The Secret Mother

by Victoria Delderfield

  The clumsy waiter didn’t help matters; several times, he spilled hot water when replenishing our tea. Schnelleck wrung his serviette beneath the table.

  “Are you having need to be eating?” he asked.

  I stopped sucking on the dates and flicked the stones from the roof of my mouth into my hand. A gob of spittle landed on the tablecloth.

  “It would be an honour to eat with you, Herr Schnelleck, but Manager He will be joining us any minute now. He’s usually starving by midday, that’s why he keeps candies in the desk – made in Europe, of course.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, but he’s very professional. He wouldn’t eat them in front of you. Should I request more tea?”

  “Exactly. So far, I am an idiot,” he chortled.

  After many long and silent moments there was still no sign of Manager He. Schnelleck’s smile was wearing me out. The man sitting opposite you holds the key to your future, remember that Mai Ling from Hunan. I steered the conversation onto work matters.

  “At Forwood, we work very fast you know? The girls on my line can check a board in under a minute, sometimes faster if the screws – I mean, the managers – permit the radio.”

  Schnelleck set his tea cup down and leant forwards, neat as origami.

  “The company song is very inspiring but it gets on our nerves after a few hours. The girls prefer love songs.”

  Once I started talking it was difficult to stop. “Mainly the time analysts don’t inspire us to work harder; it’s not like clipboards and stop clocks are the answer. It’s the fear of losing our jobs –”

  I had meant to say it took leadership, true vision of the kind Manager He possessed, for workers to exceed targets.

  “And what happens when workers don’t meet their targets?”

  “That’s what Chen and Ting are for; they hold admonition meetings every week.”

  “Admonition?”

  I explained it was another word for punishment. Poor westerner, he could barely string together a sentence of Chinese. “Girls are fired for not sticking to the rules. Sometimes we’re fined or food’s withheld or our pay’s delayed. But it’s all for our own good – the good of the factory.”

  I poured him another cup of tea. “But Herr Schnelleck, there’s so much more I can tell you about how productive we’ve been.” I launched into a speech about the reward system.

  “Excuse me, I want to know more about the punishments.”

  “Some of those lazy sheep deserve everything they get … If workers break the rules what do they expect? Manager He says that without rules Forwood would fall into chaos and we’d never impress any foreign –”

  Schnelleck’s smile weakened. I realised it wasn’t a serviette he fiddled with beneath the table; he was writing in a notebook.

  To distract him, I demonstrated how to use chopsticks.

  “What an expert you are! So adept with your hands,” he said as the chopsticks slipped noodle-like between his fingers. “No wonder they call you The Star of Forwood.”

  I felt my face redden. The only person ever to have drawn attention to my hands was Manager He.

  “No need for shyness.” He cleared his throat and straightened his tie.

  I smiled meekly and offered him the dish of dates. “Ha, ha! Manager He will be here any minute, I can’t imagine what’s keeping him. We’ve been planning this for months. We even rehearsed.”

  Schnelleck placed his small, hairy hand on mine. I swiftly withdrew as though from a trap.

  “Calm down, you look terrified. Besides, we have been talking all this time, and I still only know you as the Star of Forwood. May I ask, what is your real name?”

  Outside, the rain crackled hard against the glass. I had a sudden vision of Mother making soup on the stove. What would she think if she could see me in a posh hotel having lunch with a foreigner? But then, I knew exactly what she’d say.

  “Will you tell me or must I guess?” Schnelleck’s voice brought me back.

  “They call me Worker 2204.”

  “Please, you misunderstand my question.”

  I understood perfectly. My real name hid behind the wall; the past untouchable. “What name was given to you by your parents?”

  Only here, outside the factory, could I begin to remember myself again. “Mai Ling,” I murmured.

  “Mai Ling … Mai Ling … Does it have any special meaning?”

  “It means beautiful forest. There is a pine wood above our farm where the pine needles there are soft enough to sleep on … I remember them.”

  He nodded silently. “Do you ever see your family, Mai Ling?”

  “Not since I started work. The girls at Forwood are my family now.”

  “That must be very hard, to have no relative you can call on for help?”

  I don’t know whether it was the rain, or maybe the mention of my family or, most likely, the absence of Manager He, but I started to feel intensely lonely sitting opposite Schnelleck. Tears welled in my eyes at the sudden memory of playing figurines with Little Brother.

  “Mai Ling, dear girl.” Schnelleck passed me his serviette.

  “I’m very sorry, sir, I don’t know what came over me.”

  What was it about this man, this ‘big nose’ that had got me so on edge? We should have been knocking his socks off with our productivity figures, instead I was snivelling like a baby. I needed to save the situation.

  “I have an idea,” he said, rising from the table. “Will you follow me?”

  The air outside was fresh from the rain; we dashed across the courtyard and Schnelleck produced a set of keys from his suit pocket which he used to unlock a glass door. I wiped the rain from my face and stepped inside what turned out to be a giant greenhouse filled with large elephant-eared bushes.

  “Wait a moment, then come and find me,” said Schnelleck, disappearing down a path hemmed in by huge waxy plants.

