Green Island

by Shawna Yang Ryan

  “I made a reservation already,” he said again. “My parents are going to watch the girls.” He dropped down next to me. “Please. One night. Why won’t you at least give me a chance to make it up to you?”

  —

  I imagined Alishan, where my parents had honeymooned—that we’d ride the rickety colonial-era train and watch the sunrise from the top of the mountain—but we stayed in Taipei, at the Mandarin Hotel where we had spent our wedding night. Wei could be playful, flirtatious, and ironically romantic. But this gesture was sincere. The surprise he had promised had actually surprised me.

  “I couldn’t get the room we stayed in,” he said.

  “Do you even remember the room we stayed in?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “No. Somewhere on the fifth floor, I think?”

  This time we found ourselves on the sixth floor. The rooms had been remodeled, but we had the same view of Nanking Road. Wei sank into a paisley armchair. “This is new,” he said.

  “That was some night, wasn’t it?” I turned to the window. I smiled, but nostalgia—some hazy feeling of loss and longing—surged through me. I gripped the edge of the curtain.

  “There’s a good Sichuan place close by. For dinner,” Wei said.

  “I can’t eat spicy.” I locked my fingers beneath the curve of my belly. I was tired of thinking of us and what we had lost. I didn’t want to play-act anymore, and I didn’t want to argue either. I didn’t want dinner or fabricated romance. I just wanted to sleep. “What about the place downstairs?” Something easy.

  Wei must have read my suggestion as a kind of thaw. He grinned at me. “Whatever you want, babe.”

  —

  The hotel restaurant was a trap for travelers. Tables spaced so that one could walk by without knocking someone’s chair or purse or elbow. Tablecloths. Subdued lighting. It was mostly empty. I felt like a tourist, and I liked the feeling. My mood lightened.

  “We’ve never done this, have we?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean been tourists somewhere. I almost feel like a foreigner. Eating mediocre Chinese food by choice. We haven’t had dinner like this, just us, since Emily was born.”

  “I never thought about it,” Wei said.

  “Neither did I,” I said.

  We ordered more than we could possibly eat, just choosing whatever looked good. The food wasn’t awful. Not great, but not bad.

  Wei’s questions were polite and overly formal in a way that reminded me of our first dates.

  “How’s your article?” he asked. “Is it coming along?”

  “I have an outline. And now I really do want to write a story about Lin Wang. It’s amazing, right? An elephant that old? It must be some sort of world record.”

  He laughed. “Maybe a children’s book?”

  I found myself echoing his civil tone. “That’s a great idea. Em and Stephanie could help me.”

  He put some noodles on my plate. I smiled at him.

  “Is grumpy old Professor Green going to be around this semester?” He was Wei’s least favorite colleague, a man who made it clear that he resented every minute he was teaching at Berkeley and not Oxford.

  Wei groaned. “Don’t ruin dinner.”

  “I sort of feel sorry for him.”

  “Don’t. He’s a pompous ass. Do you know what he said at the end of the semester?” He was piqued now. He kept a running catalog of Green’s offenses—his snubs, insults, and vain declarations.

  “Don’t obsess,” I reminded him.

  “You’re right. We’re having a nice dinner.”

  “Good job, dear.”

  I blushed. Reluctantly, I realized that Wei’s plan was working. It was as if he had taken his strategy from those screeching women’s magazines that advised rekindling love by re-creating the early days of a romance. I almost felt twenty-four again. I looked at his face warmed by the low yellow lights; with a pang, I understood what Helen had seen in him, but I wanted to forgive him.

  When we left the restaurant, he put his hand on my back and I felt myself lean into his touch.

  —

  Back in the room, we kicked off our shoes and slid into the complimentary hotel slippers. Wei turned on the television, but when I said, “Don’t, please,” he turned it off.

  I complained about the heat and he cranked up the air conditioner. I settled into the armchair. Thinking of something Stephanie had said, I giggled.

  “What?” Wei asked.

