Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

‘Not so different,’ Rocky said blandly. ‘I have two friends who work at the Great Wall Hotel — have you been there?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You ought to see it,’ he said. ‘It’s very elegant — chrome columns, deep carpet, health club, glass elevators. Hot water at all hours. I have not been inside, but my friends say it is much nicer than this place where you’re staying. Yours is owned by the government.’

‘Excuse me?’ I said. My attention had drifted; I was trying to imagine a place more luxurious, more cut off, than mine.

‘State-run,’ Rocky said patiently. ‘The Great Wall Hotel is a joint Chinese-American project. My friends who work there, they are paid very well and have excellent uniforms, and they learn proper business attitudes from American bosses. It’s a very good opportunity for them — they meet many people. One of my friends is trying to get me a job there, so I can make some contacts. The benefits are very good — my friends pick up many things the foreigners throw away. Pens, paper, cosmetics half-used, clothes with one small spot or rip, plastic bags; also books. I read the American novels they give me — you have divorce, adultery, many problems with couples. Us too. It is harder for us to get divorced, but the situations are the same.’

I sighed. ‘We’re not getting divorced,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘No?’ he said. ‘What’s it like?’

He was six years younger than me, hardly more than a boy, and yet somehow I wanted to tell him everything. His was the face I’d been looking for in the crowds I’d seen through the minibus windows. His was the sympathetic ear. I imagined my story unrolling before him, stunted and stilted and common and sad; insignificant compared to his father’s; the same old story. Except that he wouldn’t have heard it before. I raised my hand and then let it fall onto his cardboard folder. Rocky looked down.

‘You want to see these?’ he said.

‘See what?’

‘My drawings.’

He lifted a flap and pulled out a sheaf of papers, which he held up before me. The inside of the cab was so dark that I couldn’t make out anything. ‘Wait,’ he said. From his shirt pocket he pulled a pair of Bic lighters and lit one with each hand. His face lit up, the dark hollows below his cheekbones echoing his dark eyes, dark hair. His hands looked almost transparent. In the yellow glow his drawings sprang to life. Birds, bees, fish, plants, grain, farm implements. A moth’s antennae grown huge, the mouth parts of a bee; the convolutions of a hummingbird’s tongue. No people, not a single portrait. No landscapes. Meticulous renderings of tiny things, beautiful as well as accurate and displaying a naturalist’s fascination with detail and form. I pointed to the most mysterious one, of a jar filled with bubbling liquid and shreds. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Something my mother discovered,’ he said. ‘She found this new strain of yeast that digests ground-up cornstalks and straw and sorghum stems so the pigs can eat it — she said it is like giving the pigs a rumen, as with cows or goats or sheep. I call it rumen-in-a-jar. It saved the production team lots of grain, but she got no credit for it.’

He sighed. ‘I want to be a scientific illustrator,’ he said. ‘Do you think I have a chance?’

He drew like Darwin; he might have done the Galápagos finches justice. ‘You’re very good,’ I said. ‘I used to do some work like this for my husband, but you’re much better. These are as good as any illustrations I’ve ever seen.’

He sighed and let his lighters go out. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘Last year, in the spring, I took the examinations for industrial art college. My modeling, painting, and drawing were better than anyone’s and still they wouldn’t let me in. Still, I am selling radios, and saving money that does me no good. Even if I could arrange to go abroad, my money would be worth nothing outside.’

He pressed three of his drawings into my left hand. ‘Would you give these to your husband?’ he said. ‘Maybe he can hire me for work where you live.’

I took the drawings and tucked them into my purse, not wanting to tell him how unlikely that was. We were out in the country by then, long past the city limits but not in any place I’d ever seen. I reminded myself that it was dark and that I didn’t know the landscape well, but still I was almost sure this wasn’t the way to the Fragrant Hills. As if to confirm my fears, the driver pulled over and held a whispered consultation with a lone bicycle rider on the side of the road.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Rocky.

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Lost,’ he said. ‘I should have known.’ He got out of the car and joined the conversation. When he got back in, the driver turned the car around and headed off in a new direction.

‘How bad?’ I asked.

‘Hard to say,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been here before — we are far north of the city.’ He picked up his cardboard folder and set it on the floor, then moved over until his thigh brushed mine. ‘Tell me about your life,’ he said. ‘Your life at home. You have shopping malls? Art supplies? Unrationed pork?’

We drove deeper into the night, and as we did I tried to paint for him a picture of life in a college town. He listened happily, asking me questions now and then and trying to square my words with his own imaginings. A sharp noise punctured the night and then the car tilted left and stopped.

‘Flat tire,’ Rocky said. ‘What luck.’

He got out to help the driver, but the spare in the trunk was flat as well. The two men argued for a bit, and then Rocky turned to me and said, ‘He will go for help. I will stay here and guard you.’

The driver left, rolling the spare before him and leaving me and Rocky alone in the warm, yeasty-smelling night. Rocky got back in the car and locked the doors.

‘This is our luck,’ he said softly. ‘I wanted so much to be alone with you.’

‘The driver will be back any minute,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said serenely. ‘He has to walk all the way to Yiheyuan Road for help. It’s at least one hour.’ And then he turned to me and touched my jaw with one warm finger. That was all I needed; I bent and kissed him. And when, after the first moment’s hesitation, he kissed me back, I closed my eyes and let what I’d wanted to happen happen. His slim strong legs, the delicate skin of his forearms, his mouth moving from my ear to my throat, his hand slipping up my thigh. It was a dream, that unreal — this man I didn’t know, this country I didn’t understand, the corn hissing softly in the sweet breeze, the utter darkness, the occasional bat. Hands as gentle as birds alighting on the peaks and valleys of me. Lucky you , Zillah said again.

‘You’re like a temple,’ Rocky said. He was a ghost, a spirit, an angel. He weighed nothing at all. ‘You are beautiful.’ The willow trees lining the road moaned, announcing a gust of wind. ‘You are my luck,’ he said, when we were done. ‘My luck.’ I heard Zillah laugh.

A sudden band of fire ringed my chest and set my heart stuttering. My breath came fast and shallow, each breath a stab, and the sweat that had filmed my palms now bloomed from all of me. I felt a sharp pain lower down on my side, separate from the pain in my chest and as precise as if a needle had pierced me. A click and a drop, like a quarter falling into a slot machine; mittelschmerz , middle pain, another egg dropping wasted from my ovary. Outside, a bird called mournfully.

‘You are sick!’ Rocky said. He touched his palm to my forehead and pulled away as if he’d been burned. ‘You have fever ,’ he said.

‘I do,’ I whispered, and then I curled against the cool window and passed out.