The Man From Beijing

by Unknown

  Birgitta suggested they should have lunch, but Ho declined, saying she had other things to do. Afterwards Birgitta wondered what Ho could have to do in a town like Helsingborg that was totally unknown to her.

  The trial continued slowly but relentlessly, and when Birgitta closed proceedings for the day they had progressed as far as she had hoped.

  Ho was waiting outside the courthouse. As Staffan was on a train to Gothenburg, Birgitta suggested that Ho should come home with her. She could see that Ho was hesitant.

  ‘I’m on my own. My husband’s away. My children live in other towns. So you needn’t be afraid of meeting anybody.’

  ‘But I’m not alone. I have San with me.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  Ho pointed to the other side of the street. San was leaning against a wall.

  ‘Call him over here,’ said Birgitta. ‘Then all three of us can go to my house.’

  San seemed to be less disturbed now than he had been in the chaotic circumstances of their first meeting. Birgitta could see that he took after his mother: he had Hong Qiu’s face, and something of her smile.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked him.

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  His English was just as perfect as Hong Qiu’s and Ho’s.

  They sat in the living room. San wanted coffee, while Ho drank tea. Set up on the table was the board game Birgitta had bought while in Beijing. In addition to her handbag, Ho was holding a paper bag. She produced from it several pages of handwritten Chinese. And she also took out a notepad with an English translation.

  ‘Ya Ru had a flat in London. One of my friends knew Lang, who was his housekeeper. She prepared his meals and surrounded him with the silence he craved. She let us into the flat, and we found a diary, which is where these extracts come from. I’ve translated part of what he wrote, which explains why most of this business took place. Not everything, but all the aspects we can understand. There were some motives that only Ya Ru could explain.’

  ‘He was a powerful man, according to what you’ve told me. That must mean that his death has attracted a lot of attention in China?’

  San, who had said little so far, was the one who responded.

  ‘Nothing. No attention at all, just silence – the kind of silence Shakespeare writes about. “The rest is silence.” Ya Ru was so powerful that others who were just as powerful have succeeded in hushing up what happened. It’s as if Ya Ru never existed. We think that a lot of people were pleased or relieved when he died, even among those regarded as his friends. Ya Ru was dangerous. He collected knowledge that he used to destroy his enemies, or those he regarded as dangerous competitors. Now all his companies are being wound down, silence is being bought, everything is stiffening up and turning into a concrete wall separating him and his fate from both official history and those of us who are still alive.’

  Birgitta leafed through the papers lying on her table. ‘Shall I read them now?’

  ‘No. Later, when you’re alone.’

  ‘And I don’t need to be afraid?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will I understand what happened to Hong Qiu?’

  ‘He killed her. Not with his own hands; somebody else did it for him. And was killed in turn by Ya Ru. One death covered up for the other. Nobody could believe that Ya Ru had killed his sister – apart from the most astute observers, who knew how Ya Ru thought about himself and others. But what’s remarkable and incomprehensible is how he could kill his sister and yet at the same time value his family, his forefathers, above all else. There’s something contradictory there, a riddle we’ll never be able to solve. Ya Ru was powerful. He was feared for his intelligence and his ruthlessness. But perhaps he was also ill.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He was possessed by a hatred that corroded his personality. Perhaps he really was out of his mind.’

  ‘There’s one thing that has puzzled me. What were they actually doing in Africa?’

  ‘There’s a plan that involves China sending millions of its poor peasants to various African countries. Political and economic structures are currently being put in place that make some of these poor African countries dependent on China. For Ya Ru this was a cynical repetition of the colonialism practised earlier by the Western world. For him this was a farsighted solution. But for Hong Qiu, and for me and Ma Li and lots of others, this is an attack on the very foundations of the China we have helped to build up.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Birgitta. ‘China is a dictatorship. Freedom is limited at every turn; justice is weak. What exactly are you trying to defend?’

  ‘China is a poor country. The economic development everybody talks about has only benefited a limited part of the population. If this way of leading China into the future continues, with a gap between the rich and the poor growing wider all the time, it will end up in catastrophe. China will be thrust back once more into hopeless chaos. Or fascist structures will become dominant. We are defending the hundreds of millions of peasants who, when all’s said and done, are the ones whose labour is producing the wealth on which developments are based. Developments they are benefiting from less and less.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand. Ya Ru on one side, Hong Qiu on the other? Suddenly discussion is cut short, and he kills his own sister?’

  ‘The battle of wills currently taking place in China is about life and death. The poor versus the rich, those without power versus those with it all. It’s about people who are growing more and more angry as they see everything they have fought for being destroyed, and those who see opportunities to make their own fortunes and achieve positions of power they could previously never dream of. That is when people die.’

  Birgitta turned to look at San. ‘Tell me about your mother.’

  ‘Didn’t you know her?’