  “The other day, Stephanie referred to Zhee Hyan as a ‘whippersnapper.’ ”

  Wei threw his head back and guffawed, a laugh I hadn’t heard for a long time. My anger washed away for a moment and it felt good.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Another surprise?”

  “I’ll get it,” Wei said.

  He was still smiling when he pulled open the door and found two uniformed men from the Garrison Command. I couldn’t move. Sweat prickled my fingertips.

  They spoke before either of us could find the words to ask why they were here.

  “Hello, Mr. Lin. We’d like you and your wife to come with us.” As one spoke, the other stared over Wei’s shoulder, surveying the room. I held his gaze until he looked away. Had he noticed the fear in my clenched teeth and the disgust in my eyes?

  “Why?” Wei demanded. Stay calm, I pleaded silently. I watched him restrain himself. “I mean, can I ask why?”

  “This is a question we can’t answer. We’re here only to escort you.”

  “My wife is pregnant. She can stay here.”

  “No, she will come too.”

  How could Wei fight while wearing those ridiculous slippers? He still held the doorknob, and he twisted it as he decided what he could do. I stood up. “Let’s go.”

  I now understood the look that had crossed my father’s face whenever he was called in. The panic was all consuming, the unrelenting tug of an undercurrent, and yet I moved normally, calmly even, toward the door. I gripped Wei’s elbow as I put on my shoes and then he put on his own. He took a moment to turn off the light and lock the door behind us.

  One man for Wei and one for me. We walked in slow motion down the hall. In the elevator, no one spoke, and I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all when I saw the four of us lined up in the mirrored walls and multiplied back into infinity. The elevator door opened and we strode across the lobby. People turned and stared. They all knew. When I caught the front desk clerk’s eye, he quickly looked down at his ledger. Like gentlemen, the officers pushed open the doors on either side of us, and the muggy night greeted us. A car waited.

  —

  The city sparkled behind the car windows like a dark glimmering ocean.

  “Will we get a lawyer?” I asked Wei. “I mean we have to, right? We’re American citizens.” A thin panel of glass separated us from our guards. Did they understand English? Did they flinch at the word “American”?

  “I don’t know. They held that American professor, Big Beard, the one they accused of killing Lin Yi-hsiung’s twins, for twenty-four hours before they told the AIT.” I recalled the false accusation meant to throw everyone off the scent of the government’s wrongdoing. It was an absurd allegation; the professor had been a friend of Lin Yi-hsiung’s family. The AIT, the American Institute in Taiwan, was a “private corporation” that had replaced the US consulate after the end of relations—another ruse of nomenclature. “But that was two years ago. It depends what happens. Are they really asking questions? Or are they arresting us? If we’re accused of sedition, we can be held for two months incommunicado. New law. Does it apply to Americans? I don’t know.”

  “Sedition? Wei?” What had he done? I could not risk asking right now.

  He squeezed my hand and said pointedly, “There’s no reason to think that. It’s probably about Tang Jia Bao.”

  One of the men up front said loudly, “These Chinese don’t even speak Chinese. Just like foreign devils.” My eyes w
idened. If he’d had the vocabulary of American racism, I’m sure he would have called us “bananas,” or “whitewashed.”

  “So you think we’ll go home tonight?” I continued, as if the man had not spoken.

  “I’m sure. Don’t worry.” But now Wei didn’t look at me, his brow furrowed, and he stared straight ahead.

  —

  A soldier pulled open a gate and the car rolled through. It had started to rain lightly, and our two guards opened the car doors. One held an umbrella for me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We bypassed a few lit buildings, then stopped in a room, one of many in a long row, that faced a cement courtyard. At the far end, I saw the menace of an iron-barred door, which undoubtedly led to the cells. The rain pattered on the metal roof, and occasionally a disconcerting cry drifted across the yard.

  There was a green sofa and, facing it, a desk. On the wall, manacles and hooks hung from chains.

  “Have a seat,” one of them told me.

