Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

‘You are, American,’ he said slowly. His smile widened. ‘My English, Yingyu , very poor. Hello.’

‘We want to go to the Summer Palace,’ I told him.

He frowned and looked puzzled. I opened my guidebook and showed him a map of the palace grounds. ‘ Yiheyuan ,’ I said.

‘Sights-seeing!’ he replied. His face lit up and he nodded vigorously, and then he hurtled us through the hotel gates, thumping his horn at the horse-drawn carts in the road. We passed through fields and past a brick-making plant and the low barracks of a military school, heading for a distant hillside studded with tile-roofed buildings. I’d seen these each time I’d passed between the Fragrant Hills and the city, but always the driver had followed a road that swung in a wide loop around them. This time we took a different route, passing hamlets I’d never seen before. On the outskirts of one was a vast, shallow pond completely covered with white ducks.

‘Roast duck factory,’ Quentin said as we passed. ‘All that Peking Duck that gets served to tourists in the city …’

‘Remember our duck?’ Katherine said. ‘The one we had in Canton?’

I pictured her and Quentin at a small table, rolling crisp duck skin and scallions into pancakes spread with sauce. But when I looked over my shoulder I saw that Walter, not Quentin, was smiling at Katherine in shared memory.

The entrance to the palace grounds was packed with tour buses, bicycles, and cabs, and our driver muttered under his breath as he snaked the car into the lot. He honked his horn at a slow-moving cart. ‘These, these … nongye ,’ he said indignantly. ‘These, from nongcun …’ Peasants, I finally understood. Farmers from the countryside.

A wave of people pressed Katherine against the wall when we got out. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘Where did everyone come from?’

‘They’re tourists,’ Quentin said. ‘Just like us. They’re visiting the sights of their capital. Like people from North Dakota visit Washington.’

Walter flushed; his hometown was always a sore spot with him. ‘Listen,’ he started. ‘You’d be surprised what people from Fargo do …’

Quentin raised his hand and cut him off. ‘Just kidding,’ he said. ‘Really.’

I asked the driver to wait for us and he slouched down in the seat and pulled his cap over his eyes, preparing for an afternoon nap. The sky was completely clear and still, blue with a slight brownish cast where the smog lay over the city. The air smelled, even out here, and the lake to our left was turbid and dark. We stepped into the stream of people heading through the east gate toward the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, where everyone seemed to be snapping pictures of everyone else. Gap-toothed fathers posed with their sons in front of the roped-off throne and peered at the labels, which I couldn’t read.

I felt Uncle Owen’s presence everywhere. He’d come here often, I knew, with friends who had sat with him by the glittering lake, which was blue then, and completely clear. The buildings the Dowager Empress Cixi had planned had lapped at the low hills, wave after wave of brightly colored pagodas and pavilions and halls, and below them islands linked by ornate marble bridges had floated in the water. Uncle Owen and his friends had tempted each other with the food they’d carried in — yellow wine, chickens baked in lotus leaves, roasted suckling pigs and spicy sausages. The grounds had been almost empty then, except for a few visitors like themselves, and they’d recited old poems to each other and had made up new ones, praising the harmony of the landscape. They had told tales of the huhsien — the male fox-spirits who love to create mysteries and perpetrate stupid practical jokes — and of the much more dangerous huliching , the vampire-fox who often assumes the shape of a beautiful young woman and then sucks the life from young men. Once, a girl with a lute and a beautiful voice had sat in a rented boat with them and sung folksongs as they floated across the water.

If there were spirits here now, I couldn’t find them; the crowds of people were overwhelming. We wandered aimlessly through the cool pavilions and then we split up, not as I would have expected — me and Walter, Katherine and Quentin — but just the opposite. Katherine glued herself to Walter’s side and marched with him down the Long Corridor, leaving me to follow with Quentin.

The covered walkway stretched before us, a mile and a half of tiled floor, painted pillars, wildly decorated canopies and open sides, which separated the lake from the hill. Each curve presented us with a new view, framed by the carefully placed pillars. I stood in the openings, trying to imagine what Uncle Owen had seen, but I was distracted by my feet; I had chosen a foolish pair of shoes and my toes were pinched. Katherine and Walter quickly left us behind.

‘Do you believe this?’ Quentin said. I thought he meant the palace, where the emperors had once come to hide from the epidemics and the heat, but he tilted his chin toward the couple vanishing before us.

‘It’s my feet,’ I said. ‘I wore stupid shoes.’ Katherine’s shoes were perfect, soft brown oxfords with crepe rubber soles, and I wished I’d worn a similar pair. ‘I don’t mean to hold you up,’ I told Quentin. ‘You go ahead, if you want.’ Beads of sweat had sprung out along his hairline, darkening the crest that sprung up from his forehead, and his nose was already starting to burn. ‘You should have worn a hat,’ I said. ‘You’re getting fried.’

Ahead of us, Katherine and Walter strolled like the Dowager Empress and her chief advisor. A yellow butterfly flew past, followed an instant later by a little boy in hot pursuit. ‘I’m in no rush,’ Quentin said. ‘If you don’t care what’s going on, why should I?’

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. I was just making conversation, just killing time. Somewhere during the previous night I’d given up trying to control anything around me, and now I was determined just to let what had to happen happen. The day was very warm, and I was tired.

Quentin gestured toward Katherine and Walter. ‘What do you think?’

I followed them with my eyes. They were looking at each other and talking so quickly their words must have overlapped. Some birds I didn’t recognize darted and swooped around them — swallows, maybe, something sharp-winged and fast. Katherine was shorter than Walter but much taller than me, which allowed her to look him easily in the face. And she was younger than Walter but not so young as me, and she knew Walter’s work very well. She’d read his papers. She’d done similar experiments. She’d studied the effects of acid rain on the northern lakes of England in much the same way Walter had studied the lakes at home, and of course they had lots to talk about. Of course Walter was completely absorbed with her.

‘You don’t understand,’ I told Quentin. I steered him toward the shade. ‘Walter’s always like this when he’s around someone who shares his work. He thinks it’s this big conquest for him to capture their minds. He likes to pick their brains, and share his. That’s all.’

Quentin took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his face. ‘Whatever you say. Do you suppose there’s someplace here we could get a drink?’

‘At the end of this walkway,’ I said. ‘I think there’s a restaurant.’

‘If we make it that far,’ he said. He rolled his sleeves above his elbow and I loosened the collar of my blouse.

‘I thought something was going on between you and Katherine,’ I continued.

He laughed then, loud and long. ‘She’s ten years older than me,’ he said. ‘And anyway — Jesus.’