Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

Dr Zhang made a small, courtly bow toward his wife and smiled his first smile of the evening. ‘Suzhou is famous for its beautiful gardens and beautiful, melodious women,’ he said. ‘Even Marco Polo said so. The house I lived in when I was young had many rooms, many secret places, and I used all of them. In Shanxi, I filled those rooms with every fact I ever learned in school, French and English and anatomy and chemistry and all the knowledge of Chinese traditional medicine I learned from my father — everything. I tried to store whatever I knew, so that someday I could teach my children and others. And now Zaofan sells radios he gets from nowhere …’

I let this all sink in, and then I turned to Dr Yu and said, ‘Did you do this too?’

She smiled and nibbled at a dumpling. ‘I forgot what I’d learned,’ she said. ‘Forgot on purpose. I tried instead to dream of life to come.’

‘That’s important,’ I said, and we looked at each other for a long minute. Life to come , I thought. Sometimes that was all that had kept me going.

‘You should use this system,’ Dr Zhang said. ‘Try it. It works.’

‘I will,’ I said. I couldn’t see that I’d ever want it, but I knew enough to thank him for the gift.

Getting me home proved harder than any of us might have guessed. The streets outside were empty, of people as well as cars, and the four of us walked six blocks to a small guesthouse before we could find a working phone. When the cab Dr Zhang called finally drove up, the driver, who spoke no English, took one look at me and shook his head. Two firm movements, the same movements the driver in front of the Forbidden City had made. In the dim light of the doorway I looked down at my white skirt and saw how inappropriately I was dressed. How inappropriate I was — my hair hanging down in a pale sheet, the gold watch on my wrist, the silk scarf draped across the front of my blouse. Everything about me proclaimed my separateness. There were buses leading back to the Fragrant Hills, but I couldn’t be put on them. This guesthouse where I stood was forbidden to me. I was very thirsty, but the water dripping from the outside tap might as well have been salt. Like some pale, consumptive child, I needed bottled water and special food and private transportation. Of course the driver didn’t want to take me — who would want the responsibility?

Dr Zhang placed his hand on the driver’s elbow and spoke softly but firmly to him. ‘He doesn’t know the hotel,’ Dr Zhang said a minute later. ‘But he knows the Fragrant Hills — can you find the hotel once you’re in the park?’

My room, calling me again; my room, which was almost as big as their apartment. ‘I think so,’ I said. I smiled at the driver, trying to look competent and undemanding. Trying not to show my discomfort — it was past midnight already and I knew that the Exhibition Hall had long since closed, that Walter and Katherine Olmand and the other scientists who’d gone in a group to watch dancers in fake folk costumes and acrobats with flaming hoops must be back at the hotel already, sound asleep. Except that Walter wouldn’t be asleep, because of me. Walter would be pacing the carpeted floor and tapping his index finger against the crystal of his watch. I looked at Dr Yu and Dr Yu looked at me. ‘I kept you too late,’ she murmured.

Rocky stepped forward. He’d said little all evening, but now he looked at his mother and announced his plan. ‘I’ll go with her,’ he said. ‘It isn’t safe otherwise.’

The family held a whispered conversation I couldn’t understand, and Rocky shifted a flat cardboard package under one arm. He’d picked this up as we’d left his parents’ apartment, and I had seen his mother give him a puzzled glance. ‘ Wo qu ,’ Rocky said, and then he repeated himself in English. ‘I’ll go.’

There was more conversation I didn’t understand, and then Dr Zhang, glaring at Rocky, said, ‘I accept. You take the bus back.’

I slipped Dr Yu my phone number at the hotel and she promised to call me. Then Rocky and I settled into the cab’s back seat, which was slipcovered in brown fabric and dotted with crocheted antimacassars. Lucky you , Zillah said. This boy … I jumped and Rocky’s knee touched my thigh.

‘Go to the clinic tomorrow!’ Dr Zhang shouted as we drove away. ‘To clinic!’

As soon as we left them we were lost, but Rocky and I were so caught up with each other that we didn’t notice at first. ‘So,’ he said to me. ‘Did you have a nice evening?’ And then he laughed as if he’d said the funniest thing in the world. ‘Be more like bamboo, less like tree,’ he added in his father’s voice. ‘Unbelievable. Did he drive you crazy?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘He made me sad. All the things that have happened to him …’

Rocky smiled and touched my hand. ‘You’re so nice,’ he said. ‘So beautiful.’ He had less of a Beijing accent than either of his parents, but he had something else I didn’t recognize at first. I had to fight off an urge to seize his fingers before he moved his hand away.

I laughed nervously. ‘I’m glad you think so,’ I said. ‘Mostly everyone thinks I’m too fat. Especially my husband.’

‘You are kidding,’ Rocky said. ‘You look like a Rubens. Or a Rembrandt.’

He edged closer to me on the seat and I edged away. My palms were drenched again. ‘How do you know so much about Western art?’ I asked.

‘That is my dream,’ he said. ‘I have loved it since I was little. In the country, where we were sent, was a farmer from Manitoba who came here to help the peasants farm better. He made friends with me when I was small — he was who taught me English.’

His voice, now that I listened again, had a faint Canadian ring to it.

‘Wilkins,’ Rocky said dreamily. ‘That was his name. He was an amateur painter, and he used to put his easel in the fields and paint when he wasn’t working. He taught me drawing, and also let me look at his books from home. All kinds of art books, that I could look at as long as I wanted. I thought I could be like him when I grew up. I knew nothing about politics then — nothing. If anyone had ever told me that I’d be selling clothes on the street, and that there would be no good job for me ever …’

He reached into his cardboard package, which he’d laid on the seat between us, and he drew out a Rapidograph and a magnifying glass. ‘He gave me these,’ Rocky said. ‘My two best things in the world.’

‘They’re lovely,’ I said. ‘Where do you get the ink?’

‘I have to grind it myself,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s never as good as the ink Wilkins had — I use the ink cake we have here, for calligraphy, and I mix a special formula. But sometimes it clogs my pen.’

I looked out the window and couldn’t recognize anything, despite all the times I’d been driven between the Fragrant Hills and the city. The driver, who’d been silent so far, caught my eye in the mirror and quickly looked away.

‘Where are we?’ I asked Rocky.

He looked around. ‘No idea,’ he said. He leaned forward and spoke quietly to the driver and then leaned back against the seat, close to me. ‘The driver says we are west of the airport, and east of Qinghua. He thinks. But do not worry.’

‘I’m glad you came along,’ I said. ‘I’d be nervous by now if you weren’t here. I hate that I can’t get around by myself.’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I will take care of you.’ And I felt that he would, somehow; that he had a store of resourcefulness and intelligence that would keep me safe. ‘Why does your husband let you out alone like this at night?’ he asked. ‘He must be blind.’

I turned my face away. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I muttered, staring out the window at the low, blank buildings. ‘Our marriages are different than yours.’