A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

  Stratton and Wang sat at right angles in adjoining chairs and the interpreter took up a priest-at-confession pose to one side. Stratton's last private meeting with a Chinese official had been with a snarling, saucer-faced man who'd punctuated shouting questions with blows from a rubber truncheon. When the time had come to leave, Stratton had shot him, twice.

  Wang Bin was speaking. Stratton leaned forward attentively, letting the sibilant Mandarin wash over him in uncomprehended waves. A girl in pigtails and a white jacket materialized. Gently, she eased the top off Stratton's tea cup and added boiling water from a thermos. She soundlessly recovered the cup. Tea leaves had already been placed in the cup.

  "… to meet a distinguished scholar such as yourself and hopes you are enjoying your stay in China," the interpreter hissed.

  "Please tell Comrade Wang that I am pleased and excited to be in China. It is a fascinating country and my trip has been very educational."

  A pause for translation. Wang's response. Then the translation floating back toward Stratton. An agonizing way to communicate, he reflected, about as lively as geriatric shuffleboard.

  "Comrade Wang asks if this is your first trip to China."

  "Tell Comrade Wang that, yes, this is my first trip. I have always wanted to come before, but it was too expensive." Stratton had told that same lie dozens of times. He would die proclaiming it. And why not? The first time he had come without a passport.

  "Comrade Wang asks, What cities besides Peking have you visited?"

  The conversation meandered like the Yangtze for nearly fifteen minutes; three offers of cigarettes, two cups of tea and banalities uncounted. Stratton let it wander. It was Wang Bin's ball park, and if he was in no hurry, neither was Stratton. The art historians had voted unanimously to spend their last morning in Peking-a rare, unprogrammed three hours-on a return visit to the Friendship Store.

  "Comrade Wang says his brother spoke well of you to him. He said you were a treasured former student and a distinguished professor. Comrade Wang says he is pleased."

  Stratton smiled.

  "Tell Comrade Wang that David had many spiritual children like me and that some of them are truly distinguished. I am not, but I mourn David as I would my own father."

  When the translation ended, Wang said something to the interpreter that brought him to his feet. Stratton, too, started to rise, thinking the colorless encounter ended. Wang stopped him with a gesture of his mourning-banded arm.

  When the door closed behind the young interpreter, Wang lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.

  "I would like to speak of my brother, Professor Stratton. I believe we can dispense with protocol," he said in nearly accentless English. Stratton did not comment on the language shift. Wang had never allowed the interpreter to complete a translation of anything Stratton had said.

  "You will be returning with my brother to the United States, the land he made his nation. Many people will ask about his death. I will tell you, so you may tell them."

  "I would like to know."

  "Let me start with life, Professor Stratton. That is where all death begins, does it not? In life? Once we had been close, my brother and I, close in that special way that only brothers know. I can still see the cobblestone courtyard in Shanghai where we would play.

  "We took our piano lessons and studied our math and our English and when no one was looking we would sneak away to play by the river. We loved the river. So much life, excitement. Once we saw a knife fight between two sailors. Then came the day for my brother to leave. Back to the river, but this time in rickshas with trunks and my brother in a Western suit. We tried not to cry, but we cried and my father was angry. At first my brother wrote every week. After my parents had done with them, I would take those letters and read them until they entered my memory. But already the Revolution was beginning, Professor Stratton, and the letters became more infrequent. Soon I left with my mother to join the people's struggle. I heard no more from my American brother for many, many years. Some good years, and a few that were very bad. For several years my job was to collect night soil in a big barrel that I pushed on a cart. Do you know what night soil is?"

  "Human excrement, collected for fertilizer."

  "Yes, I am glad to see that you have done your lessons, Professor. Human excrement, to be collected by leaders in punishment when the Revolution is betrayed by fools. I know you have read of the Cultural Revolution, Professor, but it was worse than anything that is written about it. Much worse. Then came some good years, and now… who knows?" Wang Bin slipped some tea and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old. "My brother… one may lose touch with a brother, but one never forgets him. Brothers are part of you, like parents. I have heard that when parents go to visit their grown children in America, they are asked to pay for their meals, Professor Stratton. Is that true?"

  "Certainly not."

  "I thought not. It is a lie then, published in our newspapers to make people less envious of America. Revolutions require many lies, you know." Wang Bin smiled without mirth.

  "One day, I decided to write my brother. I cannot tell you why, exactly, except that he was my brother and we are-were-old men. That must have been three years ago; a friend in our embassy in Washington got me the address. At first, the letters were respectful, distant, like the opening moves in a game of chess.

  But, eventually, they became letters between two brothers. I invited David to come for a visit. Hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese have returned for visits to their families in the past few years, from America, Canada, Europe, everywhere. Did you know that?"

  "It must have been very emotional, your reunion with David."

  "Oh, yes, it was. A wonderful experience, happy and sad. Last week, when I saw my brother for the first time in nearly fifty years, I wept. So did he, although Chinese do not display their emotions publicly. Americans are much more open about that, aren't they?"

