Once inside, Jake looks at the door. There’s no trail of blood. It’s been wiped clean. Stepping into the dining room, Jake sees the papers that had been flung about the living room have been put back into neat piles. Everything on the coffee table has been restored to order.
He walks quietly into his bedroom where he notices how the covers have been pulled up and tucked under the pillows, a half-hearted attempt at making it properly. The clothing he left strewn on the floor from the previous night is still there, but pushed into a pile in the corner. In his bathroom, the toilet seat and cover are down. Jake always leaves them up.
In his den, Jake sees that his computer is powered off, something he never does. The screen is black when it usually has a screen saver animation building into geometric designs. Some of the file boxes on his shelves are out of alphabetical order. The lids are askew, like always, but at different angles. Nothing in the apartment, Jake thinks, is his anymore. Everything is tainted.
Jake walks back to the living room, where Zhihong stands, waiting patiently for answers. He sits on the couch and puts his face in his hands. Racked with equal parts terror and relief and dismay and bewilderment, he doesn’t know which feeling to channel.
“I don’t know where he is,” Jake says finally. “We got into a fight. A very intense fight.”
He wants to tell Zhihong, to confess how he snapped and released a torrent of fury at Dawei. He wants to tell him about the stakes Jake was facing, the operation that Dawei had put into jeopardy, but can’t muster the words. He can’t even figure out where he should start. The events of the past month now seem like a puzzle whose pieces are as scattered and disorganized as his clothes and file boxes in his apartment.
Zhihong crouches down to face Jake, eye-to-eye.
“What happened here? None of the investigators would say anything. One of the neighbours said someone was taken out in an unconscious state. They didn’t put him on a stretcher. They just hastily removed him, two officers just dragging him into the ele–”
Zhihong puts a hand over his mouth to catch a sob and stands up. Jake feels his stare.
“What did you do? What happened here? Where is Dawei?” Zhihong yells.
Jake looks up and clasps his hands together in supplication.
“I need just a moment to…,” Jake says, searching for words. He doesn’t know how to say “collect my thoughts” but knows he got the meaning across.
He notices the clock on his DVD player. 8:45 p.m. Qiang might be getting ready to leave. He wonders if Qiang is expecting him. If Qiang wants to say goodbye. He can’t imagine what he would say to Qiang. How would he express love to a man who’s just stepped out of a cell? How could Jake put the weight of such a moment on the shoulders of someone weakened by endless anxiety? Who can express feelings of warmth and affection when they’re still processing the difference between confinement and freedom? The line between life and death. And then a thought emerges that overshadows the others, manifesting itself, fully formed, as a counterpoint to everything Jake wants to do and say. He should be in Qiang’s life only in the form of memories. He knows that Diane and Ben will speak well of him, decent people that they are. There’s nothing more that Jake can say or do at this moment to help Qiang or bring them closer together. Maybe they’ll see each other years from now, when Jake learns to face the emptiness that he always thought Qiang would fill. Detach from Qiang and learn to address the needs of someone else. The starting point is standing in front of him. This man, Zhihong, is in pain, perhaps even more pain than Jake had to endure. He obviously feels strongly for Dawei. Maybe they’re lovers. Maybe they’re best friends. In any case, this guy deserves to hear the whole story so Jake will need to start from the top. And that won’t give Jake time to see Qiang.
9:15 p.m.
Qiang takes a final drag from a cigarette he bummed from one of the officers standing behind him as Ben loads two suitcases into the trunk of a taxi. He looks at the two police cars parked on the other side of the one-way street leading out of the Progress Park development and is unable to see through the darkened windows.
Standing next to Qiang, Diane sighs. “It took you so long to stop smoking,” she says.
Ignoring the comment, Qiang flicks the butt into the street.
“I owe a lot to you both,” he says as he watches the dying orange ember roll towards a sewer opening. “Kind of ironic that Ben’s spying made me leave him and then became the bargaining chip that got me out.”
