The Interior

by Lisa See

  “Oh, yes,” he said. He sounded sincere, but Hulan caught the quick look that passed between him and Siang.

  Addressing the girl directly, she said, “You and Miaoshan must have been friends. Everyone knows everyone in the countryside.”

  “I have known Miaoshan since we were both in first school.” The words sounded pleasant enough, but Siang wasn’t sophisticated enough to hide the scorn in her voice, which practically shouted, She was poor. My father is a landowner. She lived here in these fields. I live in the town.

  “I’m sure that Miaoshan’s mother will be comforted to hear of your grief and that you have come to offer solace to her daughter’s fiancé.”

  Siang’s cheeks reddened, but she said nothing.

  Hulan let the silence stretch out. She was in no hurry, and the longer she kept quiet, the sooner these two would wish to fill the void. Siang noiselessly etched a groove into the dirt with the edge of her tennis shoe, while Tsai Bing looked around nervously. Finally he said, “I didn’t see Miaoshan so much anymore. She was always at work or in the dormitory. I am always here working in the fields. Different lives, different choices.”

  “But it was to be same lives, same choices, no?” Hulan commented. “Marriage brings two people together. You must have talked about that on her last night, making plans for your wedding—”

  “I didn’t see Miaoshan,” he interrupted, genuinely surprised. “I hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks before she killed herself.”

  “But the baby and your wedding?”

  Now it was Tsai Bing’s turn to blush. Again he glanced over at Siang, looking first embarrassed, then defiant. When he turned back to Hulan, he jutted his chin indifferently.

  “Who’s to say that Tsai Bing was the father?” Siang said suddenly. “Miaoshan was living away from home. Who knows what she did or where she did it?”

  “That’s right,” Tsai Bing chimed in.

  Tsai Bing and Siang had to be lovers. How else to explain Tsai Bing’s odd indifference to losing his fiancée or Siang’s callous remarks? But the young woman with the pretty face wasn’t finished.

  “Miaoshan was always showing off. With her new clothes and her painted face, she thought she was telling the whole village she was better than the rest of us. But everyone looked at her and thought she was acting like a sister of the cave, like a prostitute.”

  “I see,” Hulan said, and she did see Siang’s jealousy very clearly.

  “Everyone felt sorry for Tsai Bing,” Siang continued. “He is a good man and a good peasant. He obeys family and public rules. The law says it’s too early for him to marry without parental permission and a special exemption permit. Maybe one day he will marry. When he does, he will go through the proper channels and not through the back door.”

  Hulan had heard enough. She slowly stood and asked, “Tsai Bing, you’re sure you didn’t see Miaoshan that last night or in the morning? Her mother thought she was with you.”

  Instead of answering with words, the boy reached out and took Siang’s hand. Hulan said good-bye and that she hoped they might meet again, but what she was thinking was that Tsai Bing, a sweet enough kid, was in over his head with Siang. If this obstinate woman had her way, he would become a husband sooner than later. When he did, he would quickly catch qi guan yan. The words meant “inflammation of the windpipe,” but the pronunciation was similar to the words for “wife’s tight control,” creating the meaning of a henpecked husband. But Hulan’s mind jumped beyond this superficial assessment. If she believed these two and they had been together on that last night, then where was Miaoshan? Perhaps, like Hulan today, she had gone to find her fiancé and overheard him and Siang in the cornfield. There were many women—and men, for that matter—who killed themselves over broken hearts.

  Hulan kept coming back to Tang Siang. She was obviously envious of Miaoshan. More than that, her comments had been unnecessarily cruel. They seemed less the observations of someone who was sure of her relationship with Tsai Bing than someone who was still trying to solidify her position or—if she was as clever as she thought herself—trying to distract Hulan from the truth, whatever that was. This, coupled with the blatant intimacy between Tsai Bing and Siang, caused Hulan to wonder: Could either Tang Siang or Tsai Bing have killed Miaoshan? Murders of passion were as old as the human heart.

  It was still early in the morning, but late by countryside standards when Hulan left the fields and stepped onto the road for Da Shui. Peasants who had gone to the village to sell their produce or to do business were already heading back to their farms, so that Hulan had to thread her way through the oncoming traffic of people, pushcarts, bicycle carts, and bicycles. At first she kept to the far side of the road, nervous of the cars, trucks, and buses that drove past, but soon she fell into the rhythm of the road—the even strides, the occasional greeting, the beeping of the vehicles, the smells of exhaust, sweat, earth, and the greens that grew upon it.

  An hour later, with the sun directly above her head, Hulan entered Da Shui. In many ways it still looked the same. The streets leading into the village were too narrow for cars to pass through. (She’d seen three cars parked on a vacant stretch of land just outside the village.) The unpainted gray-brick houses were small, mostly one or two rooms with a small courtyard holding a family pig. Tiled roofs inclined steeply. A few had upturned eaves, which showed their older age. In the center of the town was a square of sorts—a large, barren area of earth where a few chickens pecked. As in most of China, there was trash of every variety lying about—twisted pieces of iron, scraggly baskets, some old barrels.