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  "As David-that was not my brother's given name, but that is what he asked me to call him-as David may have told you, I was unfortunately not in Peking when he arrived, but in Xian, a city in the west. Do you know it?"

  Stratton shook his head.

  "A beautiful city where the emperors lived when Peking was still just a village.

  So David flew to Xian and there we reunited. We wept, and laughed, and at night after dinner we would go to his room, drink tea and remember; be little boys again."

  "Did he show any signs of being sick?" Stratton asked.

  "Only the excitement, at first. But then, perhaps it was the day before we returned to Peking, he complained of pains in his chest. We sat for a while and then continued our walk; we were in a park. He took a little pill, I think, and when I asked him if something was wrong, he laughed and said he had some trouble with his heart, but that it was not serious. His doctor had joked, David said, that the problem was just grave enough for him to take two or three little pills a day for the next forty years."

  "I hadn't known that," Stratton said.

  "Well, he tried to do too much, you see. He was so excited about being in China again and being with me. He tried to do too much, rushing everywhere. I tried to slow him down, but you know how David was… "

  "Yes. Were you with him the last night?"

  "At the beginning. Some of my colleagues here had arranged a special banquet for us in honor of my brother-a Peking duck banquet. You will forgive my patriotism, Professor Stratton, but I am assured by men who know that Peking duck is the single finest dish in the world. It is also, for Chinese people, quite expensive. My brother and I were both moved by my colleagues' gesture. It was a wonderful meal, one I shall remember always. Afterwards, I went with David back to his hotel, but I did not join him for tea. I had a meeting."

  Wang Bin's eyes again strayed to the ceiling.

  "Someone came for me there to say that David had been stricken. I rushed to the hospital, but the comrade doctors said he was dead when he ar
rived. Heart, they said."

  "I'm sorry," said Stratton.

  "Your embassy has inquired about David's passport. The comrades at the hospital told me that intravenous solution had spilled on the passport during the attempt to save David. An apprentice, not knowing what it was, threw it away. He will be punished."

  Stratton sipped some of his own tea. He had the overwhelming sensation that he was being lied to, fed a carefully contrived script. But what was the lie? And, more important, why?

  "Tell me about America, Professor Stratton."

  The request caught Stratton off guard.

  "Well, how-I mean-what would you like to know?"

  "I would like to know something of the truth, something between the lies of the Revolution and the lies of the American Embassy. It is not often that a senior Chinese official may speak frankly with an American without someone present to listen."

  Better natural access than any of us will ever get, Linda Greer had said. Well, why not?

  "I am partial, of course, Comrade Minister, but it is one of the few places on earth where a man is actually free. Think what you like. Do what you like. Which is not to say that it is a nation without problems. Many people never think at all, and even more talk without having anything to say. It is a beautiful and powerful and vigorous and violent country."

  "Yes, I have always admired the vigor without understanding the violence."

  "You must come to visit."

  "I would like that, but my duties here and"-his hand waved at the window, toward the Communist Party headquarters across the massive square-"elsewhere do not permit it. But tell me about my brother's America. Tell me about the special place he will be buried."

  "The Arbor," Stratton said. David's pride.

  Soon after he had appeared at St. Edward's as a young assistant professor, David Wang had bought an abandoned dairy farm on the outskirts of Pittsville. When he hadn't been teaching, he'd begun to work the land. Not to farm it, or forest it exactly, but to manicure it, to build it into a place of beauty according to his own orderly view. David had planted stands of pine and maple, birches and oak, as well as exotic trees he grew from seed. A clear stream bubbled through the Arbor into an exquisite formal lake on the lee side of a gentle hill. David Wang had done most of the work himself, with simple tools. When he hadn't been in the classroom, he could be found on his land or deep in an armchair in the old white clapboard farmhouse that had no locks on the doors.

  Over the years the town had grown; tract houses now flanked the Arbor on two sides and an interstate lanced through an adjoining ridgetop. But nothing molested the tranquillity and the beauty of David Wang's oasis, and nothing ever would. Gradually it had become part park, part botanical garden, a place of fierce civic pride. Stratton could remember spring weekends when sixty people, from rough-hewn farmers in bib overalls to shapely college girls in cutoffs, would appear at the Arbor as volunteer gardeners. And how many St. Edward's coeds, over the years, had surrendered their virginity on an aromatic bed of pine needles? Stratton smiled at his own memories. Anyone was free to wander the land, and no one dared molest it. This was where David Wang wanted to be buried.

  Stratton spoke haltingly at first, and then with a rush of details. The Arbor was a place of both beauty and meaning.

  Wang Bin displayed such lively interest that for an instant Stratton wondered, absurdly, whether the deputy minister believed that his brother had willed him the land. Everybody in Ohio who knew about the Arbor also knew that David Wang had publicly promised it to the college.

  As he talked, Stratton mentally weighed what he knew about David's death against what Wang Bin had told him. There was something…

  And then he had it.

  "… would liked to have enjoyed it at David's side," Wang Bin was saying.

  "Yes, of course." But what did it mean, damn it?