He laughs in a way that shows a range of emotions, none of them amusement.
Diane sweeps Qiang’s hair out of his face. “You smell of cigarettes,” she says, picking up one of his hands to inspect the nicotine stains on the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know whether to feel grateful or angry that they let you smoke so much.”
Qiang looks at Diane and shrugs.
“You know, Jake helped us a lot,” she says.
“I’d like to say goodbye to him,” Qiang says.
“I thought he’d be here,” Ben says, looking at the display on his phone. “Should I give him a call?”
“You two need to get out of here. You’ll see Jake in the U.S. sometime.”
Ben shuts the trunk and approaches Diane. He puts his arms around her.
“You’re my brother-in-law, whatever happens between you and Qiang,” she whispers into his ear. “Thanks for everything you’ve done.”
“You’re the real hero here. You really stepped up for your little brother. Thanks for everything you’re doing.”
Diane lets out a small laugh and wipes away a tear.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Do me a favour and keep the cigarettes away from him.”
9:28 p.m.
“He was ready to die for that document and I had to get out,” Jake says, looking at Zhihong, pleading with him to understand. “Nothing else mattered for him and nothing else mattered for me.”
Zhihong takes a final swig from a glass of scotch that Jake had poured for him. He puts it on the coffee table.
“My interrogators said they knew of no such incident at this apartment,” Jake says.
Zhihong shakes his head.
“From the reports I saw, the authorities were concerned that your dispute with Dawei would somehow complicate your other situation. The one surrounding your filmmaker friend,” Zhihong says. “He was just a complication. Something to be removed.”
The last of daylight is gone. Jake looks at the time and goes numb. The minutes have ticked past any chance that he’ll see Qiang. He feels incapacitated, weighed to the couch like a sack of flour, by the thought of Qiang being whisked to the airport in a cab with Ben.
“Zhihong,” Jake says. “I know someone who should be able to find out what happened to Dawei. He’s got some leverage on the authorities.”
Hong Kong
June, 2007
Jake copies the bank account number from the email Zhihong has just sent from Beijing. It includes Dawei’s name in Chinese and Romanised. He pastes it into a Word document which he sends to the printer.
“He’s recovering well,” Zhihong says in the email.
“Thanks for letting me know, Zhihong,” Jake writes in his reply. “I still think it’s best not to say anything about this arrangement. Maybe after some time, you both can come and visit me in Hong Kong. I would like to apologize personally. As you know, it’s difficult for me to get to the Mainland. That may be the case for a while.”
The street level noise dissolves into silence as the escalator conveys Jake into the belly of the HSBC building on Queen’s Road Central, just a short walk from his new office in Pacific Place. Jake hears conversations in English and Cantonese, the tones muted by the empty space of an atrium that soars to top of the massive, skeletal structure. Jake had only seen the famous Norman Foster building in glossy coffee table books and advertisements, aware of its status as an icon of design. And now he’s a customer of this international financial bohemoth, thanks to the advocacy of G
reg Nell, his new boss.
Jake approaches the teller and presents an envelope of cash, several thousand Hong Kong dollars converted from renminbi in the account he closed in Beijing, as well as other documents he needed to open an account. The teller’s grey suit, worn over a blue oxford shirt and a thin black tie, looks as though it was custom tailored, reminding Jake that he’ll need to spend more than he ever did in Beijing to dress the part he’ll be playing in this city.
Jake explains to the teller that his first pay will be remitted to the account in two weeks. He turns around and looks up at the shafts of light reflected into the atrium by banks of giant mirrors at the top of the building. Jake thinks about the effort behind the manipulation of sunlight, the challenges that architects and engineers overcame to bring natural illumination to everyone in the fifty-odd-storey building. The power of this massive composition of light, steel and glass catches Jake off guard. It prompts a realization that Jake should have arrived at two years earlier when Dawei showed up at his door looking for companionship. Dawei returned again, and again, and again. He wanted a safe place to store that document, that fucking screenplay. It was a simple request and it should have been clear to Jake, clear as the shafts of light beaming into HSBC’s headquarters, that Dawei was looking for a friend. In many ways, they’re the same person, one from rural Kentucky and one from China’s rural northeast, both fighting for validation and security in a world that provides very little of either for those without the right credentials. They’re the kind of people who can’t afford missteps. The pivots and parries of Jake’s path from Magnet Hill, Kentucky to a desk with a breathtaking view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour might have just as easily led him to the dead end that Dawei now faces.
