“Papa could travel to Beijing and submit a petition,” his sister suggested in a hesitant voice.
“And we can visit him in a labor camp after that. Great idea.” He shook his head violently. “Stop that. We had better think about how we can care for Mama instead. Papa can’t do it.”
* * *
They walked up Fenyang Lu in silence and turned onto Donghu Lu, which took them to Changle Lu. There were not many cars in these small streets. People were sitting in the courtyards and outside their houses, enjoying the mild evening air. Xiao Hu saw two old men sitting on tiny bamboo stools, playing chess. Next to them, a gray-haired woman in pajamas was fanning herself and sizing up every passerby with keen eyes. Xiao Hu guessed that she must have watched over the whole block for the authorities before. At the next crossing, a man with oil-smeared hands was repairing a punctured bicycle tire; there was a toolbox and a pail of water next to him. They said good-bye on Changle Lu. Weidenfeller took a taxi and Yin-Yin went home on her own.
Xiao Hu looked at her as she disappeared among the plane trees without turning back. He worried about his sister. Mama’s illness had changed her. She was even paler than usual and had lost weight. He had not seen her laugh for weeks. There was tension between her and Weidenfeller; he had sensed that at their previous meetings, and both of them had confirmed this to him in the last few days. Now the conversation with Leibovitz was an additional burden. Yin-Yin had been deeply affected by it; he could tell by the look in her eyes, and her voice, which had grown more and more strained as the evening progressed. She couldn’t hide anything from him; he knew her too well. She had understood his argument but had not completely accepted it; he could tell from the way she had said good-bye. She had been brief, almost curt. He felt sorry; he had not wanted to anger her. Xiao Hu wondered if he had been too harsh, whether he should call her the next day and tell her that they were not so different after all, even though he might have sounded heartless and cynical. She mustn’t think that he didn’t feel the same way as she did. If Sanlitun was responsible for Mama’s illness, he would be as horrified as his sister was. It would be a crime that ought to be punished. If this was happening in America, there would be lines of lawyers offering their services to fight for damages. And not only for Mama and Papa. If Leibovitz was right, more people in the village had been affected, and perhaps others in the area too. There would be a class action suit and compensation payments in the millions. An outcry in the media. The people responsible would be brought to justice. In America. Not in China. He and Yin-Yin could be angry about that, disappointed, sad, whatever they wanted, but they could not change things. It was that simple. Getting worked up about it was a waste of time and energy. Which you really could spend on better things in Shanghai. She must understand that, surely.
He would have liked to call her immediately to make sure that they basically agreed on this. She was not only his sister but also his friend and closest confidante, and on no account did he want to quarrel with her over Mama’s illness. But it was way past midnight. He would get in touch the next morning and ask her to lunch or dinner.
X
* * *
Christine felt horribly sick. She tried to take deep, calm breaths in and out as she explained patiently to a brazen customer on the telephone why a free upgrade to business class was not possible, gesturing to an intern at the same time to show her where the application forms for a visa to China were. She put down the phone and hoped she would make it to the toilet in time. She had to hold on to the shelf holding the travel brochures in order not to lose her balance, and she was just able to kick the door closed behind her with her heel before she threw up into the toilet bowl.
Christine had been suffering from this awful nausea for days, along with pounding headaches, spells of dizziness, and a feeling of total exhaustion. She fell asleep in front of the television at night, and in the morning Tita Ness, the Filipina housemaid, had to wake her up, because although she had heard the alarm ring, she’d fallen asleep again immediately. Twice she had stayed in bed longer and come to the office only later in the morning. She intended to go to the doctor that afternoon. For the first time in years. She was not the kind of person who worried about her health, her own, her son’s, or her mother’s. Quite the opposite of Paul, who got worried over even a tiny bruise, who noticed when her face was pale, and who regularly inspected the few moles she had with care. You don’t understand, he said gruffly when she made fun of him. Christine believed that no one and nothing could change the course of fate. A life that had come to an end was finished. Time was up. The end. That was sad, painful, and unfair. Call it what it you will, but it could not be changed. So, to Paul’s consternation, she had only the recommended routine medical examinations on an irregular basis, and with no great belief in them. Fatalists were no good at prevention.
She wished Paul were with her now. Yesterday he had sounded very mysterious on the phone, but he’d promised to tell her more today. Now she could not reach him on his cell phone and would have to wait until he called her that evening from his hotel.
A disgusting sour taste rose from her stomach. She brushed her teeth thoroughly. The intern cleared the armchair that had been buried under catalogs and made an herbal tea for her. Christine sat down gratefully and closed her eyes for a moment. The phone rang: one of her last big clients, who wanted to speak to her urgently. She was glad for the distraction.