  ‘I met her, but I can’t say that I knew her.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy to be her child. She was strong, determined, often considerate; but she could also be angry and spiteful. I freely admit that I was scared of her. But I loved her, because she tried to see herself as a part of something bigger. To her it was just as natural to help a drunken man onto his feet when he falls over in the street as it was to conduct intensive discussions about politics. For me she was more of a person to look up to than somebody who was simply my mother. Nothing was easy. But I miss her and know that I now have to live with that sense of loss.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to be a doctor. But I’m taking a year off. To mourn. To try to understand what it involves, living without her.’

  ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘He died a long time ago. He wrote poetry. All I know about him is that he died shortly after I was born. My mother never said much about him, only that he was a good man and a revolutionary. The only part of him left in my life is a photograph of him holding a puppy in his arms.’

  They spoke at length that night about China. Birgitta admitted that as a young woman she had wanted to be a Red Guard in Sweden. But the whole time she was waiting impatiently for the moment when she could read the papers Ho had brought with her.

  At about ten she called a taxi to take Ho and San to the railway station.

  ‘When you’ve finished reading,’ said Ho, ‘get in touch.’

  ‘Is there an end to this story?’

  Ho thought for a moment before answering.

  ‘There’s always an end,’ she said. ‘Even in this case. But the end is always the beginning of something else. The periods we write into our lives are always provisional, in one way or another.’

  Birgitta watched the taxi drive away, then sat down with the translation of Ya Ru’s diary. Staffan wasn’t due back home until the following day. She hoped she’d have finished reading by then. It was no more than twenty pages, but Ho’s handwriting was hard to decipher because the letters were so small.

  What exactly was it, this diary she was reading? Afterwards, when she looked back on t
hat evening alone in the house, with traces of Ho’s perfume still in the room, she knew she should have been able to work out for herself most of what had happened. Or, rather, she should have understood, but refused to accept what she really did understand.

  Naturally, all the time she was wondering about what Ho had left out. She could have asked, but knew that she wouldn’t get an answer. There were traces of secrets that she would never understand, locks she would never be able to open. There were references to people in the past, another diary that seemed to have been written as a sort of counter to the one JA had written, the man who became a foreman on the building sites of the American cross-continental railway.

  Over and over again Ya Ru returned in his diary to his frustration at Hong Qiu’s failure to understand that the path China was now following was the only right possibility, and that people like Ya Ru must be the controlling influences. Birgitta began to realise that Ya Ru had many psychopathic traits that, reading between the lines, he even seemed to be aware of himself.

  Nowhere could she find any redeeming features in his character. No expression of doubt, of a guilty conscience with regard to the death of Hong Qiu, who after all was his own sister. She wondered if Ho had edited the text in order to depict Ya Ru as a brutal man. She even wondered if Ho had invented the whole diary herself. But she couldn’t really believe that. San had committed murder. Just as in the Icelandic sagas, he had taken bloody revenge for the death of his mother.

  By the time she had read through Ho’s translation twice, it was almost midnight. There were many obscurities in what Ho had written, many details that still weren’t explained. The red ribbon – what was its significance? Only Liu Xan could have explained that, if he had still been alive. There were threads that would continue to hang loose, perhaps forever.

  But what still needed to be done? What could or must she do on the basis of the insight she now had? She would spend part of her holiday thinking about it. When Staffan was fishing, for instance – an activity she found deadly boring. And early in the mornings, when he was reading his historical novels or biographies of jazz musicians and she went for walks on her own. There would be time for her to formulate the letter she would send to the police in Hudiksvall. Once she’d done that she’d be able to put away the box containing memories of her parents. It would all be over as far as she was concerned. Hesjövallen would fade slowly out of her consciousness, be transformed into a pale memory. Even though she would never forget what had happened, of course.

  They went to Bornholm, had changeable weather, and enjoyed living in the cottage they had rented. The children came and went, days passed by in an atmosphere generally characterised by drowsy well-being. To their surprise Anna turned up, having completed her long Asian journey, and astonished them even more by announcing that she would be embarking on a political science degree at Lund in the autumn.

  On several occasions Birgitta decided that the time had come to tell Staffan what had happened, both in Beijing and then later in London. But she didn’t – there was no point in telling him if he would never be able to get over that she’d kept it from him. It would hurt him and be interpreted as a lack of confidence and understanding. It wasn’t worth the risk, so she continued to say nothing.

  She did not say anything to Karin Wiman either about her visit to London and the happenings there.

  It all stayed bottled up inside her, a scar that nobody else could see.

  On Monday, 7 August, both she and Staffan went back to work. The previous evening they had sat down at long last and discussed their life together. It was as if both of them, without having mentioned it in advance, realised that they couldn’t start another working year without at least beginning to talk about the decline of their marriage. What Birgitta regarded as the major breakthrough was that her husband raised the question of their almost non-existent sex life of his own accord, without her having put the idea into his head. He regretted the situation and was horrified not to have the desire or the ability. In response to her direct question he said that no one else attracted him. It was simply a matter of a lack of desire, which worried him but was something he usually preferred not to think about.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asked. ‘We can’t live another year without touching each other. I simply couldn’t take it.’

