The taxi ride to the city center took almost two hours. Christine had booked him into the New Asia Hotel, a large-budget hotel that was popular with Western tour groups. She thought he would attract less attention among all the foreigners.
Approaching the Nanpu Bridge, they got stuck in an impossible traffic jam caused by an accident. The driver switched on the radio, looking for music that he liked, but ended up listening to a show in which listeners called in to talk. The subject was cosmetic surgery. One caller wanted to lengthen her legs, and was asking how many centimeters was possible, and if she could still play badminton after the operation. The next caller said that he had paid a small fortune for his wife’s breast augmentation, but she had left him two months later for another man. Now he wanted to get his money back; after all, he didn’t want her new lover to benefit from it. Was there any legal recourse for him?
* * *
The hotel was on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, not far from the Bund.
The receptionist flicked through his passport repeatedly. It looked like she had never seen an American passport before. When she disappeared into a back room with his paperwork, he started to worry.
After she returned, he asked, “Is there a problem?”
“No. Everything’s fine. I couldn’t find your reservation,” she said in a flat voice, as Paul scrutinized her body language for any sign that she was lying.
He took his things up to the room and rang Chen.
“Mr. Leibovitz, where are you?”
“In Shanghai, not far from your office,” he offered, hoping their proximity would make a meeting possible.
“I’m sorry, I’ve no time at all.”
“Perhaps later?” Paul tried not to let his disappointment show.
“No, I’m tied up the whole day.”
No time, Paul thought. There was no such thing. Time was ultimately a question of priorities. “That’s too bad. What about tomorrow?”
“I’ll be in Beijing. But I have news for you. Yesterday evening I spoke to my colleague Gao in Yiwu. He said you absolutely have to see that journalist Wang in Yiwu again. He has very good contacts in the city and probably knows more than he told you the first time you met. Gao rang me again an hour or so ago and told me that Wang had been incredibly angry when he heard about Yiwu’s disappearance. He thinks Wang can help you. If he wants to. Do you have his number?”
“Yes. But do you really have . . .”
“No.”
After he put down the phone, he sat in his room feeling at a loss for some time. The room was so small that barely anything more than a bed, a desk, and a closet fit in it; if his suitcase had been any bigger, he would have had to open it on the bed. The window looked out onto a lit well. The air-conditioning rattled like an old diesel engine. He would be able to stand being in there only at night; he would rather spend the afternoon wandering the city.
The taxi drivers hanging around the front entrance of the hotel swarmed around him immediately. No, he didn’t need a driver. No, no cheap-cheap massage for him either. Paul walked onto a small bridge over the river, stood in the middle, and leaned over, looking at the murky water. It was a very warm late-spring day. The air was worse than it had been over a week ago; gray-brown clouds of haze and exhaust fumes shrouded the tops of the skyscrapers of Pudong.
His cell phone hummed, and Paul jumped as if a stranger had started talking to him from behind. A text message. On the screen were the words XIAO XIN. Little heart. No explanation. No name. He knew what the Chinese words meant. They could be a friendly greeting from an acquaintance or a veiled warning. Who could have sent it to him? Yin-Yin? Most unlikely. Xiao Hu? Paul called the number of the sender.
“Hello.” A deep male voice, unfamiliar to him.
“Did you just send me a text message?”
Silence.
“Who are you?” Paul asked urgently.
Silence. Loud, steady breathing.
“Who are you?” he repeated.
No reply.
Paul ended the call. Less than a minute later, the second text message came: XIAO XIN.
How did the sender know his cell phone number, and that he was in the city? He thought about Yin-Yin. She was the only one who could land him in serious difficulty, if she claimed it had been his idea and that she had been following his instructions. But he trusted her, naïvely or not . . .