* * *
That evening, as she did almost every day she did not spend with Paul, she sat with her mother in front of the television. Her mother had moved into a small apartment three floors below her six months ago, and was constantly in and out of her home. Josh was busy with a new computer game in his room, Tita Ness was ironing in the bedroom, and Pearl TV was showing a Ming dynasty soap opera. They ate together, staring silently at the screen. Sometimes they exchanged no more than a few words on evenings like these. Her mother did not ask any questions, and Christine doubted that she listened properly when she, Josh, or Tita said anything to her. Christine poked at her rice without any appetite, watched her mother from the corner of her eye, and wondered how she would take care of her if business at World Wide Travel continued to be as bad as it was. The monthly life insurance payments were not even enough for the rent, and her mother did not get a pension. Christine had to pay for everything else. There would probably be no choice then but to share an apartment again; she would have to let Tita Ness go and ask her mother to take care of Josh and the household. This thought did not fill her with pleasure, but neither did it make her feel particularly unhappy. It was children’s duty to take care of their parents, regardless of whether it suited them. It was a waste of time to complain about that. She wondered if moving to Lamma could be an alternative. It would be the best solution financially, but despite Paul’s familiarity with the Chinese language, culture, and mentality, she feared that living with her, Josh, and her mother under one roof would stretch even his abilities to integrate.
“Mama?” Her mother was not listening to her. She was immersed in a world of intrigues, jealously, and revenge in a Ming courtyard, and Christine did not have the strength to raise her voice. Once again, she could not bring herself to tell her mother about Da Long and her trip to Shanghai. She should take care of herself, the doctor had said. Work less, not stress herself, rest more. He would have the results of the blood test in two days, then he would know more. A conversation with her mother about her brother was the opposite of what she needed now. Her mother’s questions. The tears, shed or unshed. The mystery of why Mama had not searched for Da Long. She did not feel strong enough right then to find out about family secrets. There was no hurry. Not after forty years.
Paul’s telephone call woke her. She was lying on the sofa in front of the television, which was still on. It was just before midnight. He sounded worked up; it took her some time to understand what he was telling her. Dead fish and cats. Japan, Minamata, mercury. Her sister-in-law had apparently been poisoned.
“Isn’t it possible that the laboratory made a mistake?” she asked disbelievingly.
“I can’t imagine they did,” Paul said.
“You’re in Shanghai, don’t forget. Who knows if they even have the necessary equipment?”
“Christine! They have the fastest train in the world here now, the tallest building in China, and God knows what else. So they can definitely prove the mercury content in a hair sample. Apart from that, as far as I know, it’s not a complicated test,” he said. But he could not quash her doubts.
She thought hard. “If you’re right, would that mean that Min Fang could be cured?”
“No, for heaven’s sake!” he shouted, so angrily that she flinched and held the phone a few inches away from her ear. She had never heard him so agitated before.
“I’m sorry, it was just a question,” she replied, irritated. “Why are you getting so worked up?”
“Because your nephew and your niece also wanted to know that. Because they lost interest in the whole thing once they found out that it didn’t mean their mother could be cured.”
“And what don’t you understand about that?”
She heard Paul taking a deep breath, about to start speaking, but then he just exhaled in a quiet sigh, as if he were pulling himself together in order not to strike the wrong note again. “If what I suspect is true,” he said, still irritated, “this is not just about Min Fang. The whole village, and probably other villages too, are at risk. Something has to be done.”
Christine gave a deep sigh. He was, and was still, a Westerner, she thought, no matter how well he spoke Chinese, how long he had lived in Hong Kong, or how much he tried to understand the way the Chinese thought and behaved. There were limits to how much a person could understand about another culture, even if Christine didn’t quite know where they were, who set them, or whether they were fixed or movable. Paul had clearly reached those limits now. “You know China and the Chinese so well; why are you getting worked up about this?” she asked in a conciliatory tone. “My mother has been living in Hong Kong for over forty years, and she’s still afraid of the authorities. I don’t know what would have to happen before she went to the police for anything. She would never take someone to court, because she doesn’t trust any state prosecutors or judges. A few months ago a policeman came to her front door because he had a perfectly harmless message for her neighbor. It took her days to get over the shock. Her fear of everything to do with the authorities runs so deep. And that’s someone who has spent over half her life in Hong Kong. What do you expect from Yin-Yin and her brother; what’s he called again?”
“Xiao Hu.” Paul paused for a long time. “I expect them not to stand by doing nothing while people are poisoned. Is that too much to expect?” He sounded calmer now, but she still found his self-righteousness unsettling.
“No. Or maybe yes. I don’t know. I have no idea what I would do.”
“If you saw someone in Hong Kong pouring poison into a reservoir of drinking water, you would definitely do something, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, in Hong Kong. But I don’t know what I would do in China. Go to the police? Employ a lawyer? Say nothing? No idea. Anyway, are you quite sure about it?” She felt another wave of nausea rising.
“Yes,” he replied in a defiant tone.
Christine wondered if he was really serious about this. She did not know Paul as an angry, self-righteous person. “Really?” she replied, surprised. The nausea grew worse. Whatever she did, she mustn’t throw up on the couch.
“No, of course not!” Paul blurted out. “Who do you think I am? But we’re not at that point yet. I just wanted to try to gather as much information as possible so that we know where we are with this. Then we can decide whether to get the authorities involved, to get a lawyer, or to do nothing at all. But they’re not even interested in that. I can’t understand it.” His voice was quiet now, and he sounded resigned and full of doubt.
