A Certain Smile

by Judith Michael

  He called Miranda at the garments factory, and left a discreet message with the receptionist that their plans for the evening were confirmed. There was no need to do that after their arrangements at dinner the night before, but the two telephone calls confirmed his decision to stay with her.

  And if it did become dangerous ...

  Then he would rethink it. But not now. Now he was going on.

  At home, he showered, trying to wash away the hours spent at the State Security Bureau, then spent an hour planning the meeting he would have on Monday morning, to bid on the new building. At first he had trouble focusing on it, but the process of putting together a proposal like a jigsaw puzzle finally absorbed him and the time sped by. The interrogation stayed with him like a bad taste, but he ignored it. One learned to do that, in China. It would fade. It always did.

  de

  But, still, he had to put it to rest with Miranda, and so that night, on the plane to Xi'an, as soon as their tea was served, he bent his head to her and, beneath the tumultuous noise of the cabin, said, "I want to ask you something."

  Her eyes widened, and he knew she had heard the tension in his voice. "What is it?"

  "I found out today that you delivered a letter from a Chinese woman in America to a—"

  "How could you possibly know about that?" A shiver ran across Miranda's skin. What a strange and terrible feeling to know that ordinary things you did were known by others, and talked about.

  "Chinese dissidents are watched, wherever they are, in China or abroad. The young woman—"

  "You spy on people in America?"

  "I do not. My government does."

  "They can't do that."

  "Well." Li shrugged slightly. "They do it. Americans do it, too, you know; your CIA has spies in most countries. It is part of the world now; it is the way things are. My government does not lose interest in people just because they have left China. So the young woman, Sima Ting, has been watched since she arrived in Boulder Colorado, which means that you were seen with her—after all, you are her intimate friend—and you also—"

  "Intimate? What are you talking about? I saw her twice, at a friend's apartment. I've never even been alone with her."

  Li frowned. "Twice. At a friend's apartment. Yet she asked you to become her courier?"

  "I don't know what that means. She asked me to take a letter to her parents, so of course I said I would. Why wouldn't I?"

  "But you did not deliver it to her parents."

  "She said their home was hard to find, and to leave it at a small shop, a food shop. The people were very nice; they barely spoke English, but they insisted that I t£ike a few things from the store, as a gift. I suppose because I'd done a favor for Ting."

  "To make it look as if you were there to shop. A vain hope: tourists do not find their way to that neighborhood. But they did their best to cover up the reason for your visit for anyone who might be watching."

  Miranda stared at him, because then she understood. "Someone is following me?" Involuntarily she looked behind her at the crowded plane. No one seemed the slightest bit interested in her. "This is crazy. I don't know anything about China; I came here not knowing one single person. Why would your government care about me?"

  "You are a friend of Sima Ting."

  "I told you I only saw her— Oh. That doesn't matter, does it? One meeting or twenty, just the fact that I talked to her."

  "Yes."

  "And other people know I delivered her letter. And the people in the shop knew, or thought, I might have been followed there. Does everybody know everything in this country?"

  Li smiled. "In fact, we know almost nothing. You know more about your government in five minutes than we know in a year." He looked at his cup. "We have not touched our tea and it has grown cold. We will get fresh cups. Now that this has been straightened out, we will forget this subject and drink our tea and talk of other things."

  "No, we can't." She was contemplating him with a small frown. "How did you know that I delivered the letter?"

  He sighed. "Someone told me."

  "Who told you? The people who followed me? The police?"

  "The State Security Bureau. Like your FBL"

  "They're the ones who followed me? And then they called you up and said I'd delivered a letter?" She looked at him more closely. "Is that what happened?"

  Again he sighed, and shook his head. "They brought me in for questioning. They wanted to know about you, when we met, why we have dinner together. They were .... You have a way of saying this in English. Hunting. They don't have any information, but they are . . . hunting?"

  "Fishing. A fishing expedition. What did you tell them about me?"

  "That you are a designer here on business. Of course I did not know about the letter, so I could not respond to their questions about it."

  "Why did they say Ting and I were infimate friends?"

  "To trap me. It is an old trick; I should have seen it immediately."

  "And now that I've delivered the letter, they aren't following me anymore?"

  "They will follow you until you leave China, but it does not mean anything. It keeps people employed, you see, and that helps the economy."

  "I don't think it's anything to joke about." She frowned again. "What could they do to me? Could they make me leave?"

  "You mean revoke your visa? Yes, but they have no reason to do that. You are not meeting any dissidents, and, even more important, your president is coming to Beijing in a few weeks and they would not provoke an incident with an American citizen just before his arrival. Some of our dissidents might be arrested to prevent their try-

  ing to talk to your president or get messages to him, but Americans are safe."

  Miranda shook her head. "How can you be so calm about tiiis?"

  "We are calm about what we cannot change until the time comes that we can change it."

  "But they must be watching you, too. You're with me, and if they think I'm suspicious, they must think you are, too."

  He looked at her broodingly. "How quickly you learn. I wish that you did not have to learn these things."