On the way to the Bund he crossed over to one side of the street, then back again several times, convinced he was being followed. The promenade by the river was full of people; he sat down on a bench and sized up everyone who walked past. How ridiculous, he thought. How was he to know if someone was following him or not? He was not a detective and was not able to distinguish a mere passerby from a spy. The mere thought made him feel even more uneasy. Besides, a nervous person would attract much more attention than a calm one.
A new text message: XIAO XIN.
He bought a Chinese SIM card with a new telephone number from a convenience stand and called Christine. All through the flight, he had thought about her and the life that was growing inside her. Arriving in Shanghai, the telephone call with Chen and the “xiao xin” messages had distracted him, but now he realized once again how much he missed her.
“What’s this telephone number?” she asked, unsettled.
“I bought a China Mobile SIM card. It’s cheaper.” A white lie. He didn’t want to worry Christine; she couldn’t help him right now. “Are you okay? Are you taking care of yourself?” Stupid questions. He heard phones ringing in the background and the voices of her colleagues.
“Yes, as much as I can. You sound very tense.”
Paul told her about the conversation with Chen.
“What will you do now?”
“I’m meeting Weidenfeller and Xiao Hu later. Tomorrow I’ll go to Yiwu and talk to Da Long and Wang. I’ll be back with you the day after tomorrow.”
“Have you thought about what would happen if Yin-Yin said it was all your idea and that you, not she, had written the piece?”
“Christine! What makes you think that?” he exclaimed sternly. It was least easy to forgive someone else for voicing one’s own faults and fears.
“It just occurred to me,” she said apologetically. “Why are you getting so worked up?”
“No, I hadn’t thought about that at all,” he said with a bad conscience.
“Paul, take care of yourself. We need you.”
Sometimes a word was enough.
He took a side street back to the New Asia Hotel. In the room, he slotted the security chain into place, took off his sweat-soaked clothing, and stepped into the shower. The hot water felt good. Paul realized how tense his shoulders and back were; he closed his eyes and stayed under the warm spray of water until the small bathroom was filled with steam. He stepped out of the shower, reached for a towel, and then got such a shock that he nearly slipped and fell. Two large Chinese characters were showing in the steamed-up mirror above the sink: “XIAO XIN.”
He pricked his ears. Nothing more than the drone of the old air conditioner came from the room. Paul opened the bathroom door very slightly; the security chain was in place as before. Someone must have come to his room while he was taking a walk and drawn the characters on the mirror with a finger. They gradually disappeared, and fat drops of water trickled down the mirror. Paul dried himself quickly and crawled into bed. It was a long time before he stopped trembling.
Xiao xin. Little heart.
They had been correct there, though they hadn’t meant it that way. He had a small heart. One that was filling with fear. One that ought to be braver than it was. One that was large only in its neediness and its longing for love. He wanted to go back to Hong Kong. He was no hero.
He thought about moving to another hotel, but he would have to show his passport there as well. His details, like all foreigners’, would be passed to the authorities, and whoever had found him in the New Asia would track him down in the Hilton or the Jinjiang too.
He got dressed and gathered his passport, flight ticket, cash, credit cards, notebook, and pen. He had to hurry. Weidenfeller had invited him to his apartment for a drink, and then they were to go on to dinner with Xiao Hu at a restaurant in the French concession.
He took a taxi to the Okura Garden Hotel, walked through the lobby, left the building through a side entrance, and walked down Maoming Lu until he reached Grosvenor House, a redbrick art deco construction from the 1930s, one of the loveliest addresses in the city then and now.
Yin-Yin’s boyfriend lived on the tenth floor; he greeted him at the elevator with a firm handshake and a serious look on his face. Paul couldn’t remember the last time he had shaken hands when greeting someone.
Weidenfeller was taller than Paul had remembered. He had broad shoulders, light-blue eyes, and short, cropped hair that made his face look energetic and severe. It was a severity that did not go with his soft, slightly nasal voice. Paul judged him to be in his late thirties. He was wearing a suit with a white shirt and a tie, and he was perspiring. He had clearly only just come home himself.
