by Lyn Hamilton
Zhang—I knew his voice well now—was in the courtyard a minute or two later. He called out in a loud and quite authoritarian tone, and a woman answered. There ensued a conversation that I could not understand. I held my breath as someone tried the door, rattling the handle. It was locked, as I very well knew. I thought I was doomed. The woman said something, and a few seconds later I heard footsteps moving away from my hiding place. Soon all was quiet.
I stayed there hardly daring to breathe for what seemed to be hours, absolutely petrified. I was cold, hungry, and scared beyond reason. Who had locked me in? Did they know I was there? Were they holding me prisoner for Zhang,-and if so, why hadn’t they just told him where I was? Maybe they had, and he was going for reinforcements. Then there were more footsteps outside my hiding place—or my prison, depending on circumstances I didn’t understand—and I heard a key inserted into the lock. The door opened. A woman spoke. I didn’t have a clue what she said, but I stood up. She couldn’t have been speaking to anyone else, and there seemed no point deluding myself with any pretense that I was safely hidden. My legs were aching from the climb and from having crouched down for so long. She took my hand in the dark and led me across the little courtyard and into another small building. This was the house. There was one lantern casting a pale light.
We looked each other over. I expect she saw a very large white woman with fair hair and pale eyes looming over her. I saw a tiny Chinese woman, someone who worked hard, judging from her worn hands. It was a one-room home, with one bed, on which a small child slept. I assume they slept together. She gave me a cup of tea, and even took me in the dark to the communal bathroom—after I said the word “toilet,” one she understood—a concrete structure with four holes in the ground cantilevered over a cliff. It was breezy, but what did I care? Then she took me back to the storage room, arranged some sacks as a bed and gave me a blanket. As I more or less collapsed on the makeshift bed, she locked me in again. Again I wondered whether I was a prisoner or a guest. At this point, it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going anywhere in the dark.
I didn’t think there was the slightest chance that I’d sleep, but I did. As the palest of light showed through the cracks in the walls of the house, I heard the key turn again, and the woman offered me a bowl of something. She signaled me to follow her, and I did, to a chair in the courtyard.
The home in which I had found myself was very basic. The cart in the courtyard against which I’d managed to bang my knee was loaded down with drying cobs of corn, dark gold against the green paint of the cart. Bunches of long, thin red peppers dangled from the rafters. A cat, perhaps my companion of the previous evening, was curled up beneath the cart.
The bowl contained congee, a soupy rice dish. To the rice were added some spring onions, and something a bit spicy I didn’t recognize. I ate every last bite. I kept saying xiexie, thank you, over and over again. Her child, a shy little boy, kept coming up and staring at me, before giggling and running away.
The woman prattled away to me for a while. I couldn’t understand a word. Finally I just said, and I believe there may have been a catch in my voice, “Zhang Xiaoling.”
The woman spat on the ground. I said it again, and she spat again. She obviously knew who he was, and she didn’t seem to like him.
After breakfast, she offered me a bowl of water to clean up a bit, and picked away at some straw that had attached itself to my jacket. “Lara,” I said, pointing to myself. She reciprocated. I think she said Ting, but I couldn’t be sure.
I pulled out my wallet, took out all the cash, the equivalent of close to two hundred dollars, and said “Beijing.” This elicited a stream of conversation. Ting left the house and came back a few minutes later with another woman, who introduced herself, at least that was what I thought she was doing, as Rong. The two of them talked away, and finally Ting took my watch arm, and pointed to two on my watch. I didn’t know what that meant, but I figured she must have thought that this was relevant in some way. It was now only eight.
I spent the next six hours in a state of barely controlled panic. I kept trying my cell phone, but of course it didn’t work. I was in the hills, and far from Beijing. I was fed regularly, and pots of tea were always available, but I didn’t know what was happening. I also didn’t know if Zhang Xiaoling was going to show up again. Every time I heard footsteps crunch against the stones of the lane, I ducked into the storage area.
Two o’clock came and went, and I was getting really frightened. Then, at about two-thirty, I heard a car horn sound several times. Ting gestured to me to follow her, and we carefully made our way down through the village toward the road. She went ahead at every corner, looking carefully about before signaling me to follow. High above the roadway we stopped, and I looked about me. We were in a narrow pass between two dark hills, their slopes brown with winter, in what looked to be a dead end. If so, this could very well be a trap. I tried not to think that way, to concentrate on what I thought had been some real human connection here.
The town clung to the slopes of both hills, with a road at the bottom between the two. The distance between the two hills at this point was just the width of a two-lane road. The town was spectacular. I think it had to be several hundred years old, Ming in style, with lovely rooflines, all gray stone and brick, with only two flashes of color, the red Chinese flag hanging high over the valley, and a red lantern swinging from a porch. Higher up the hill I could see one whitewashed building that looked like a tiny temple of some sort. I could not understand how a village like this got to be here, wherever here was, or how it had stayed like this for so long. The only modern touch was a truck at the bottom of the hill. Far, far below in another direction, on the main road, a white Lexus, at least what was left of it, sat on the shoulder. It was the car, and not the village, that seemed out of place in this setting. There was no one I could see near it. I was surprised how far I’d managed to climb in the dark.