They could have been friends but Jake didn’t appreciate the friendship that arrived at his door because he was too determined to nurture a stillborn romance. And he nearly killed the gift that Dawei was.
A sob rises from Jake’s gut, taking him off guard, and he breathes spastically for a moment.
“Sir,” the teller says. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Jake says as he presses a thumb and index finger to his eyes and then wipes away a tear. “Yes, I’m…I’m fine, thanks.”
The teller goes back to processing Jake’s data. The clicking of the keyboard hypnotizes Jake until he remembers Dawei and the account details Zhihong sent. He turns toward the teller.
“I need to initiate a standing instruction to send 5,000 yuan to this account every month until the remittances accumulate to a total of 500,000 yuan,” he says.
Capelin Bay, Newfoundland
August, 2007
Qiang emerges from a grove of pine trees on a narrow trail that winds from the end of town. Large swells carried across the Atlantic crash against the broken sedimentary rocks just a few hundred metres in front of him and gusts of wind from the west carry scented air from the pine grove. The fragrance reminds Qiang of the Christmases he spent with Ben who would put essential oil of pine into an incense burner throughout the holiday to trick their guests into thinking their artificial tree was real. Thick tufts of green moss blanket the ground, cushioning each step so much that Qiang can’t help but think he’s walking on an alien landscape created in a Hollywood backlot.
A day that started in Boston ends here, on the rocky tip of a peninsula near the easternmost point of North America, after a transfer in Montreal and a few rides down-coast from Saint John’s by generous “Newfies”. Speaking in an Irish-sounding brogue, one of the drivers offered Qiang a cigarette. In exchange, Qiang gave the man one of his two small jars of Tiger Balm, which he explained is used to soothe sore muscles. It was a pure exchange and a welcome contrast to the politically driven give-and-take that had kept him busy for the past few months as a subject of intense media interest.
He had been barraged by reporters asking for details that would confirm the conclusions they’d already made about the Chinese government, looking to legitimise the positions they’ve taken on the subject. Dissidents, critics, academics, analysts, ingraciated themselves, most of them trying to back up their fellowship applications and speaking fees. Few of them willing to delve into the hypocrisy of the U.S. government or its Chamber of Commerce.
Qiang feels the cigarette tucked in a small pocket inside his windbreaker. He will save it for later. The sun has fallen below the ridge on the other side of Capelin Bay so he needs to find a spot to pitch his tent soon.
A few minutes later, Qiang fights the wind to get the last peg into the ground, allowing the tent to take its bulbous form. The top of the tent flutters but the foundation looks firm. After arranging the contents of his backpack inside the tent, he sits on an oversized clump of moss and eats the wild blueberries he collected from low bushes growing in clearings between the pine trees. The berries are smaller than those he’s found in supermarkets but much sweeter. He savours each one as daylight dwindles into dusk and then to the pitch black of night. The wind, the sweetness of blueberry pulp, the sound of crashing waves and the scent of pine combine to create a sense of freedom for the first time since Qiang vacated his office in Silicon Valley a few years earlier. He didn’t feel free when the authorities let him out of detention, nor was he free when he landed in San Francisco. He’s been bombarded by that word lately, mostly by people who think they have freedom but don’t, people who will never understand how viscerally it can be felt. The more the word has been used in the media to describe Qiang’s condition, the more elusive it felt, which is why he’s now disappeared into this wilderness between worlds.