  Wang Bin looked at Stratton sharply, as though he had divined the wandering of a perplexed mind. From the table he took a leather-bound volume that looked like a diary. He handed it to Stratton.

  "Here, this is my brother's journal. Apparently he was addicted to writing something nearly every day. I was interested in his first impressions of China.

  I would be grateful if you could take it with you." Wang Bin rose. "And I am in your debt, Professor Stratton, for agreeing to accompany David's body. I am sure your presence will smooth the formalities. I am assured that the body has been prepared to the most exacting standards."

  "Yes, of course."

  "I know little of such things, Professor, since corpses are cremated in China, but I believe my brother would have appreciated a simple ceremony as quickly as it can be arranged. For my part, I think it is particularly fitting that he be buried in the Chinese coffin in which he makes his last journey."

  "That should be no problem. But, look, about my accompanying the body. I'm not sure… " Stratton wanted some fresh air, some room to think.

  "Why?" Wang Bin asked sharply. He made no effort to hide the strength behind the question.

  Stratton improvised.

  "This has been very emotional for me. The thought of David's body riding in the cargo hold of the same plane… I'm not sure that I'm up to it."

  "It is all arranged, Professor. My car will call for you in ample time for the flight. Everything is taken care of."

  "But… "

  "You must." Stratton could taste the menace.

  Later, Stratton would not remember leaving the museum, or whether he walked back to the hotel or had been driven. What he remembered with clarity was sitting on the bed, staring out the hotel window, puzzling, and the lie-and wondering why.

  If you were a man in your sixties with serious heart trouble, would you go to China, where tourism is rigorous and health facilities are primitive by American standards? Perhaps, if it was to see a long-lost brother.

  But, if you did go, would you remember those life-giving pills that you had to take two or three times a day "for the next forty years"? Of course. And if you took them with you, would you take them for the entire trip and a reserve supply, just in case? Again, yes.

  And there logic exploded. Stratton had examined David Wang's effects with care.

  The only medication he had found was an unopened bottle of Excedrin.

  CHAPTER 7

  Grass, like nearly everything else in China, is subject to political interpretation. Historically, the Chinese have taken a dim view of grass. In Peking's parks, the dirt is swept daily since cleanliness is prized, but gardeners relentlessly uproot any tuft of grass. Grass breeds disease, generations of Chinese have been taught. Additionally, Communist doctrine teaches that grass is decadent since it is usually associated with leisured classes and generates exploitation-one man hiring another to cut it.

  In the pragmatic years, though, when the town fathers of Peking were allowed to gaze at their city without ideological blinders, they recoiled at what they saw.

  Peking, capital and presumed showcase of the most populous nation on earth, was a mess-overcrowded, disorganized, dreadfully polluted.

  An emerging generation of Chinese environmentalists has sought to repair the wreckage by planting trees and, yes, grass. But history does not die without a fight. So it is that on some weeks students at Chinese elementary schools can hear a lecture one day from an earnest ecologist on the virtues of grass and another from a functionary of public health on the merits of its destruction.

  Tom Stratton, amused by the ongoing struggle between tradition and modernization, had early on spotted a fresh plot of grass on the shoulder of a new highway overpass near his hotel.

  It was on this hard-won and possibly temporary bit of green that he sat cross-legged in the heat of a summer's afternoon to read David Wang's journal. august 10.

  Peking overwhelms me, and it is only my second day. Walking the streets, I realized how cluttered and musty my memories have become. As a child, I visited this city a dozen times, and for all these years, I have carried visions of it
s history and art, visions of brilliant colors and vibrant people.

  Yet that is not what I have found so far. What has struck me, instead, has been the crush of masses of people-all seemingly in a hurry and all almost faceless amid the brownness of the city. Each block seems to have at least one noisy factory. Brick chimneys spew so much filthy smoke that hundreds of Chinese customarily wear surgical masks, called koujiao, to protect their throats and lungs from infection. For a city with so few automobiles and trucks, I have never seen, or breathed, such foul air.

  I suppose that this is one of the prices that the government has chosen to pay for industrialization, and I must admit that I have seen several great technological accomplishments. This morning, for example, I made a trip to the Grand Canal, which stretches eleven hundred miles to Hangchow. It is the longest man-made waterway in the world and many Chinese believe that it is more of a masterpiece than even the Great Wall.

  During my childhood, however, the Grand Canal never was fully utilized because it had become blocked with silt and impossible to navigate at many key ports. My father told me it had been that way all during his life; my grandfather, too, could not remember the Grand Canal in its prime.

  Yet, I learned, under the Communists the canal has been redredged during the last twenty years and is now thriving from Peking to its terminus. The economic benefits of this must be incalculable for cargo transport, as well as agriculture. Yet I fear that the human costs of the intense restoration program also were incalculable; in that area, my guide provided no information.

  Tomorrow I meet my niece for the first time. Of course I am nervous, but I am also nervous about seeing my brother again. With so much on my mind, it has been difficult to absorb and appreciate the changes in this ancient place. august 11.