by Carl Nixon
Ruth and Simon take the video to a child psychologist in Thorndon. ‘We are concerned,’ says Ruth and then pauses, lost. She has so many concerns that she is uncertain which one to mention first.
‘Particularly about the doll,’ picks up Simon. ‘She seems … aggressive towards it.’
Doctor Rosanowski consults his notes. ‘It’s impossible to get a full picture just from a video but I can tell you that there don’t appear to be any obvious developmental problems. She’s doing all the usual things you’d expect at twenty-two months. Her mobility seems good. Her fine motor skills are normal.’
‘But her emotional development?’ asks Ruth.
‘It’s very hard to tell. Although this particular orphanage is reputedly one of the better ones, they are most likely understaffed and under-resourced. Experience shows that the children grow up without building significant attachments to any specific adults. This, obviously, creates problems.’
Ruth squeezes her hands together tightly in her lap. ‘But in this case can you see evidence of any major problems?’
‘No. There’s no evidence of that on the tape. But, as I said, it’s impossible to tell from a five-minute video. The truth is that in a situation like this it’s a bit of a lottery.’
Simon has chosen the fish over the beef and is hard at work with the plastic knife and fork. Ruth’s meal hovers in front of her untouched. She is thinking about what Dr Rosanowski said about a lottery. Will they be lucky or unlucky with their choice?
They have decided to call the girl Isabella. It is the name she picked out when they still imagined that they could have children naturally (Isabella for a girl, Duncan for a boy). Focusing on this name has been a comfort to her over the last few months while the torturous adoption arrangements were being put in place. She said it to herself a hundred times a day: silently and out loud; while showering; waiting at the traffic lights; sitting at her desk; last thing at night. ‘Is-a-bell-a.’ Those four mouth-opening syllables have been something to hold on to and caress.
But somewhere over the vast Pacific, dread has seeped into her. Ruth’s excitement is eroded, washed away like an unstable hillside by streams below the surface. She can feel doubt shifting the material on which she has built her future.
Mister Chen from the Celestial Stairway Adoption Agency fails to meet them at Beijing Airport as arranged. They collect their luggage and wait on plastic seats for almost two hours, then decide to catch a taxi to their hotel. Ruth asks at reception but there is no message.
‘We’ll just stay close to our room,’ says Simon. ‘He’s bound to call soon.’
Ruth looks around the hotel’s vast foyer with its central fountain cascading water into a blue-tiled pond. A toddler leans out dangerously over the pond and is snatched back by its mother. Simon is still talking, although it is hard to tell if he is talking to her. ‘If worst comes to worst we can phone the agency at home. They can sort it out.’
People bustle around her and she feels alone and alien. She has no business being here. The whole idea is a terrible mistake.
‘Love? Are you okay? You look pale.’
‘I’m fine. You’re right, we can always call.’
Their room is on the twenty-seventh floor. Through the haze the city stretches out ahead of her. There are cranes everywhere, lanky, long necked, yanking up more and more buildings through the holes they have poked in the polluted air. These were not the cranes she had imagined when she thought of her new daughter’s homeland.
Mr Chen shows up at 6.30 the next morning. He is not what she expected either. He is younger for a start, only about twenty-one or -two. Ruth blinks out at him from the doorway of their darkened room. Mr Chen is wearing a Hawaiian shirt under a black leather jacket.
‘Who is it?’ asks Simon from the bed. ‘Mr Chen?’
He smiles, showing a set of teeth so large and white that they can only be dentures. ‘Okay. You come now. Bus waiting.’ There is no apology for not showing up at the airport. ‘Bus waiting,’ he says again more urgently, and he looks down the corridor as though the bus is right there idling next to the lift.
There is no time for a shower. Simon and Ruth whisper to each other as they dress, throw some essentials into a day-bag and five minutes later find themselves following Mr Chen like dishevelled refugees being led to safety through the hotel lobby and out into the Beijing dawn.
They are not alone on the minibus. There are two other couples. Directly across the aisle sit a husband and wife who, it transpires, are from Birmingham: a round-faced man with several chins and his equally sprawling spouse. There is also an Italian couple who sit directly behind the driver, dressed head to toe in suave black, aloof as circus acrobats.
In contrast, the Birmingham couple do not stop talking. Ruth and Simon listen as they tell the story of years of trying, failed IVF treatment and impossibly long waiting lists to adopt back home.
‘I wonder how long it will take to get there,’ says Ruth, looking out the window at a scene of snarled traffic that for ten minutes has been as unchanging as a painting. She can feel the dread start to flow through her again, silent below the surface. What are they doing here?
Mr Chen stands at the front, snapping instructions at the driver and pointing out gaps in the traffic only he can see. His perfectly white teeth flash in the early morning light. The Birmingham woman looks across at Ruth. ‘They told us the orphanage was well out of the city. Could take bleedin’ hours. Not to worry though. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other.’