He led his guest into the living room, a large space with a high ceiling and white walls, furnished with a mixture of modern furniture, art, and Chinese antiques. A painting of the Forbidden City that looked like a photograph hung over two white leather sofas, and there was a flat screen television opposite tuned to CNN news with the sound turned off. In the middle of the room was an old Chinese closet and dresser whose dark-brown polish shone in the light. The dining table and chairs were behind a six-section wooden partition with various dragons and scenes from a wedding carved into it.
“Beautiful place.”
“Thank you.”
“Where did you get the antiques?” Paul asked, impressed.
“I used to travel a great deal, and bought them in the provinces. Are you interested in jade?” Without waiting for a reply, he opened a display cabinet in which several dozen pieces of jade lay. Little dragons, tigers, dogs, and oxen in blue, orange, pink, and lavender, along with amulets, rings, and mouthpieces for opium pipes.
“These are the most beautiful pieces in my collection,” Weidenfeller said, picking up a light-green rectangular piece. It was a dragon with large jaws and a curled tail, as large as the palm of a hand. “This was a belt buckle. It’s from the Tang dynasty. Over a thousand years old.”
Paul nodded, even though he was not particularly interested in jade. Perhaps he had been too quick to judge Yin-Yin’s boyfriend. At their first meeting he had seemed typical of one of those corporate types who worked in China for some time in order to earn as much money in as little time as possible, and lived in Beijing or Shanghai without getting to know the rest of the country, which they weren’t interested in anyway.
“Would you like a drink?” Weidenfeller asked, putting the jade away. “Whiskey? A gin and tonic? A martini, perhaps? Or a beer?” He opened a cupboard that concealed at least two dozen bottles of hard alcohol, and poured himself a large whiskey.
“No, thank you. Maybe later,” Paul said. “Or maybe I will have something. A cold beer, if you have one.”
“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise,” his host said, disappearing into the kitchen for a moment. “A German Beck’s. I hope that’s all right with you.”
Paul sat down on the sofa and looked at Weidenfeller. He was perched on a stool cradling his whiskey; he took a large gulp of it and stared at the wall. He was breathing heavily. As though he was suddenly remembering the reason for Paul’s visit.
After a while, he asked, “Have you found out anything?”
“No, not yet, unfortunately. I’m going to Yiwu tomorrow—”
“This is your fault,” Weidenfeller said, interrupting him abruptly. “I hope you know that.”
Paul sighed heavily. He had feared an accusation like this and had resolved not to even engage in a discussion on this point. “Listen, I don’t want to argue with you.”
“You inspired Yin-Yin, without thinking it through.”
“She’s a grown woman. She knew what she was doing,” Paul retorted, annoyed. He did not intend to justify himself.
“Stop your smart-ass talk, for God’s sake,” Weidenfeller said bitingly. “It’s always the same with goddamn do-gooders like you. You get involved in something without having the faintest idea about it. Create all kinds of chaos and claim at the end that you were just acting for the best. You make me sick.”
“You’re mistaken,” Paul said. “I’ve known this country for over thirty years and—”
“Don’t give me that old spiel. For over thirty years? That makes things even worse. You clearly seem to have understood nothing. China is not Europe. China is not America. Different laws apply here. We have to respect them, whether we like it or not. We’re guests here, and we have to behave accordingly.”
“I know you’re very worried. I am too,” Paul said, trying to calm him down. “But a crime has been committed here. That can’t mean nothing to you.”
“What we think about it is irrelevant. Why can’t you understand that? The way crimes are dealt with here is a matter for the Chinese, not for you. If they decide to execute petty criminals and let the serious ones off scot-free, it’s their affair. If they poison their air, their fields, their rivers, it’s their business. At some point the people will have enough of it and fight back.”
“Or maybe not.”
“Or maybe not, that’s right. But even then it’s not your business, Herr Leibovitz. I’ve lived in China for years, as you know. I’m doing fantastic business here and have never had problems. None, at least, that we haven’t quickly found solutions for, be they official or not. Do you know why? Because I play by the rules. Because I don’t meddle with things.”