By the time he finishes the berries and a ration of trail mix, the wind has died down enough for Qiang to remove his outer jacket. He lies on the soft vegetation and looks up. Perhaps he saw just as many stars as a child in rural Sichuan Province but the novelty of the night sky and the freedom of sleeping outdoors in a place of his own choosing gives the stars a renewed and awesome brilliance. As he tries to identify constellations, Qiang sees a hazy band arching across the night sky and realizes it’s the Milky Way, a sight so majestic and profound he smiles, perhaps for the first time in months. Seeing this infinite array worlds so far away puts an equally infinite distance between Qiang and his recent trials.
He remembers the poem. The one he first heard in his university English class. It happened to be the poem that helped keep Qiang sane throughout the events he’s come here to, finally, put into some perspective. Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
I know what the caged bird feels!
The poem gave Qiang his first indication that English verse could be as profound as the classics he had learned over the years in Chinese. More specific on details, more modifiers, less of the ambiguity. But beautiful nonetheless. Qiang continues reciting the poem to the end. The breeze rushing by him is still strong enough to whip these words of wisdom up into the sky, across the Atlantic Ocean, and then across the great continent that separates him from so many people he’s thinking about these days. Jake, in particular. And the young man who wound up injured as a result of Jake’s efforts. These two characters, more than any others, need reassuring words.
Qiang watches them streaming up in the air currents blowing from the edge of North America. He inhabits these peaceful whispers, guiding them through the stratosphere and halfway around the globe. From these heights, Qiang can see London and Paris below. Then Moscow, with its concentric rings similar to Beijing. Then the amber sands of the Middle East and the green plains of Central Asia. When he watches the words finally descend on Jake and Dawei, he can sleep. And when he wakes, he’ll resume his work.
Acknowledgments
Th
e list of people whose contributions were vital to The Wounded Muse is long.
Susan Nanes steered me to the right books many years ago, including W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, giving me my first appreciation for novels. Susan also provided some guidance on a few chapters early on.
Wayson Choy managed to tell me in a kind but firm manner to go back to the basics and to stop writing fiction like it’s a news report. He sent me to Beth Kaplan’s University of Toronto classroom, where I learned to take risks.
My mentors during a writing residency at the Banff Centre, Larissa Lai and M.A.C. Farrant, helped me develop my key characters and pay more attention to sentence structure.
My first writing group, which grew out of an online UofT class led by Michelle Berry, included Siobhan Jamison, whose poetic approach to prose inspires me constantly. Other members of this group – including Djamila Ibrahim, Charles Shamess, Alexandra Bednar, and Donna Hughes – helped me start to shape the narrative.
My second writers group, comprising everyone in yet another UofT class, this one led by Dennis Bock, was crucial in strengthening the story and the characters. These classmates – Joyce Wayne, Sandra Rosier, Terry Leeder, John Choi, and Leah Zaidi – helped me shape the story’s characters. After a last pass through the manuscript, Joyce suggested some additions that turned out to be crucial.
Sam Hiyate convinced me to remove one central character, which required a thorough re-engineering of the story. That effort was like removing a dysfunctional kidney, unpleasant and messy but necessary to give the book a chance at life. Sam also provided great ideas that helped torque up the action.
And last but not least, my partner Klemens, who never complained when I needed time to write and whose editing skills I now take very seriously.
Many thanks to all of you.
Author Biography
Robert F. Delaney has been covering China as a journalist for media outlets including Dow Jones Newswires and Bloomberg News since 1995, and was recently appointed U.S. Bureau Chief for the South China Morning Post. He moved to China in 1992, when the government set in motion an economic reform programme, initially as a student and then spent many years covering the twists and turns of the country’s transformation. In his spare time, Robert turned to focus on writing about the personal struggles of those in the middle of these changes. Many of the themes for The Wounded Muse were first developed in Route 1 to China, a collection of memoirs that won Robert first runner up in the University of Toronto – Penguin Random House Creative Writing Competition in 2012. Robert splits his time between New York City and Toronto.
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