  The greenhouse smelt pleasant, very sweet and intense and I recognised it as orange blossom or, more precisely, sweet mandarin. It wafted over me, bringing to life a lost image of my grandmother picking cotton with an orange-scented flower in her hair. I must have been about seven at the time, back in the days when Grandmother was still six inches taller than me.

  Gradually, I heard music. I followed the sound to a clearing in the centre where Schnelleck was already seated at a grand piano. His music was very good, the piece fluid – I had never heard anything quite like it. I rested on a rock beneath a hairy-leaf plant and thought again of Grandmother; of her blue jasmine bowls buried in the ground and the precious memories of her I hid, far down where the other girls wouldn’t find them. Also memories of the way Little Brother tugged my hair as he fell to sleep sprawled across my k’ang; Father’s happiness following a bumper rice crop and the rabbits he bought back from market. I remembered, too, the way the sky settled into a familiar painting every night over the top of our valley – as though it could only ever look one way. The soil in Hunan was red and when it dried up in summer, I spat it into a paste and dabbed it on my cheeks to look like Auntie, whose rouge-red complexion had seemed so sophisticated.

  Schnelleck paused. “The piece is by Beethoven – a German composer. Do you know where Germany is?

  “No.”

  “No matter … Beethoven is our finest composer; everyone who lives must hear his music at least once. He dedicated that piece to his pupil, a girl your age, with whom he was in love. It’s known as Mondscheinsonate … how do you say … um, Moonlight Sonata?”

  I wanted him to play on; this Beethoven was giving me permission to remember things I had not thought of in months. But Schnelleck said he preferred the doleful first movement to the livelier second.

  I said, “Sadness is not what Manager He wanted; his desire was to make you happy, delighted even, by our hospitality.”

  Schnelleck reached into his suit and held out a black and white photograph of a woman, smiling as though caught off-guard. Her clothes were nothing special, a plain white
T-shirt, the kind a migrant might wear. Her long hair was pinned back in a sloppy ponytail, her fringe brushed the top of her eyebrows, reminding me of Fei Fei’s hair. The woman’s large Western eyes creased around the corners in contentment. She was seated at a piano.

  “Her name’s Isla, she’s my wife. I left her at home with our daughter, Gerda, who wanted to come. It wasn’t possible. Gerda is … she is not well.”

  “Gerda’s your only daughter?”

  “Yes, our only child.”

  So maybe China wasn’t the only country to say, Popularize the first, control the second and exterminate the third…?

  Schnelleck seemed jaded now in the drab light. He clearly missed his wife as painfully as I missed my family and Ren. I should have tried harder to find her that night … She should never have died alone.

  “Find who?” asked Schnelleck.

  “A friend, Ren.”

  “You say she is missing?”

  “It was her legs, they were no good. She didn’t stand a chance. She couldn’t run and even if she could, she had grown weak.”

  “She was in need of medical attention?”

  “Partly because of the work but also because of Du. She missed her every day and every day part of her died …”

  Schnelleck stared at the piano keys. “Please, go on.”

  “It’s all so unfair. I found out she was learning to read and write. She wanted to leave Forwood and find a new job. At first, I was angry with her. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to leave – well, there were times, early on, when I longed to go home, but those feelings didn’t last long and Manager He soon made me see sense. Ren was never happy. She carried her sadness like a dead baby, clinging onto it. She would say things like, ‘Can’t you see it’s all a game, Mai Ling, that we’re being used?’ But Manager He cares a great deal about his workers, he wants to make things better. That’s why he chose me. He knows together we’ll make a better future.”

  “That’s what he told you?” Schnelleck’s voice cut through the air.

  “Winning your business, Herr Schnelleck, will take Forwood into a new era.”

  “I see.” He closed the piano lid.

  We didn’t intend to reveal this card so early, but things had taken a strange course – Beethoven had changed everything. I peered over the piano for signs of Manager He.

  “And what exactly does your Manager think Europe can offer Forwood? Does he really believe that expansion will cure all the factory’s problems? Money can’t buy everything, Mai Ling. Things like equality and a fair society.”

  “He never said …”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. Please, accept my apology. I brought you here to hear my music, to relax. From everything you say, Mai Ling, you have a great need for peace.”

  “I should go.”

  He looked at his watch. “Please, stay a little longer. There remains several hours until my next appointment. I am already so lonely in this city. I miss my family, Mai Ling – you understand how that feels?”

  “As you wish.”

  We walked the gravel path around the greenhouse. Schnelleck asked me to read aloud the Chinese names of the plants on display.

  He paused next to a dense cluster of crimson Ixora. “You have treated me like an emperor and I’m very grateful for your welcome, but there has to be more to my visit than extravagant hotels and personal tours of your city. I want to know about your life at Forwood, Mai Ling, not the things you are supposed to say, but how it really is to be a worker.”

  I bowed my head.

  “What is there to hide, if everything Manager He writes in his letters is true?”

  “How can I begin?”

  “Tell me more about the people you work with.”

  “I’ve already told you about Ren.”

  “There must be others.”

  “I share a dorm with seven others. You soon find out who to avoid.”

