Peter May - The Runner

There was an immediate gasp from the crowd, and several pairs of hands drew Margaret away. One woman issued a stream of rapid-fire Mandarin into her face. Margaret had the distinct impression she was being lectured for some misdemeanour, and then she realised that’s exactly what was happening. She was pregnant. She should not even be attempting to help her mother up. The crowd was incensed.

To Mrs. Campbell’s extreme embarrassment, she was lifted vertical by many hands and put back on her feet. Her leg buckled under her and she yelped in pain. But the crowd supported her. ‘I can’t put any weight on it,’ she called to Margaret. Her distress was clear in the tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘We’ll need to get a taxi,’ Margaret said, discomposed by the fact that she appeared to have lost all control of the situation.

A small man in blue cotton trousers bunched over dirty trainers, and an overcoat several sizes too large, raised his voice above those of the other onlookers and took charge of Margaret’s mother. The crowd parted, like the Red Sea, and he led the elderly American lady through them, hobbling, to his trishaw which he had drawn up on to the sidewalk.

Mrs. Campbell’s distress increased. ‘Margaret, he’s touching me,’ she wailed. ‘His hands are filthy, where’s he taking me?’

Margaret hurried to take her elbow. ‘Looks like you’re getting your first ride in a trishaw, Mom.’

He eased her up on to the padded bench seat mounted over the rear axle of his tricycle. The flimsy cotton roof had flaps extended down the back and at each side creating an enclosure which afforded at least a little protection from the weather. Margaret climbed up beside her and told him their address.

The crowd was still gathered on the sidewalk, noisily debating events, and no doubt discussing whether or not Margaret should even be out of the house. Margaret smiled and waved her thanks. ‘ Xie-xie, ’ she said, and the thirty or more people gathered there burst into spontaneous applause. The driver strained sinewy old legs to get the pedals turning, and they bumped down into the cycle lane heading west.

It was a long and arduous cycle, taking nearly forty minutes. Mrs. Campbell, pale and drawn, sat clutching her daughter’s arm. Her face was smudged and tear-stained, her hair like a bird’s nest blown from a tree in a storm. All dignity was gone, and her pride severely dented. The bleeding from her knee had stopped, but it was bruised and swelling. ‘I should never have come,’ she kept saying. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have come.’ She shuddered. ‘All those horrible people with their hands on me.’

‘Those “horrible” people,’ Margaret said angrily, ‘had nothing but concern for your well-being. Do you think if you’d fallen like that on a Chicago street anyone would even have stopped to ask if you were all right? Someone would almost certainly have run off with your purse. And I can just see a taxi driver stopping to give you a lift home.’

‘Oh, and I suppose your precious Chinese coolie is giving us a lift out of the goodness of his heart.’ Mrs. Campbell was not far from further tears.

‘He is not a coolie ,’ Margaret said, shocked, and lowering her voice. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

When they finally reached the apartment block, the trishaw driver helped Mrs. Campbell out of the cab, waving aside Margaret’s offer of help, and insisted on taking her mother into the elevator and up to the apartment. Only when he’d got her seated in the living room did his expression of serious concentration slip, and a wide smile split his face.

‘Oh, my God,’ Margaret’s mother breathed. ‘Look at his teeth!’

He had one solitary yellow peg pushing out his upper lip, and three on the bottom. Margaret was mortified and delved hurriedly into her purse to retrieve some yuan notes. ‘How much?’ she asked him. ‘ Duoshao? ’ He grinned and shook his head and waved his hand. ‘No, no, you must,’ Margaret insisted, and tried to push five, ten yuan notes into his hand, but he just backed away. And Margaret knew that having once refused he could not change his mind without losing face, mianzi.

‘ Zai jian, ’ he said and started for the door.

Margaret caught his arm. ‘You have a child?’ she said.

He looked at her blankly and she looked around the room frantically for something to convey her meaning. There was a small framed photograph on the table of Li’s niece, Xinxin. She grabbed it and pointed at Xinxin and then at the driver. ‘You have a child?’

He frowned for a moment, perplexed, and then caught her drift. He nodded and grinned, then pointed to the photograph and shook his finger, before pointing it at himself.

‘You have a son,’ Margaret said. And she held up the folded notes and pushed them into his hand. ‘For your son.’ And she pointed again at the photograph of Xinxin and then at him.

Clearly he understood, for he hesitated a moment, uncertain if his pride would allow him to accept. In the end, he closed his hand around the notes and bowed solemnly. ‘ Xie-xie ,’ he said.

When he had gone, Margaret went back into the living room and stood glaring at her mother, who by now was feeling very sorry for herself. ‘You never even said thank you to him,’ Margaret upbraided her.

‘I don’t speak the language.’

Margaret shook her head, fury building inside her. ‘No, it’s not that. The truth is, he doesn’t count. Isn’t that right? He’s just some Chinese peasant with bad teeth.’

‘And an eye for a fast buck. I saw he wasn’t slow to take that wad of notes you pushed at him.’

Margaret raised her eyes to the heavens and took a deep breath. When she had controlled the impulse to strike the woman who had brought her into this world, she said, ‘You know, there was a time when I first came here, that I saw Chinese faces as very strange, quite alien.’ She paused. ‘Now I don’t even see them as Chinese. Maybe one day you’ll feel that way too, and then you’ll see them for what they are — just people. Just like us.’

Mrs. Campbell turned doleful eyes on her daughter. ‘In the light of my experiences to date, Margaret, that seems highly unlikely.’ And she let her head roll back on the settee and closed her eyes.

‘Jesus!’ Margaret hissed her frustration. ‘I wish I’d never asked you to the wedding.’

Her mother opened eyes that brimmed with tears. ‘I wish I’d never come!’

Li cycled up Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street as the first light broke in a leaden sky. He had taken his father out for a meal the night before, and they had sat staring at each other in silence across the table as they ate. For all the hurt and misunderstanding that lay between them, they had nothing to say to each other. He had been tempted to call Margaret and suggest he drop by, but it was her first night with her mother and instinct had told him to stay well away. He would meet her soon enough at the betrothal. Instead he had gone to bed early, and risen early to be free of the atmosphere that his father had brought to the apartment. He wasn’t sure when he would get away from the office tonight, so his sister had agreed to collect the old man from Li’s apartment and take him to the Imperial Restaurant on Tiananmen Square where they had booked the room for the betrothal meeting. Li was dreading it.

The narrow street was busy with traffic and bicycles. Braziers flared and spat sparks on the sidewalk as hawkers cooked up breakfast in great stacks of bamboo steamers for workers on the early shift. Everyone wore hats today and more muffling. Although it was perhaps a degree or two milder, the air was raw with a stinging humidity that swept in on a north wind laden with the promise of snow.