Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

‘It was nothing,’ Dr Yu said. She looked at the floor when Katherine and Quentin praised her kindness, and she changed the subject as quickly as she could. ‘I heard your presentation,’ she said to Katherine, and then she turned toward Quentin. ‘But not yours, I am sorry. What is your field of special interest?’

Quentin answered her and then asked about her own work. As she described her research, Walter and Katherine listened as well, and for a few minutes Dr Yu basked in everyone’s attention. ‘It was a small study,’ she said modestly. ‘Money and equipment are limited, so I designed this to rely on human labor. I tried to take advantage of what we have. We analyzed the stomach contents of many fish, from samples taken over fifteen years …’

While she talked, the hotel manager sidled up to me. ‘Our washing machines your clothes have destroyed,’ he whispered. ‘No one of us understands how. We offer largest apologies, and arrangings for compensations of the future will occur.’ He held an empty laundry bag in his hands.

‘Can we fix them?’ I asked. ‘Patch them up, somehow?’ I had given him almost everything I had.

‘Oh, completely not,’ he assured me. ‘Completely, they are destroyed to bits.’

He pleated the bag in his hands until it was no bigger than a belt, and I thought of the way my mother used to stand in front of the closet she shared with my father, coldly fingering the clothes she bought off-season in bargain basements. A belt , she’d say. If I just had one good belt to tie this outfit together … There was a broom closet off the kitchen, where a lightbulb hung over a metal chair, and when my mother was disgusted with all of us she’d retreat to that paneled box and browse through stacks of old Vogues with a cold, unblinking eye.

‘You will be reporting this incident?’ the manager said anxiously.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Please don’t worry about it. The clothes wouldn’t fit me now anyway. I lost some weight in the hospital.’

He broke into a radiant smile. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ he said. ‘Anyone this could see. You have great kindness. My wife, my children, will all have gratefulness — this job only has been in my possession for several months.’ He looked over at Dr Yu and his face darkened again. ‘But your friend …’

‘Why would she care?’ I asked. He dropped his eyes and I looked at him sharply. ‘Did you call Lou?’ I said. ‘Did you tell him Dr Yu was here with me?’

‘Oh, no, no ,’ he said in dismay. ‘You guide, he alerts himself. I am complete discreetness.’

He wrung his hands and apologized again and then he left, murmuring a few words to Dr Yu as he passed her. The day was unraveling around me faster than I could knit it up again. My clothes were destroyed, my hair was gone, Dr Yu had been insulted; a suitcase I didn’t recognize sat next to Walter’s brown leather bag, which we had bought together in Vermont. Walter’s friends talked on and on and didn’t seem to understand that they should go. Katherine had somehow turned the conversation to her family’s long involvement with China.

‘My grandfather made a famous translation of the Book of Changes ,’ she told Dr Yu. ‘And he translated many of the works of Li Po and the other Tang poets. And also many of the classics of Chinese traditional medicine — he used to drive my grandmother crazy, cooking up potions in the kitchen of their summer home. Boiled licorice root and scallions, dried lotus buds and dogwood and orange peel and ginger …’ She laughed musically. ‘He was such a crank,’ she said fondly. ‘Yin and yang, hot and cold, wet and dry — he had arthritis. What he needed was an aspirin. And then my father studied Chinese history — his specialty was the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion. And two of my uncles — my family has been involved with China for years, but none of them ever made it here. I’m the first.’

She said a few phrases in Mandarin, with an accent so pure that I felt a pang of jealousy. Dr Yu complimented her on her pronunciation.

‘My father taught me a little,’ Katherine said modestly, her face lit up with pleasure. ‘But you know, it’s the strangest thing — since we got here, I’ve discovered that I can’t understand what anyone’s saying. I can’t seem to distinguish any words. Everyone speaks so fast, and with such an accent — all I can hear is noise.’

‘Well,’ Dr Yu said, ‘no doubt we sound different than your family who taught you. Since they learned only from books, since they never came here …’

Everyone paused at the same time. ‘The laundry destroyed my clothes,’ I announced.

Quentin smiled and moved his sneakered foot away from Katherine’s brown pump. ‘We know,’ he said. ‘The manager was just telling us when you walked in.’

Katherine frowned and tapped Quentin on the arm, and in that instant I thought I understood the tension in the room. Katherine and Quentin must be sleeping together, or they had, or they would — they had that slyness about them, and that set of shared gestures. I moved toward Walter. I had so much to say to him — everything that had happened while he was away, everything I’d thought about. All our history, which suddenly seemed worth preserving. ‘Dr Yu and her husband took such good care of me,’ I said. ‘I had this fever …’

Walter smiled and nodded but made no move to touch me. ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘I called the hospital every day.’ He turned toward Dr Yu and said, ‘Really — I’m so grateful for your help.’ Katherine dug in the suitcase I didn’t recognize and passed a small package to Walter, which he offered to Dr Yu. ‘Please accept this token of my thanks,’ he said.

Dr Yu moved forward reluctantly. ‘There is no need,’ she said. ‘Your wife has been my close friend.’

‘Please,’ Walter said. I was proud of him then, proud of his thoughtfulness. I prayed that he’d brought something useful and good — a cassette player, perhaps, or even something for Dr Yu’s lab, a pH meter or a micropipette.

Dr Yu unwrapped the package slowly. Inside lay a black silk Qing-style jacket, with a mandarin collar closed by a red frog. The silk was coarse, the embroidery rough; the style was a crude imitation of an American’s idea of imperial elegance. I had seen work like this at home, in shops that aped Uncle Owen’s Oriental taste but couldn’t tell good work from bad. Tired peddlers had hawked trays of these jackets to us at every tourist spot I’d been dragged to my first week.

‘Thank you,’ Dr Yu said slowly. ‘That is most kind.’

‘Try it on,’ Katherine said. Her voice was high and clipped. Cream? I could imagine her saying. Weak or strong? I saw her pouring at a proper tea, ironing sheets and storing them with lavender sachets. Her shoes were excellent, sturdy and expensive.

Dr Yu put the jacket on. The sleeves hung four inches below her fingers, and a chain of small white holes dotted the shoulder seam.

‘A little big,’ Katherine said brightly. ‘But surely the sleeves can be hemmed. Any good seamstress …’

Dr Yu and I looked at each other, trying to shut out Katherine’s voice. But Katherine seemed compelled to tell us how the jacket had been bought.

‘Xian,’ she said. ‘What a place. Our hosts took us to the tomb of Qin Shihuang — you know the famous emperor? The one who built the Great Wall and buried all the pottery armies around him?’

Dr Yu and I nodded politely. Everyone had heard of the Xian tombs. Even us.

‘After we left the museum we got funneled through this market set up outside the exit. Two rows of stalls, us forced down the middle …’ She smiled at Walter and Walter smiled back. Quentin made a face at his shoes. ‘Wasn’t it amazing?’ she said.