  “The atmosphere is good or bad?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  I pursed my lips and pulled nervously on the sleeve of my blouse.

  “On the hours?” he asked. “The food?”

  I nodded.

  “So the girls in your dorm don’t like working at Forwood?”

  “It’s not really a question of liking it, Herr Schnelleck, we’re there to work because we have to and because we want to live for ourselves; most of us came from the country. There aren’t many jobs back home apart from looking after your husband and his family.”

  His wife no doubt filled her time with much more exciting pursuits than washing Schnelleck’s socks. She could play the piano in her T-shirt whenever she wanted; her cares all light as rose petals. “For you, in Europe, there’s no such thing as an arranged marriage?”

  He paused, gave a laugh, and pointed to his shirt sleeves. “No, in my country a man must learn how to press his shirts using a travel iron!”

  I was confused; did he mean the women were lazy?

  “So you’re from the country?” he said.

  “Hunan province.”

  “Ah, Chairman Mao.”

  Hunan. Mao. They weren’t words I felt as proud of as I was supposed to.

  “Mai Ling, it strikes me you’re neither happy at home in the country nor in the city.”

  “Happy?”

  “Yes, gāo xìng. Is that the right word? I’m sorry my Chinese is below average, I’m learning it for business purposes.”

  “I’m very happy at Forwood, as are the other workers,” I said, pulling myself together. “If I’ve given you any other impression, Herr Schnelleck, then I’m afraid it’s not true. Forwood Motor Corporation is the best opportunity a young woman like me could have in life. I have a great future there. I believe my job is well-paid and the prospects are the best of any factory and …”

  A porter stepped before us. “Herr Schnelleck?” He offered a note on a tray.

  Schnelleck read quickly. “I should never have come. Isla told me my daughter’s condition is worsening. Mai Ling, forgive me for dashing off like this.” He clasped his bristly head. “Please, give my regards to your Manager. Thank him for his hospitality, but tell him that there will be no business deal.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I can’t grant Forwood our account.”

  “But …”

  “It’s been a pleasure to spend time with you. But I fear I may have been too easily impressed with the cost-savings your Manager highlighted in his many letters.” He headed for the door.

  “Wait! Don’t go! You must not have analysed the figures correctly.”

  He hesitated. “Figures are not enough, your Manager will see that in time – maybe twenty years from now it will become clear. For now, he is a child learning to walk.”

  Manager He was no child. He was the most enterprising man I’d ever met.

  “With respect, you don’t know all our plans for Forwood. He’s a good man and you’re making a big mistake by leaving me here like this.”

  “Please, Mai Ling, don’t be upset. My daughter needs me now.”

  I grabbed him by the arm. “How can you say that? Don’t you know the effort we’ve gone to? At least talk to him, phone him now before you leave. I’m begging you to hear what he has to say about the future …”

  “Let me make this clear to you, Mai Ling. From everything you’ve told me, I now realise that your Manager has no concept of how to run an effective business. You cannot cut corners with your staff and their safety – as was proved. Yes, I heard about the fire, it was in the local paper provided by the hotel. If I was considering investing in Forwood prior to this visit, then I am very sorry but that is no longer a correct option for me.” Schnelleck’s smile had vanished. “I wish you every good thing life has to offer, Mai Ling, but I must say goodbye.”

  I watched as he darted through the rain towards reception and knew that my future, my luck, went with him. And in that moment I hated Beethoven, almost as muc
h as I hated Isla with her ponytail and Gerda, poorly in some distant land.

  Hours later the rain still beat against the shutters of our dorm. It was time for our evening meal, everyone was in the canteen, but I lay alone in my bunk, staring at the wires on what used to be Ren’s bed, wishing I was dead.

  A scratching at the door interrupted my thoughts. At first I believed it was a rat, I had seen a few since the fire.

  I opened the door to see Manager He. “Well, well,” he said, “you’re back early.”

  “Manager, what are you doing here? We’re not meant to see each other in the dorm. We can’t …”

  “I’ve come especially to find you, my little star.” His words were slurred. I could smell baijiu.

  “You look unwell Manager; can I get you a drink of water?”

  He shook his head, kicked a pair of work slippers out of his way and batted the overalls from around his head where they hung on the drying wires. “Not much space in here, is there?” he laughed, “Still, enough room for the dagongmei, eh, my little star.”

  I didn’t like his tone of voice.

  “So, how did you find him?”

  “Herr Schnelleck?”

  “The very same – was he good? Better than me? Was it large? That’s what they say about foreign men: big nose, big –” he broke off to belch. “Aiya! Pardon the hog. Don’t keep me in suspense, 2204, how long did it take before you and him got down to business?”

  “We waited hours for you. What happened? Where were you? I’ve been so worried, I thought maybe the boss … Has there been an accident, you don’t look yourself?”

  He fell down on Damei’s bunk and bounced, “How d’you sleep on this thing? And is that the breakfast pipe? I keep telling them to turn it off.”

  “Manager, I think you should go, the others will be back soon. We could get into trouble if they find you here.”

  He laughed cruelly, as though I’d told him the funniest story of his life.