Paul realized again why he had disliked this man at first sight. He felt belittled by the cold logic of this kind of argument. The reasoning did not convince him, even though all he had to counter it was a feeling.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Paul said. “I didn’t post the piece on the Internet.”
“On the Internet?” Weidenfeller gave him a confused look.
“Yin-Yin wrote down the story of her mother and the results of our investigations and posted it on the Internet anonymously. Didn’t she tell you about it?” Paul could see how his final sentence offended his host. Weidenfeller swallowed a few times and his lips trembled uncontrollably.
“No, she didn’t tell me. But she obviously told you,” he replied quietly. “And yet you did nothing to prevent it?” He stood up, walked over to his bar, turned his back to Paul, and poured himself another whiskey. He emptied his glass in one gulp and filled it again. “I don’t understand it,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t understand it.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time.
The sound of the doorbell broke their silence. Paul got a shock. “Are you expecting anyone else?” he asked suspiciously.
“No,” Weidenfeller said, surprised. He went to the door.
Paul got up and followed him. They heard the elevator moving, stopping at one of the lower floors. The sound of male voices could be heard from below. They heard the doors closing and the elevator coming closer, stopping with a jerk. Xiao Hu stepped out of it. He was pale and had dark rings under his eyes. “A meeting got canceled so I got away from the office earlier,” he said half apologetically when he saw their astonished faces.
“Why didn’t you call first?” Weidenfeller asked, a little unnerved.
Xiao Hu shrugged. “Am I disturbing you?”
“No, not at all. Come in. What would you like to drink?”
“Whiskey on the rocks. A double.”
Weidenfeller poured the drink in silence; he was so quiet that Paul could hear the crackle of the ice cubes when the warm whiskey flowed over it.
Xiao Hu collapsed onto the other sofa, his gaze wandering from one to the other of them. “My sister has done something really stupid.”
“I know,” Weidenfeller said shor
tly. “Leibovitz has just told me. And you won’t believe this: he knew about it beforehand.”
Xiao Hu looked at him in disbelief. Paul nodded.
“You knew what my sister planned to do?”
Paul nodded once more.
“And,” Xiao Hu said, speaking slowly and enunciating every word carefully, “you allowed her to go ahead with it?”
“What was I supposed to do?” It had slipped out. A sentence that sounded like a betrayal of Yin-Yin, as though he had had even the slightest doubt about whether she had been doing the right thing. They were really succeeding in making him try to justify himself.
“You could have told me about it, for one thing,” Xiao Hu said sharply.
“Why?” Paul said in anger, more at himself than at the two men. “If Yin-Yin had wanted one of you to know about it, she would have told you, wouldn’t she?”
“You’re a self-righteous asshole,” Weidenfeller spat out.
Xiao Hu looked at him thoughtfully. Paul was not sure if he was considering the logic of his argument or if he agreed with Weidenfeller. He took a big gulp of whiskey, looked at the ice cubes in the glass, waited a moment, and then emptied the glass with a second swallow.
“Another one?” Weidenfeller asked.
“Yes, please. Thank you.” Yin-Yin’s brother cleared his throat. “This morning I found out that my sister has been arrested.” He looked at them in turn, took a deep breath, and sighed loudly. “Sanlitun wants to press charges against her for libel and damage to its reputation. They are demanding compensation.”
“You . . . You can’t be serious,” Paul stammered. “They want to sue us?”
“Not you, Mr. Leibovitz,” Xiao Hu replied in a stifled voice. “My sister. That’s a significant difference.”
“And one he hasn’t grasped,” Weidenfeller interjected. “That’s the problem.”
Yin-Yin’s brother continued without paying any attention to him. “The case will probably be heard in Hangzhou or Yiwu. She would have no chance. She would be ruined for life.”
The Language of Solitude Page 26