Christine could not stand it any longer. She stood up. “It’s not your job to get any more involved in this. Remember what happened with Michael Owen. You were lucky with that. It could have played out very differently. And your friend Zhang, the only person who helped you then and who could perhaps help you now, is in Shenzhen. That’s a long way away.”
“I know,” he said in a despondent tone.
“When are you coming back? I miss you,” she whispered, trying to keep him from noticing how sick she was suddenly feeling.
“As soon as I can get a flight. I’m hoping that will be tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest.”
“Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid, promise?” She walked toward the bathroom, holding the phone. “Sleep well now. I love you.” She lifted the toilet lid.
“I love you too. Good-night.”
“Good-night.” She pressed the red button and felt the rice and vegetables spurting out of her in a gush at the same time.
XI
* * *
Yin-Yin opened the apartment door carefully and crept in. Her roommate, Lu, who had a cold, was already asleep. She heard her light snoring through the bedroom door, which was ajar. Yin-Yin went to her room and opened the window. Warm early-summer air flowed in; it smelled of sautéed garlic and onions. Someone was still cooking a meal this late at night. Not a day passed that she was not grateful for the apartment, which she had shared with Lu for six months. It was in one of Shanghai’s lilong housing developments, on the upper floor of a two-story building whose architect must have been influenced by the art deco style. The neighborhood felt almost like a village; the residents knew each other, children played badminton or basketball in the alleys, elderly people sat in front of the building shooting the breeze, and Yin-Yin was woken in the morning by birdsong. Now she could hear the hum of air conditioners outside, the muffled voices of the next-door neighbors, and, from the floor below, the suppressed moans of Mrs. Teng, who made love with her husband almost every night at this time. Beneath all these sounds lay the dull roar of the big city like a carpet; it was a little quieter in the few hours after midnight, but never quite died down; it often helped Yin-Yin fall asleep.
She took the cheongsam out of her bag and hung the dress up on a hanger, smoothing it out. As she undressed, she looked in the mirror, and got a shock. She had always been glad not to be a skinny woman; she liked the proportions of her body, with its prominent bosom and bottom. But now her hip bones were jutting out and her legs were thin; even her breasts, which had been full and firm not long ago, were smaller now and had begun drooping a little.
Yin-Yin sat down on her bed, put her arms around her knees, looked up at the night sky lit up in silvery white, and felt glad that she was alone. Sebastian had wanted to come home with her, but she had no desire to sleep with him tonight or to listen to a lecture about China’s legal system or the naïveté of people like Paul Leibovitz. If there was anything about Sebastian that she disliked, it was the way he analyzed and discussed everything down to the last detail. Every feeling had to be named, every thought had to be expressed in words. He stopped only when he believed that they were in agreement, and he often didn’t notice that she frequently gave in because she found his lecturing wearisome and wanted to be left in peace. He was the first boyfriend she had had who was not from China, and she wondered if this love of talking was typical of just him or if everyone in the West prized words so much.
Tonight she had to be alone in order to think properly.
Yin-Yin felt incredibly relieved that she had made it through the concert. She had started planning it six months ago in honor of her parents, especially her mother, who had taken on all kinds of extra work in school to pay for her daughter’s studies, and who had constantly encouraged her in her violin playing without ever pressuring her. Who had taught her to believe in herself, who loved her enough to let her go. Her parents had planned to come to Shanghai for the first time in many years for this concert.
Her hands had trembled during the first not
es; the movement of the bow had been unsteady. She had closed her eyes briefly and had seen not the notes, but the face of her mother instead. The crooked hands, the empty stare at the ceiling. Only the mysterious power of the music had brought her back to the moment. She had trusted herself to first Mozart’s, then Beethoven’s notes, which had swept her into a world in which her mother’s illness no longer mattered.
She thought about the conversation with Paul Leibovitz and her brother. What Xiao Hu said had affected her, not because he had lied or been hurtful, but because of the coldness of his tone, even if he had not meant it that way. Or at least she hoped not. She remembered the baby rabbit that they had once found as children. It was lying in a hollow in the ground, sick; it could no longer move its hind legs. It was an animal condemned to death, who would either starve to death in the next few hours, days perhaps, or fall victim to a bird of prey. Yin-Yin had been paralyzed with shock and pity, but Xiao Hu had picked up a stone and slung it at the animal. He was not used to killing. The rabbit squeaked. It struggled. She turned away, unable to do anything. He continued throwing stones until the guts spilled out of the little belly and the animal no longer moved.
He threw up in a field after that.
She thought he was cruel and repellent; he thought she was a coward. He said that he had felt just as sorry for the rabbit as she had, if not more. That was precisely why he had put it out of its misery. What was the use of pity if no action was taken as a result?
After that, a shadow had darkened the relationship between them for a long time. He had become a bit of a stranger to her. She could see that in some way he had been right, but there was something within her that resisted his cold logic, something that she could not find the right words for.
The Language of Solitude Page 15