  I sat. My obedience surprised me. And then they were leading Wei out of the room, and I hoisted myself to my feet again and cried, “Where is he going?” One guard turned to grip my shoulders. Wei glanced back at me. It’s okay, he mouthed.

  Now my panic rose to the surface and my hands began to tremble despite the heat. The guard gently eased me back onto the sofa. Sweat beaded on my forehead. It rolled down my face, over my collarbone, and down between my breasts. I wiped it away and dried my hands on my dress. I didn’t cry.

  A new man came in. He was barely taller than me and wearing brown slacks. He was close to my age, with a wide and round white face, eyes like two dashes of ink, and slick hair tidily parted on the left. He carried a brown accordion file.

  “Hello, Mrs. Lin.” He dismissed the guard and sat himself at the desk. The clock on the wall read five past nine. Though the room was sweltering, and the man’s white shirt had gone translucent in certain spots, he made no move to turn on the fan bolted to the wall above him. “How are you?”

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked.

  He laughed. “No. Not at all. We’d have to call the AIT if you were. You came voluntarily, didn’t you?” He suddenly looked serious. “They didn’t handcuff you, did they?”

  “No,” I said. Their scheme was suddenly clear, the convolution of words and legalities. They had never said “arrest.” They had requested that we come, and we had. It might as well have been an invitation embossed on hundred-pound linen paper with a gold foil–lined envelope for the way we practically leaped up and strolled away with them.

  He opened the file he had brought and scanned it as he spoke, half distracted. “No, no, no. We just want to ask some questions.”

  “And my husband?”

  “They are interviewing him in another room. You know how these things work. We can’t interview you together. We need to see if your statements corroborate each other.”

  “I understand.” I didn’t know how I could be so calm.

  “Then let’s begin.”

  “Will you tell me your name first?”

  He smiled. “No one has asked me that before. You can call me Mr. Ping.” He asked me questions that I knew he knew the answers to—my date of birth, my husband’s name, the address of my childhood home. Jia Bao had told me that interrogators never say what they want. Your uncertainty means that you reveal more than you intend. I reminded myself to stay vigilant.

  He asked me about Jia Bao—when he had arrived, when we had decided to house him, how he had spent his time there. He was already dead; I thought there was no harm in recounting the facts of that time. Nothing incriminating was left, and no one to be incriminated. I spoke deliberately. Some things I did not say. Memories arose that I didn’t mention—Jia Bao’s wire-framed glasses, the secondhand clothes that we donated back to the thrift store after he died, the cleft at the center of his chest that I felt rise and fall as he slept that night in Willits.

  The clock on the wall now showed nine thirty-five. I was tired. I wanted to go to bed.

  Another man entered the room with a fastidious bearing that put me on instant alert. I sat up a little straighter. So did Mr. Ping. “Good evening, Mr. Yang,” he said, phlegm quavering in his throat.

  Mr. Yang raised an eyebrow and settled beside me. He tugged at his white cuffs and adjusted his watch. He and Mr. Lu were of the same genus. The near calm that Mr. Ping’s soft manner had elicited in me now receded.

  “Read,” he commanded, and Mr. Ping thumbed through the sheaf. The consideration that had been in Mr. Ping’s voice when he interviewed me was gone. His tone plummeted into monotony, and it was several sentences before I realized with horror that what he read was a letter Wei had sent me years and years ago when he was in California and I was still in Taiwan waiting for my visa. Our innocent, blossoming love was made dirty and ridiculously naive in his colorless voice. They had been reading our mail. Not just reading it. Copying it. Keeping it. I closed my eyes against the humiliation. My cheeks burned.

  Mr. Yang said, “That’s enough. Let’s be serious now.”

  Mr. Ping folded the letter and picked up his pen again.

  Mr. Yang crossed his legs as if we were settling in for a cozy chat. “Why are you in Taiwan?”

  “To see my family.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes. I wanted to see my parents. And wanted my daughters to see them too.”

  “And what about your husband?”

  “We came as a family, of course.”

  “What other business did he have here?”

  “Business? He had no other business here.”