It came to me that the villagers must surely have heard and most likely seen the accident. In a cut in the hills like this, the sound had nowhere to go but up. They may even have seen or at least heard me running away. Ting knew I was in her home. She could have exposed me, but instead she had protected me by locking me in. When Zhang came to her place, he had called her out and tried the door. Finding it locked, he assumed I couldn’t have been in it. His tone in speaking to her had been so harsh, and yet she had saved me. She’d waited until she was sure he’d gone, perhaps watching in the darkness from a little open porch I’d seen on the back of her house, a porch that afforded the same view of the road that I now had, and then she had come to make sure I was all right, and to make me tea, and to fashion some sort of bed with a blanket, something that was probably in pretty short supply in this place, to keep me warm. I wanted to cry.
Rong was talking to the driver of the truck, which was loaded down with all kinds of merchandise. There were plastic washbowls, running shoes, towels, sweaters, jackets. It was a kind of moveable general store and several people were gathered ‘round it checking out the wares. Others were standing at various places on the slopes of the town. They looked like sentries in a way, and perhaps that’s what they were. It seemed possible to me that the whole town knew I was there.
When everyone had made their purchases, Rong gave Ting a signal and we quickly headed the rest of the way down the hill. I felt terribly exposed there, the two hills looming over me like malevolent giants. Zhang or his henchmen could have been up there, and any moment could come swooping down to get me, probably hurting my newfound friends in the process. I thought it was very brave of them to help me. “Zhang Xiaoling,” I said again, this time to the driver, and all three of them spat on the ground. The feeling in this town appeared to be pretty much unanimous on the subject of Zhang Xiaoling. I thought perhaps this was part of Zhang’s fiefdom, where terrified people were forced to do whatever he asked. These three seemed prepared to defy him, something for which I was exceedingly grateful.
&n
bsp; Five minutes later, I was lying on the bed of the truck with sweaters, jackets, pots and pans, and just about everything else piled on top of me. We were underway. It was a really rough ride. I could feel every bone, and at one point the truck stopped, and I heard someone talking to the driver. I held my breath, and soon we were on our way again.
About half an hour later, I think, the truck stopped again, but this time the driver started pulling the merchandise off me, and signaled me to get into the cab of the truck, which smelled very slightly of manure. We sped along for a couple hours that way, he talking to me, me talking back, neither of us understanding a word, but both of us nodding and smiling away.
He dropped me in front of the Forbidden City, at the north end of Tian’anmen Square. I think he would have taken me to the door of my hotel if I could have told him what and where it was. I had given some money to both Ting and Rong, although both had protested. I knew that for these people what was a posh dinner out in my hometown was a fortune for them, and I insisted they keep it. I gave the driver most of what I had left. I had enough for a taxi to the hotel. The woman who swept the sidewalk in front of the hotel was gone. I suppose she didn’t expect me to get back. Twenty minutes after the man dropped me off, I was walking through the door to my room.
Rob was there. I could tell he’d been pacing. “Where have you been?” he demanded in the tone he uses when he’s worried, but would prefer me to think he’s annoyed. “You were supposed to get here first. Was your flight delayed or something?” He looked me up and down with a somewhat perplexed expression—perhaps I wasn’t looking as well turned out as usual, what with the dirt and straw all over my clothes—before coming toward me as if to give me a hug or maybe a shake. I gave him a shake of the head of my own. Unless he liked the smell of manure, he’d regret getting any closer to me than he already was.
“Well?” he said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No, my flight was right on time.”
“Then where have you been?”
“I have no idea. I met some wonderful people, though. It’s a long story, but let me summarize it this way: any man who gets between me and the shower is dead meat.”
Later, not only clean but safe, I placed a call to George Matthews. Did I care it was rather early in the morning in Toronto? I did not. I reversed the charges, too. When he heard my voice he did not ask why I was calling, nor did he make any attempt at small talk. I didn’t think, though, that this was because I’d awakened him. He just waited for me to say something.
“You have not been honest with me,” I said, not bothering with small talk myself. “Neither you nor Dorothy have been.” For some reason, my tongue and brain would no longer permit me to call her Dory. “Now you will tell me everything I need to know.”
“I was afraid it might come to this,” George said.
That night I dreamed about Burton and Dorothy. Burton, who was still blue of face and wearing surgical gloves, accused Dorothy of being responsible for his death. Dorothy just kept saying over and over that she was sorry.
Eleven
Lingfei was gone. I searched for her everywhere. In some ways I hoped she had used the opportunity provided by the chaos created by An Lushan to escape the bounds of the imperial harem and join the man she loved. I asked if a message had been left for me. There was none. I confess that hurt me deeply. I wondered if perhaps she was angry because I had not said good-bye to her.
I went to her apartment but someone else lived there now. Her workshop too was gone. I looked in every possible hiding place I could think of, but could find no evidence of Lingfei or of her life’s work. It was as if she had never existed.