  But to Hulan’s eyes Da Shui had changed dramatically. A few feet of cement sidewalk edged the north side of the square. Where once there had been one or two little shops with government-controlled prices, Hulan now saw store after store—all small establishments, all competing against each other to sell toiletries, rice, produce, crackers, and other dry goods. Painted on empty walls were advertisements for chewing gum, appliances, and face cream. She even saw a couple of billboards.

  Twenty-five years ago the only decoration in the village had been larger-than-life posters and paintings of the Great Helmsman. Of course, there had been other embellishments in the form of revolutionary slogans promoting Mao’s Cultural Revolution (“Universal Redness With No Exceptions” or “Fight With Words, Not With Weapons”) and in dazibao, the big character posters that proclaimed the real and imagined crimes of this or that villager. In those days loudspeakers had blared Chairman Mao’s quotations all day and long into the night.

  Even today cone-shaped speakers wired to the eaves of buildings played a set routine of programs, beginning at six in the morning with news and commentary. At noon, those fortunate enough to have fields near the village would have lunch accompanied by news and maybe a little music. At dusk, when peasants from the surrounding area converged on the town for a cup of tea, a little conversation, and a game of cards, the programming would start up again with what had traditionally been political indoctrination. Right now an old-fashioned military march accompanied Hulan as she walked down the dusty street.

  She went straight to the local Public Security Bureau. The linoleum floor was worn and dirty. An electric fan hung from the ceiling, flanked by two sets of fluorescent lights, but none of them was turned on. Hulan went to the counter. Two women sat at desks against the wall. One was eating from a bowl of food she’d brought from home; the other was doing nothing as far as Hulan could tell. Neither woman looked up. The police bureau was not part of what might be considered the service industry. Manners had no place here. There were no forbidden phrases or outlawed attitudes. To the contrary, people in law enforcement—even if they were simply office staff—were allowed to be rude. Hulan understood the routine, but that didn’t make her like it any more.

  Finally Hulan cleared her throat.

  “What do you want?” the woman eating noodles asked.

  “I was hoping to see whoever is in charge.”

&n
bsp; “Captain Woo is busy. He can’t see you now.”

  “I can wait.”

  The two women exchanged glances. The woman eating noodles smirked as she said, “You can sit or you can go, we don’t care.”

  What came to Hulan’s mind as she stood there in the hot room was a centuries-old saying: To be an official for one lifetime means seven rebirths as a beggar. Wisely, she didn’t say this and sat down instead. She picked up a newspaper, but there was little news in the province this week. A while later, she got up and walked to the bulletin board. Here were the usual posters promoting the one-child policy, a flyer for employment at the Knight factory, a chart showing farming quotas, and a government-sponsored list of slogans encouraging better work habits, personal hygiene, and good attitudes such as “Time Is Money, Efficiency Is Life” and “Persist in Reform and Open Policy.”

  At last a door behind the counter opened and a man came out. Seeing Hulan, he leaned down and spoke quietly to one of the secretaries, then straightened and addressed Hulan directly. “You may come in, but only for five minutes.”

  The sign on the door said Captain Woo. He motioned for Hulan to sit and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Liu Hulan.”

  “An old-fashioned name. People don’t use that name much anymore.”

  “This is so.”

  Captain Woo poured himself a cup of tea from a thermos but didn’t offer any to the woman who sat before him. “You are not from Da Shui.”

  “I have come to visit a friend.”

  “And you find that you argue, that things aren’t as they were? This happens sometimes. Friends grow apart.”

  “No, that isn’t it—”

  But the captain wasn’t listening. “The bureau doesn’t get involved in domestic disputes. That is something for the Neighborhood Committee or the manager of the work unit to handle, but”—he sighed deeply—“I have people like you coming to me more and more. Soon, I think, the government will need to come up with a directive on how to handle these problems, for neither I nor my colleagues are equipped to deal with petty arguments when we have so much more important work.”

  “Excuse me, Captain, but I am not here over a dispute with a friend.”

  “If you have a problem with a husband running away to our village, then you must go to the village leader. Make a petition. He will listen.”

  Hulan’s patience was wearing thin, but she couldn’t interrupt him or stop him in her usual manner without giving herself away as an educated woman, a Beijinger, a Red Princess, or an inspector for the Ministry of Public Security. This last was most crucial. Local Public Security Bureaus had little respect for the more important Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. This attitude wasn’t unique to China. Every country had its jurisdictional arguments between local police and national law enforcement, whether it be the FBI, KGB, or Scotland Yard. So, instead of putting Woo in his place, Hulan acted as a peasant, more than a little afraid of his power.

  “Please, Captain,” she said as meekly as was possible for her.

  He frowned at her impertinence, then nodded for her to go ahead.

  “I am here because my friend’s daughter died. The mother is very sad. I am hoping you can tell me what happened so that I can help the mother with her grief.”

  Woo’s eyes narrowed. “You must be speaking of Ling Miaoshan. She killed herself.”

