three large suitcases piled on a trolley.

Margaret hurried to intercept her. ‘Mom,’ she called and waved, and her mother turned as she approached. Margaret tipped her head towards the three cases. ‘I thought you were only coming for a week.’

Her mother smiled coolly. ‘Margaret,’ she said, and they exchanged a perfunctory hug and peck on the cheek, before her mother cast a disapproving eye over the swelling that bulged beneath her smock. ‘My God, look at you! I can’t believe you went and got yourself pregnant to that Chinaman.’

Margaret said patiently. ‘He’s not a Chinaman, Mom. He’s Chinese. And he’s the man I love.’

Whatever went through her mother’s mind, she thought better of expressing it. Instead, as Margaret steered her towards the exit, she said, ‘It was a dreadful flight. Full of…Chinese.’ She said the word as if it left a nasty taste in her mouth. Her mother thought of anyone who was not white, Anglo-Saxon, as being barely human. ‘They ate and snorted and snored and sneezed through fifteen hours of hell,’ she said. ‘And the smell of garlic…You needn’t think that I’ll be a regular visitor.’

‘Well, there’s a blessing,’ Margaret said, drawing a look from her. She smiled. ‘Only kidding. Come on, let’s get a taxi.’

At the rank, they were approached by another tout. ‘You want taxi, lady?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Margaret’s mother.

‘No,’ said Margaret

‘We do,’ her mother protested.

‘Not from him. It’ll cost three times as much.’ She steered her mother towards the queue. The wind whipped and tugged at their clothes, and destroyed in fifteen seconds the coiffure which had survived fifteen hours of air travel. Her mother slipped her arms into her coat and shivered. ‘My God, Margaret, it’s colder than Chicago!’

‘Yes, Mom, and it’s bigger and dirtier and noisier. Get used to it, because that’s how it’s going to be for the next week.’

A middle-aged man came and stood behind them in the queue. He was wheeling a small case. He smiled and nodded, and then very noisily howked a huge gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat it towards the ground. The wind caught it and whipped it away to slap against a square concrete pillar supporting luminescent ads for satellite telephones.

Margaret’s mother’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did you see that?’ she said in a stage whisper.

Margaret sighed. It was going to be a long week. ‘Welcome to China,’ she said.

Margaret’s mother stared in silence from the window of their taxi as they sped into the city on the freeway from the airport, and Margaret tried to imagine seeing it all again through new eyes. But even in the few years since Margaret’s first trip, Beijing had changed nearly beyond recognition. New high-rise buildings were altering the skyline almost daily. The ubiquitous yellow ‘bread’ taxis had been banished overnight in a desperate attempt to reduce pollution. The number of bicycles was diminishing more or less in direct relation to the increase in the number of motor vehicles. At one time there had been at least twenty-one million bicycles in Beijing. God only knew how many vehicles there were now on the roads. Giant electronic advertising hordings blazed the same logos into the blustery afternoon as you might expect to find in any American city. McDonald’s. Toyota. Sharp. Chrysler.

They hit the Third Ring Road, and started the long loop round to the south side of the city. ‘I’d no idea it would be like this,’ her mother said. She turned her head in astonishment at the sight of a young woman on the sidewalk wearing a miniskirt and thigh-length boots.

‘What did you think it would be like?’

‘I don’t know. Like in the tourist brochures. Chinese lanterns, and curling roofs, and streets filled with people in blue Mao suits.’

‘Well some of these things still survive,’ Margaret said. ‘But, really, Beijing is just a big modern city like you’d find anywhere in the States. Only bigger.’

It took nearly an hour to get to Margaret’s apartment block on the north side of the campus. Margaret’s mother cast a sharp eye over her surroundings — looking for fault, Margaret thought — while their taxi driver carried each of the heavy cases into the lobby, and stacked them in the elevator. There was no sign of the sullen operator. Just the debris of her cigarette ends on the floor and the stale smell of her cigarette smoke in the air.

The driver smiled and nodded and held the elevator door open for them to get in.

‘ Xie-xie ,’ Margaret said.

‘Syeh-syeh? What does that mean?’ her mother demanded.

‘It means, thank you.’

‘Well, aren’t you going to give him a tip?’

‘No, people don’t give or expect tips in China.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She waved her hand at the taxi driver. ‘Don’t go away.’ And she fished in her purse for some money. She found a five dollar note and held it out.

The driver smiled, embarrassed, and shook his head, waving the note away.

‘Go on, take it,’ her mother insisted.

‘Mom, he won’t take it. It’s considered demeaning to accept tips here. You’re insulting him.’

‘Oh, don’t talk nonsense! Of course he wants the money. Or does he think our American dollars aren’t good enough for him?’ And she threw the note at him.

The taxi driver stepped back, shocked by the gesture, and stood watching as the note fluttered to the floor. The doors of the elevator slid shut.

Margaret was furious and embarrassed. ‘That was an appalling thing to do.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Margaret, as soon as those doors closed you can be sure he was pocketing that note quicker than you could say…syeh-syeh.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Margaret angrily stabbed the button with the outward pointing arrows and the doors slid open again. Beyond the glass at the far side of the lobby they saw the driver hurrying down the steps to his cab. The five dollar note lay untouched on the floor. Margaret turned to her mother. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

‘I don’t expect to be treated like that by my own daughter,’ her mother said, as they got the three huge cases into the tiny hallway of Margaret’s apartment. ‘We’ve never gotten along well, you and I, Margaret. But you are my daughter. And at least I made the effort to be here. No matter how much I might disapprove, I have come halfway around the world to be at your wedding. I think I’m entitled to a little consideration in return.’

Margaret kept her teeth firmly clenched and closed the door behind them. ‘Your bedroom’s this way,’ she said, leading her mother up the hall. For the first time, Mrs. Campbell stopped to take in her surroundings. She looked into the bedroom, whose double bed nearly filled the room. It was necessary to squeeze past an old wooden wardrobe to reach the small desk beneath the window which acted as a dressing-table.

‘You live here?’ Her mother was incredulous. She marched down the hall and cast an eye over the tiny kitchen before turning into the living room. A three-seater settee took up nearly half the room. There was one easy chair and there were two dining chairs next to a gate-leg table pushed up against the wall by the window. Margaret took most of her meals alone at the gate-leg, or off her knee in front of the twelve-inch television set. There was no disguising the horror on her mother’s face. ‘The whole apartment would fit into the sitting room at Oak Park.’ She turned earnestly to her daughter. ‘Margaret, what have you been reduced to in this God-forsaken country?’