In many ways, life at the Imperial Palace returned to normal I found I had more influence than ever before and took full advantage of it. Soon I had a splendid home in the countryside outside Chang’an, a wife of sorts, and two adopted sons, one of whom was to follow me into the Imperial Palace, the other to provide me with grandchildren some time later.
Still, I thought often of Lingfei. Was she my sister? What had happened to her? No one seemed to know, or if they did, they were not revealing that information to me. I looked for her, as I had looked for Number One Sister, in the marketplaces. I looked for her in the brothels of the Gay Quarter.
Life at the palace now was different, of course, with a new Son of Heaven, but in many ways it was the same. There was a ghost though that now haunted the quarters of the harem. It was an angry ghost, someone who had died violently, without the proper rituals to ensure that the cloud soul would be nourished.
One day, several months after I had returned to the palace, a package was delivered to me. Wrapped in a piece of fabric that I recognized as being cut from the plain robe that Lingfei wore when she worked, were a few pages of notes in my hand. It was some of the last work I had done for Lingfei. The eunuch who delivered the package said a stranger had asked him to do so. He did not know who it was. I could only guess what this would mean.
That night, I had a most disturbing dream. In it, Lingfei appeared to me. “Do you not remember me, Di-Di?” she asked. Then she told me her story.
“I was taken as one of the spoils of war by An Lushan himself,” she said, tears in her eyes. “He was a loathsome man, not refined like the emperor. He had no real love of music and dance, and he did not really care for me. While I was under his control, he became very ill. Painful boils erupted on his body. He died in agony. One of his men blamed me for his death, accusing me of having poisoned him.
“One night as I slept I was wrenched from my bed and strangled by this man, who accused me of witchcraft. He buried me under a large tree in the Imperial Park in the garden where the peonies bloom. My cloud soul roams, Di-Di,” she said. “Help me, please.” I awoke with a start. She had called me “little brother.” I knew then that Lingfei was indeed my sister. I knew what I must do to honor her. The proper rituals must be undertaken to ensure that she could rest.
The gates of the Zhang residence were locked, but I rang the bell as long as it took to get someone to open it. It was Zhang Xiaoling with a bandage on his forehead. He didn’t look happy to see me.
“We’re here to see Zhang Anthony,” I said. He didn’t invite us in. I pushed past him, Rob right behind me, Dr. Xie bringing up the rear.
This was quite the spot the Zhang family had. The gardens were lovely and the houses in the two courtyards very elegant from the outside. One didn’t need to feel sorry for them at all. They had all the modern conveniences. In fact, in the room to which we were eventually directed, an elderly man was sitting in front of a thirty-one-inch television screen, a basket on his knees.
A maid came with a tray of tea, and some candied jasmine blossoms. We waited for a time, important and wealthy people finding it necessary to put unexpected visitors in their place, I suppose, before a man in his late fifties strode into the room. He was taller than average, although still smaller than his son, and he had a Eurasian attractiveness, a lovely bone structure, and interesting eyes. I didn’t think I’d recognize him, but I did. He’d been sitting to the right-hand side of Mira Tetford at the victory dinner at Dr. Xie’s Beijing apartment, the man she’d been chatting up for business reasons, as I sat to her left talking to Liu David. I’d been that close and I didn’t even know it. I had no idea what I was looking for, of course, not then, and I’d been hampered, as Burton hadn’t been, by my total lack of facility in Chinese. I might even have been introduced to him, I couldn’t remember. Somehow it seemed to be a very long time ago.
I introduced myself anyway. “Zhang Anthony, my name is Lara McClintoch,” I said. “And this is Xie Jinghe, of Xie Homeopathic. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. With us is my partner, Rob Luczka. I am a friend of your sister Dorothy’s, who, I regret to tell you is dead.”
Did he speak English? I sincerely hoped so. He’d have spoken English for the first three years of his life, but not, perhaps, after that. But of course his English was impeccable, American-acc
ented. He was a red prince after all, the son of one of Mao’s closest advisors, someone who had gone on the Long March. Zhang Anthony had been educated at Harvard.
“I go by Zhang Yi, now,” he said. “This is a rather presumptuous opening gambit, Ms. McClintoch. I don’t know this Dorothy person. Why should I listen to you?”
“Because your son is trying to kill me.”
Zhang Anthony looked sharply at Xiaoling, who couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. “Well then, why don’t you proceed?”
“Thank you. Given that I don’t know how much everyone in this room knows of this story, I will summarize. A considerable portion of the information I’m about to impart was told to me by George Norfolk Matthews, Dorothy’s husband and now widower, who has confirmed many of the hypotheses I had with regard to this situation.”
“I do not know these people,” Zhang Anthony repeated.
“Dorothy,” the old man said, taking a cricket out of the basket and holding it in his hand. It was difficult for him to do so, as his hands were gnarled with what looked to be arthritis. Still, that one word from his lips seemed a pretty good indication to me that I was in the right place.