  ‘I’ll try to get help. I don’t find it any easier than you do. But I also find it difficult to talk about.’

  ‘You’re talking about it now.’

  ‘Because I realise that I have to.’

  ‘I hardly know what you’re thinking any more. I sometimes look at you in the morning and think that you’re a stranger.’

  ‘You express yourself better than I ever could. But I sometimes feel exactly the same thing. Perhaps not as strongly.’

  ‘Have you really accepted that we could live the rest of our lives like this?’

  ‘No. But I’ve avoided thinking about it. I promise to call a therapist.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not the first time. Later, if necessary.’

  ‘Do you understand what this means to me?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy. But with luck we’ll be able to get past this. It’s been a bit like wandering through a desert.’

  He started his day on 7 August by climbing aboard a train to Stockholm at 8.12 in the morning. She didn’t arrive in her office until about 10. As Hans Mattsson was still on holiday she had responsibility for all the district court’s activities and began with a meeting for the legal and secretarial staff. Once she was convinced that everything was under control, she withdrew to her office and wrote the long letter to Vivi Sundberg that she had spent the summer composing in her head.

  She had obviously asked herself what she wanted or at least hoped to achieve. The truth, naturally; the hope that all the happenings in Hesjövallen would be explained, including the murder of the old hotel owner. But was she also looking for some kind of redress for the distrust shown her by the police in Hudiksvall? How much was personal vanity, and how much was a genuine attempt to persuade the investigation team that the man who had committed suicide, despite his confession, had nothing to do with it?

  In a way it also had to do with her mother. In searching for the truth Birgitta wanted to pay tribute to her mother’s foster-parents who had met such a grisly end.

  It took her two hours to write the letter. She reread it several times before putting it in an envelope and addressing it to the police in Hudiksvall, attention Vivi Sundberg. Then she put it in the tray for outgoing post in the reception area downstairs and opened the windows in her office wide in the hope of blowing out all thought of the victims in those isolated houses up in Hesjövallen.

  She spent the rest of the day reading a consultative document from the Department of Justice regarding what seemed to be a never-ending process of reorganisation affecting all aspects of the Swedish judiciary.

  But she also made time to dig out one of her unfinished pop songs and attempted to write a couple more lines.

  The idea had come to her during the summer. It would be called ‘A Walk on the Beach’. But she found it hard going, today especially. She crumpled up her failed attempts and tossed them into the bin before locking the unfinished text in one of her desk drawers. Nevertheless, she was determined not to give up.

  At six o’clock she switched off her computer and left her office.

  On the way out, she noticed that the post outbox was now empty.

  37

  Liu Xan hid among the trees on the edge of the forest: he had arrived at last. He had not forgotten that Ya Ru had told him this was the most important mission he would ever be given. It was his task to bring matters to a conclusion, all the shocking events that had started more than one hundred years ago.

  As he stood there Liu Xan hought about Ya Ru, who had given him the job he was about to perform, given him the necessar
y equipment and exhorted him to be efficient. Ya Ru had explained everything that had happened in the past. The journey had continued for many years, back and forth over oceans and continents, travels filled with fear and death, unbearable persecution – and now came the necessary ending, the revenge.

  Those who had made the journey had passed on a long time ago. One lay dead at the bottom of the sea; others lay in unmarked graves. During all these years a constant lament had risen up from those resting places. He had now been given the task of putting an end to that painful dirge.

  Liu Xan had snow under his feet, and was surrounded by freezing cold air. It was 12 January 2006. Earlier in the day he had noticed a thermometer saying it was minus nine degrees Celsius. He kept shuffling his feet in an attempt to keep them warm. It was still early in the evening In several of the houses he could see from where he was standing that the lights were on or in some windows the bluish glow from television screens. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear a single sound. Not even dogs. Liu Xan thought that people in this part of the world kept dogs to guard them during the night. He had seen tracks in the snow, but gathered that they were being kept indoors.

  He had wondered if the dogs inside the houses would cause him problems, but he’d dismissed the thought. Nobody suspected what was going to happen; no dogs would be able to stop him.

  He took off a glove and checked the time. A quarter to nine. There was still time before the lights went out. He put the glove back on and thought about Ya Ru and all his stories about the dead people who had travelled so far. Every member of Ya Ru’s family had been involved in part of the journey By a strange coincidence the one who was destined to put an end to it was Liu Xan, who was not a relation. It filled him with deep thoughts. Ya Ru trusted him as if he were his brother.

  He heard a car in the distance, but it was not approaching. It was on the main road. In this country, he thought, during the silent winter nights, sound travels a very long way – as if over water.

  He continued shuffling his feet. How would he react when it was all over? Despite everything, was there a tiny part of his consciousness, his conscience, that he was not familiar with? Everything had gone according to plan in Nevada. But you could never know, especially as this task was so much bigger.