In the end they are on the minibus for just over five hours, not counting two short toilet stops. It takes three hours to negotiate their way out of Beijing and another two driving though barren fields and small satellite towns before they arrive. At the orphanage Ruth disembarks with stiff legs and thinks of deep vein thrombosis and the irony of falling over dead from a roaming blood clot just as they arrive. She wonders if, technically, you can orphan an orphan. Not that Isabella has been formally adopted. Ruth is reassured by the thought that they still have the chance to pull out if they do not like what they see today.
There are no children playing behind the tall mesh fence. The orphanage is simply a large brick building, like a factory, set next to a wide and dirty-looking river. In fact it might originally have been built as a factory. The road running past leads to a utilitarian bridge, and cars and trucks move by in an almost constant stream.
‘We here. You come now. Hurry.’ Mr Chen herds them inside where they are met by a small smiling man in a neat grey suit who they are told is the director of the orphanage. The Italians hang back by the door as Mr Chen translates the director’s lengthy welcome. Ruth listens for the shouts of children but hears only the barking of a nearby dog and the hum of cars going over the bridge.
‘Come,’ translates Mr Chen at last. ‘I show you the children.’
The three couples are ushered into a room where three small girls are standing in a strict line facing the door. Ruth recognises Isabella immediately. She is the smallest of the three and is wearing the same yellow dress as in the video. Instead of feeling the wave of joy and maternal love that she had long anticipated, Ruth feels the dread surge and swell inside her. How is it possible that they are preparing to take this child, this miniature stranger, home with them? The idea is ridiculous.
The director makes another, only slightly shorter speech and then all three couples move forward, isolating their assigned child from the small herd and shepherding her off to a far corner of the room.
Now that they are together the girl does not look to Ruth like an Isabella. It sounds silly but she is somehow more … Asian than the video led them to believe. But it is more than that. There is a watchfulness, a stillness that is at odds with the jaunty Romance name. Isabellas dance with their arms in the air. Isabellas laugh with abandon. Ruth cannot visualise this child doing either. The girl stares at the floor, and Ruth watches as the name Isabella evaporates syllable by syllable up into the orphanage
air.
‘What,’ she says, ‘was the name they gave her here?’
She has been told but cannot now remember the singsong Chinese sounds and so for the moment the child appears to her to be adrift between names like someone who is dangerously swimming from one island to the next.
‘I’ve forgotten,’ says Simon.
Of course the girl speaks no English. Ruth has learnt to say her own name in Mandarin by befriending someone from the office whose parents were Chinese immigrants. ‘My name is Ruth. His name is Simon. It is very nice to meet you.’
The child stares at her blankly.
‘Your accent,’ says Mr Chen from where he is loitering by the wall, a blank look on his face. ‘You speak Chinese very bad.’
At a dead end, Ruth looks to Simon for the lead. He holds out the wrapped parcel they’ve carried with them in their hand luggage from New Zealand.
The child stares at it impassively. ‘Perhaps we should unwrap it,’ says Ruth. It is a large Pooh Bear, yellow and red. Simon holds it up, jiggling it in front of the child’s face.
‘Hello, little girl,’ he says in a bear’s deep voice. ‘My name is Poooooh. What’s your name?’
The child stares bug eyed, then lets out a primitive howl and begins to cry uncontrollably.
Up close the river is surprisingly wide. The banks have been fortified with steeply sloping walls of concrete. ‘Probably,’ suggests Simon, ‘to protect against flooding.’ Below them the water is a yellow-brown and seems quite high and fast. Ruth watches the currents swirl in circles.
They have been with the girl several hours but have made no tangible progress. Although they have not made her cry again, she is as impassive and disinterested as a puppet, hardly speaking, never smiling. At last Ruth suggested to Simon that they take a break, and the two of them have walked to the river, leaving the English and Italian couples who seem to be having more success.
A child was what she always wanted, but this child? So stern. So passive. So different from everything she had imagined. Ruth thinks about what type of things an orphan could have been exposed to in twenty-three months of life: shocking things, terrible things that don’t bear thinking about.
Simon throws a large stone out into the river. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘That it’s not too late to change our minds.’
‘But we’ve come all this way.’
‘We could just think of it as a holiday.’
‘Are you serious?’
Ruth is not sure if she is serious. Is her doubt only an attack of cold feet? She remembers how she felt before her wedding — as uncertain and edgy as a lone ewe. She looks down into the flowing water and folds her arms over her chest to protect against the cold wind that has sprung up. No, it is more fundamental than an attack of nerves. They are making a mistake.
She is about to say as much to Simon when there is a shout. A woman is coming along the bank towards them. She is carrying a bundle of sticks under one arm and she gestures and waves with her free hand, calling out again.
When she arrives in front of them, Ruth sees that the woman is about her own age and dressed against the cold in several tatty layers. Her long hair is tied back. She babbles in Mandarin and gestures towards the river and then back towards the orphanage. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Ruth, smiling too broadly. ‘We don’t understand.’
The woman places one dirty hand just above Ruth’s elbow and tries to pull her away with surprising strength. Simon steps forward protectively. ‘Hang on. No. No. Don’t do that.’ Undeterred, the woman lets go but keeps talking loudly and pointing towards the river. Ruth wishes she had taken the time to learn more useful phrases.
‘Keep walking,’ suggests Simon. ‘She’s probably trying to sell us something. Just walk away.’