  “And what about his meeting with Huang Ying Cheng on August tenth?”

  “What meeting? My husband has been with me the whole time.”

  “August tenth, August tenth. It was a Tuesday. The day after you arrived.” He bared his bottom teeth as he waited for my response.

  I tried to remember August tenth. What had we done that second day? The girls were drowsy with jet lag. We had lunch with Wei’s parents, and then roamed the Mitsukoshi department store, relieved by the air-conditioning. And then…and then Wei had gone out. With college friends, he’d said. My temples tensed and my ears began to throb.

  “You remember something.” He smiled.

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “You were with your husband the whole day?”

  “I was.” He had said he was fishing for shrimp at the pools. His face had been red from the alcohol. I’d smelled the smoke and beer on him.

  “I understand. He is your husband. My colleague Mr. Lu has spoken highly of your loyalty. But I have my own loyalty. I love my country. I want to protect it. Your husband is a person who wants to destroy it.”

  “He’s not,” I said, like a sulky child.

  “If you say so.” My interrogator turned to Mr. Ping. “They can start.”

  Mr. Ping capped his pen and picked up the phone. Time revolved around me, slow. Even the second hand of the clock seemed to dawdle. It was nine fifty-two. I watched his pale lips say, “Go ahead,” into the receiver.

  A long, terrified moan came through the wall. It was not human.

  I flinched. “What is that?” A gray fog pulsed around the edges of my sight.

  “What is your husband’s plan?”

  Through the wall came multiple dull thwacks, the sound of a baseball bat hitting a leather punching bag. So that is the sound of beating flesh, some more rational part of me noted. The poor man cried out again. Horrified, I recognized my husband’s voice.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” I whispered.

  “He says he has nothing to tell us—it’s as if he has no interest in saving himself.”

  My husband wailed again. “Stop it!” I cried. To hear the voice I knew so well distorted in pain made me sick. I drummed my feet against the floor. “Stop it!”

  “August tenth.”

  “I don’t know anything about it!”

  The third time W
ei cried out, I vomited. I tried to hold it in and cover my mouth, but it spilled out of my hands and spewed over my dress. Mr. Yang lurched back as I convulsed. I wiped my hands on my ruined dress and rubbed my mouth against the crook of my elbow.

  He stood up. “If he won’t tell us what else he’s been up to, then you should. Save your husband.” He turned to Mr. Ping. “Clean her up, then let her see him.”

  Mr. Ping’s anemic face shaded toward gray as he approached. He marched through the vomit splattered on the floor and helped me to my feet. His hands were strangely soft, as if he lacked bones.

  Ten o’clock.

  We weren’t due back at Wei’s parents’ place until noon. No one except the people in the lobby even knew we were gone. The Garrison Command had fourteen more hours with us.

  There would be consequences, I assured myself, as Mr. Ping led me toward the courtyard. If they harmed us, the AIT would investigate. It would be an international incident. Then I remembered Jia Bao, murdered on American soil. Chen Wen-cheng, the Carnegie Mellon professor who never came back from interrogation. Wei had told me a gentler era was encroaching upon Taiwan. Brutality belonged to the previous decade. Does brutality ever get old? I wondered. Each generation brings a new group of men who have not yet learned the guilt of the last. They need to feel bones breaking under their very own fingers to know for sure how they feel about it.

  Mr. Ping’s soft hands on my arm. In the courtyard, I stood at the center of the prison block, within view of all the cells circling around. Faces, made spectral by the moon, appeared in the dark cell windows. Mosquitoes buzzed in my ears and bit my face, my arms, my ankles. Mr. Ping’s white face grew more wraithlike in the dark; with his white shirt and dark pants, he looked like the apparition of half a being. Behind him, incongruously, loomed a broken basketball hoop.

  He sprayed me with a hose and my heart seized from the cold water and I shrieked, then worried that Wei would think I was crying from pain and do something stupid. The water soaked through my dress, through the pads of my bra, wet my flesh. It washed over my sandals and swept away the odor of puke.