  "You said it was part of the world now. So I should learn it."

  "Not your world."

  "Yours. And I want to understand it."

  Li put out his hand as if to touch her, then drew it back. "Yes, I am being watched. But now I know that they are wrong about you and there is nothing to worry about. It is annoying, but not dangerous, because there is nothing for them to find. They will follow us, some distance away, and after a while we will forget they are there."

  "I could never forget it."

  "Then you will live with it and soon it will be like the weather. 'Oh, so it is raining today. Well, that does not affect my plans.' You see?"

  "You make it sound so ordinary."

  "And in China it is. You understand, it is not as bad as it used to be; we have many freedoms now that we never had. This is a remnant of the past and someday it will disappear. It is difficult for any government to throw out its old habits, you know, but eventually our government will have to; it is being pulled and pushed by the world of trade and money and the Internet that walls and guns cannot stop. But still, it takes time. And now we will concentrate on our tea and our visit to Xi'an, and talk of other things. Will you try to do that?"

  "I think you're minimizing it for my sake, to make me less worried."

  "I do want you to be less worried. But I am not minimizing it for that reason. There is no danger here."

  "For me or you?"

  "For both of us. Now, will you help me talk of other things?"

  She hesitated, then nodded. She did not believe that there was no danger for Li, but she would pretend that everything was normal, if that was what he wanted.

  And what is normal in China? I have no idea. How do people live with this uncertainty? I never could.

  But the amazing thing was that they did talk of other things and for the rest of the flight, she did not th
ink about the fact that some name-

  less, faceless, shadowy form—man or woman?—was on the plane with them, or waiting in Xi'an, ready to follow them wherever they went.

  She did not see anything unusual in the Xi'an airport, and she saw no one outside the hotel. It was possible, she thought, that Li was wrong. But she did not really think he was. And she did not suggest that to him before they went to their separate rooms, or the next morning, when they met in the lobby after her swim. By then she was nervous for other reasons.

  The minute they sat down to a breakfast of tea and rice and steamed buns, Miranda opened her guidebook and began talking about museums and tombs and warriors. Twice, she dropped her napkin, and each time a waiter appeared with a fresh one. Every few minutes she looked up to survey the room, then looked at her plate or her book, as if ordering herself to be casual.

  "It does not help to look," Li said gently.

  "I know, but it isn't only that. It's ..." She smiled ruefully. "It's like the private room in your restaurant, only more so. Even eating breakfast feels illicit."

  "Ah. Men and women do not travel together for sightseeing in your country?"

  She smiled again. "They might call it that."

  He chuckled. "Well, we will call it sightseeing, because that is what it is. And a chance to be together, away from work. Shall we go to the museum?"

  "Yes."

  The museum was a concrete enclosure as long as three football fields. Li and Miranda entered at one end, and stood on a railed walkway, looking down at six thousand terra-cotta warriors, larger than life-size, standing at attention in battle array. Over two thousand years old, they stood as they had when the emperor Qin Shihaung-di commanded their placement to guard his nearby tomb: row on row of men in full battle gear, the generals wearing bronze swords still keenly sharp, the foot soldiers holding ghostly weapons of wood long since rotted away. All six thousand stared straight ahead, each face unique, modeled after living warriors of that distant time. Their ranks faded into the dim shadows of the concrete structure that had been built to protect them, with workers at the far end restoring warriors being pried every day from the hardened clay in which hundreds more still lay buried.

  It was a magnificent sight, no matter how many times Li viewed it, but today his thoughts kept sliding away, to the woman beside him. He

  wanted to touch her. He wanted to touch her hair, to trace the pure out-hne of her face, to embrace her. Especially in Xi'an, where he was as much a visitor as she, he felt a new closeness and he was sure she must feel it, too.

  In this he knew he was different from most Chinese, who kept aloof from strangers and frowned on openness outside their family and close friends. His mother had tried to raise him as his father might have, and Li's bedtime stories had been tales of his father's easygoing familiarity, his open gestures of affection, his laughter, even, sometimes, at himself. Li knew he had never mastered that—only Americans truly could, he thought—but he knew that he was more open than most Chinese, more willing to offer something of himself if his attention were caught.

  He glanced at Miranda as she frowned in concentration at the warriors below. She was dressed as she had been when he first saw her at the airport, in a severe blue suit, her white blouse buttoned to the throat, her square leather purse hanging from her left shoulder, and she stood out among the casually dressed tourists crowding behind them. Why had she not brought informal clothes from America, Li wondered; had she not expected even a few hours of relaxation? Probably not. She had come here to work and to deal with the hazards of travel and a country where so much was foreign.

  He felt a rush of tenderness toward her, for daring to try so much in so few days. And he wanted to touch her.

  Not now. Not yet. He mmed to the scene below: the standing warriors and kneeling archers, the wild-eyed horses pawing the ground, the standing archers facing outward, alert to approaching enemies. Everyone is on guard, he thought. Especially Miranda. But perhaps, when she feels more at ease; when she feels, as I do, the pleasure of being together...

  "Did he really think they would protect him?" Miranda asked.