They walk back along the bank towards the orphanage but the woman follows them. She grows increasingly agitated. Her voice rises into an almost-shout. She tugs at their clothes.
Ruth is starting to feel afraid when Mr Chen appears beside them, the collar of his Hawaiian shirt flapping in the wind. He speaks loudly to the woman, waving his leather arms to shoo her away. The woman does not retreat but chatters back, pointing at the river.
‘She say that you should not be here.’
‘Why not?’ asks Ruth.
‘She say that river is dangerous.’ The woman speaks again. ‘That many people come here and drown. They fall down. Here. Cannot climb up again. River take them forever.’
The woman is smiling now and nodding as though she understands every word Mr Chen is saying. Ruth looks towards the concrete bank which she now realises is steeper than she first thought and covered near the bottom in a thick green sludge. The yellow water swirls past. She shudders, imagining trying to scramble up again and again, clothes heavy with water.
‘Please thank her very much. It was kind of her to try and warn us.’
Mr Chen and the woman talk. ‘She want to know why you here. I tell her you come from New Zealand to adopt baby girl.’
‘And what did she say?’ asks Ruth.
‘That you very good people and that little girl is very lucky.’
In the minibus on the way back to the hotel, Ruth sits and stares out the window. It is dark outside and she can see only what is lit: the fleeting interior of a house through a half-open door; a young boy leaning against a vending machine; a group of old men standing smoking on a street corner — snippets of lives until then unimagined. Simon has fallen asleep next to her, his head back.
Next to the river they had thanked the woman again and walked away a short distance before Ruth stopped and turned back.
‘Wait. Please ask her what her name is.’
Mr Chen translated and the woman replied with sounds from which Ruth had heard clearly the name Anne.
‘That is what we will call her,’ she thinks, and lowers her hand to place it lightly on the head of the small girl who, exhausted and confused, sleeps between them.
This is the story she tells Anne.
It has grown over the years in the retelling until it has achieved a shape like litany. Ruth is waiting for the day, which cannot be far off, when Anne will ask if the woman at the river was her real mother. Was she living close by, waiting to see if nice people would adopt her daughter into a better life?
Ruth knows that this interpretation is improbable. But who is she to deny her earnest dark flower this tantalising glimpse of a birth mother?
When the question eventually comes it is a Tuesday.
Experiments in SPACE
and TIME
0726
he sits behind the wheel of the bus, waiting for the precise moment when he will begin. He is tall, full of angles, and appears to be folded up behind the wheel like a mathematician’s half-open compass. The route starts at the top of Newton Road next to the lamppost with the green tag that could be a word or a badly drawn apple or it could be nothing. He clears his mind and focuses on the details of the first part of the journey. He knows that beginnings are crucial. He goes over it all in his mind, letting the possibilities and variables wash over him. He feels positive. He feels that things are falling into place. It has been a cold night and there is a slight frost which will not have melted by the time he begins. Even the delaying effect of the frost is included in his calculations.
0728
The bus driver’s name is Morrison. It is printed on a laminated card that also contains a photograph of himself taken in another time, another place. The card hangs from the sun visor so that Morrison is simultaneously driving and looking back down the aisle of the bus, making sure that everything is where it should be, and when. In both his past and present Morrison wears a blue uniform with a clean white shirt. He waits. And then, reaching out his right hand, turns the key in the ignition. The engine turns over, loud in the quiet suburban street. It is well tuned and soon settles down into an easy rhythm. It is still dark and there is an overhead light that he reaches up to and switches off. He feel
s the vibrations up through his feet and through the seat. The bus hums.
0729
It is time. His feet shift. He begins. The bus rolls forward down the slight incline, the front bumper passing the chipped gate of number 23. Morrison glances down, checking the time: 37 seconds. The sun is just beginning to climb out of the Pacific when he comes to the first roundabout on the corner of Rowland and Rutherford. He accelerates through it, aware that he is slightly behind. He pulls up at the stop two-thirds of the way down Heisenberg where a man in a dark suit is waiting with an air of uncertainty. The man folds his paper and steps on to the bus. If he thought about Morrison at all, the man would probably say that he likes the driver, appreciates his punctuality and the whiteness of his shirt. The man has a concession card which Morrison clips. The bus rolls forward, still 8 seconds behind schedule.
0733.31
He has fastened a sleek digital clock on to the dashboard next to the speedometer. It has red numbers that flash into existence. The clock not only shows the hours and the seconds but also delves into the spaces between; the thousandths of seconds flow by like running water. To Morrison the digits appear with the brilliance of sunspots. His passengers on this day will not know it, but Morrison is carrying out the most taxing of temporal experiments. His calculations are as precise as those done by any physicist in any of the leading laboratories around the world. As the bus goes past the third post of the picket fence on J. J. Thompson Road, Morrison checks his time again. Each red number tells Morrison when the bus is in time. This is fundamental. If he is not driving, he spends hours studying the clock. He has meditated on the numbers until their changes have become instinctual to him. From his uncompromising knowledge of time, Morrison can calculate where precisely the bus should be in space.