  Li brought his thoughts back to the warriors, and to the man who had them created. "He was the first emperor of China, the man who united all the warring provinces. I imagine he thought whatever he decreed would come to pass."

  "He must have been terrified of death, to require an army to go with him."

  "He expected the next world to be a replica of this one, and he was determined to be prepared for it. It's amazing how completely we fool ourselves into believing we can cope with whatever lies ahead."

  Looking at the warriors below, he was aware of Miranda's quick look, and her small frown as she tried to understand him. And before

  he could stop himself, he said, "I love your frown. It's as if you're trying to bring the whole worid to its knees, to capture it and make it yours."

  Her eyes widened. Li met them, and was flooded with desire. He grabbed the railing in front of him, pressing the cold steel into his palms. "In some people a frown would be a door closing," he said, forcing back his desire with inanity, "but in you it is a greeting." He took a breath and turned to walk on, following a group of tourists. "I apologize. I should not have said that."

  "No," she agreed, walking beside him. Her purse slid to the ground and she gave an exclamation of annoyance. Li picked it up and, as if to deflect attention from her nervousness, she said, "You said people fool themselves, thinking they can cope with the future. Do you?"

  "Oh, certainly, in many ways. I believed I could save Wei. I beUeved I could raise my children by myself, better than others, because I thought love could overcome all obstacles. I believed—"

  "And it may not be able to."

  His eyebrows rose. "I thought Americans believe that it can."

  "Oh? Why would they?"

  "Because Americans are romantics."

  "Another one of your infallible pronouncements."

  "But surely Americans believe in happy endings and that the way to them is through love."

  "Some Americans. But a lot of Americans would say that money is the way to a happy ending. And people everywhere—^you, too, I'll bet—accuse us of loving money more than anything."

  He nodded. "I have said that about Americans, as others have, probably because we're all jealous of America, and jealousy breeds illogic. But sometimes I think that Americans believe the power of love is greater than the power of money, indeed, greater than anything."

  "And you don't agree with that."

  "No. Do you?"

  "I'd like to." She paused. "I know that love may not always be enough, but I'd like to believe that most people would put it ahead of money and power and possessions. Anyone who has loved, even once, could never find money and power attractive enough to risk losing it."

  "That is what I meant by romantic," Li said quietly.

  "Well. Maybe."

  But he wanted her to understand, and, to his surprise, because he had never admitted this to anyone, he said, "You see, I envy romanticism, that wonderful belief in love and magic and goodness triumphant. Once, when I was young, I believed in angels; kind forces in

  the universe that bring safety where there is danger, joy where there is despair, love where there is hatred. But too many of my dreams shattered for me to believe in angels; my solid world crumbled too often. I would like to believe in goodness, but even that is difficult in China these days. In fact—" He met Miranda's eyes and saw in them a warmth that stunned him, stopping his words.

  "In fact?" she asked.

  He let out his breath. "In fact, it seems impossible that any of us, living in a culture that springs from warlords, emperors, nationalists, and communists, could truly believe in the power of anything except ,.. power."

  "What a terrible thing to say. Everything must seem so bleak to you ... as if you're lost in a cave and your lamp has failed and you don't know the way out and you never will. Why don't you just
lie down and die?"

  "Because people don't do that. We always go on. That's hard to fathom, if you look at the world's history, but something compels us to go on, even in the midst of unimaginable horrors. Maybe we keep looking for another lamp. Or a way out, because we refuse to believe there cannot be one. Or perhaps romanticism. Although I would not let myself be fooled by beautiful dreams."

  "Why don't you just believe in them? Sometimes they come true."

  "Not often. Or not often enough."

  She smdied his face. "You gave up all your dreams?"

  He shrugged slightly. "It was not a question of giving them up. I rejected them because they did not apply to me. In a way, you did the same, I think: you had your dream of love flowing between two people, but you put it aside for a calm life with your children and your work."

  She turned from him. Li would have pursued it, but there was already too much tension between them. Tension, and something else, he thought: feelings that drew them together even as they seemed to draw apart in disagreement.

  He saw her take a final glance at the archers, shoulder to shoulder, facing outward to scan the horizon for dangers, then turn away. "This way," he said, and led her to the exit.

  Outside, they blinked in the brilliant sunlight. They took out their dark glasses and Miranda put on her hat, black straw with a wide gros-grain ribbon. They were on a concrete walk bordered with large chrysanthemums, and the spicy autumn scent followed them as they walked. "Are you ready for lunch?" he asked.

  She nodded and they walked back to his rented car. As he drove, he

  saw by her face that she thought he was going too fast, Hke all Chinese drivers, with barely a glance at cyclists and pedestrians. Well, she's right, he thought, but I probably am too old to change my driving habits. And how brave or polite of her not to scold me, or even ask me to slow down.

  In a narrow street, they went into a tiny restaurant tucked between two crumbling buildings. "Soon these will be gone," Li said. "Too old and too small to be renovated. I suppose the city will try to keep one or two, as a museum. The rest will be anonymous highrises."