  “How can this be?” Hulan asked. “She was young, beautiful, and she was to be married. Suicide isn’t the act of a bride.”

  Hulan had hoped that Captain Woo would recognize the inconsistencies just as she had. Instead, he dropped his pseudo-polite demeanor and spoke in a tone designed to halt any more questions from this know-nothing woman.

  “Ling Miaoshan had a bad character. The whole district knew she was a loose girl who opened her legs for any man with a beating heart. As for marriage? Well, no one ever saw an invitation to the wedding.”

  “Are you saying that Tsai Bing never intended to marry Miaoshan?”

  “No, I’m saying I’m done with you. Go on your way before you get into trouble here.” This time there was no mistaking the threat. Hulan stood, bowed her head in feigned gratitude, and left the office.

  Later, as she walked along the road leading out of the village, she thought over Captain Woo’s words. How could Miaoshan have had such a bad reputation? The answer was as old as womankind—she’d probably earned it. But again, this seemed at odds with Suchee’s description of her daughter. Was this just a mother’s blindness to her daughter’s weakness? Or were the villagers intimidated enough in some way by Miaoshan to create a portrait that explained a disparity that they couldn’t understand? Hulan knew how that worked. It had happened to Hulan her entire life. Even at work her colleagues recognized her differences and translated them into misjudgments such as that she held herself too high or dressed peculiarly, yes, even that she was a loose woman who had had unmarried sex—with a foreigner, no less.

  5

  SUNDAY MORNING DAWNED DAMP AND FOGGY. DAVID, dressed in boxers and an old T-shirt, padded down to the kitchen and started a large pot of coffee for himself and special agents George Baldwin and Eddie Wiley. Within hours of Keith’s death, the agents had arrived back at the house. George and Eddie were pretty good guys, and during their last few months together on the Rising Phoenix case, they’d learned how to accommodate one another. Eddie, who’d spent years doing undercover work, was more of an athlete and accompanied David on his morning runs around Lake Hollywood. George, on the other hand, had come out of the bank robbery squad. He was accustomed to sitting all day in courtrooms and waiting in offices, so he had a great deal of patience with David’s typical workday. During the previous months a kind of frat house atmosphere had prevailed. But circumstances had changed.

  David had thought his life had been circumscribed the last time around, but after two full days with George and Eddie he felt as if he were in jail. After the shooting outside the Water Grill, the agents were taking everything much more seriously. David was never alone in his own home. Never alone when he ate. Never allowed to go outside and pick up the paper. Never alone when he walked or ran or went to work. Even now David could hear George on the phone setting up shifts, which meant there’d be new agents to get to know, more traffic all around the periphery of his life, and even less freedom.

  Eddie entered the room, then in a swift series of motions slipped his hand to where he kept his weapon holstered behind his back, opened the door, looked around, went outside, picked up the paper, brought it in, and dropped it on the kitchen counter. Then, without a word, he opened a cupboard and poured himself a bowl of Cheerios. He’d already showered, shaved, and dressed for the funeral in an outfit that wasn’t much different from what he wore on every other day of the week—gray slacks perfectly pressed, a starched light blue shirt, sports jacket, and a tie with a blue and red pattern. He was in his thirties, and because of his undercover work kept his hair longer than most agents. Eddie had a girlfriend he talked to every night on his cellular phone. David had overheard more than one conversation between the two agents about how and when Eddie should propose.

  David waited silently for the coffee to finish, poured himself a cup, grabbed the paper, and went back to his bedroom. He stood for a minute or two looking out at the view. Usually it gave him a sense of expansiveness, but today he only felt the pressure of the four walls around him. His mood might have lifted if he could have spoken to Hulan, but she hadn’t called since that day on the train and he couldn’t reach her—not because she was out of satellite range but because she hadn’t turned on her phone. Hulan had a 139 phone that allowed her to place and receive calls from anywhere in the world. Since phones were such a rarity in homes both in the countryside and in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, most people who could afford cell phones—and they and their ancillary rates were outrageously high in China but minuscule compared to U.S. standards—had them. The government had facilitated this by making sure that
satellites covered all but the most remote or difficult to reach areas such as the Three Gorges. With Hulan separated from him—by choice? The idea made him even more depressed—she didn’t even know that Keith had died, or that David was responsible.

  David still had two hours before the funeral, so he propped himself up in bed and opened the paper. There were the usual stories—trouble in the Middle East in the front section, a profile of one of the Dodgers in Sports, the second of a two-parter on infidelity in Life & Style, and, because it was an industry town, there was a piece about a film that had run over budget in Calendar. He was about halfway through the business section when he saw Knight International in bold type.

  Despite troubles in the Asian markets, he read, Knight’s stock had climbed another seventeen points in the last week. The reporter, a Pearl Jenner, had interviewed a couple of brokers who observed that the recent action was due to the fact that Knight’s board and its minority shareholders had accepted a bid for purchase by media and manufacturing giant Tartan Incorporated. She also interviewed Henry Knight, the colorful chairman of the company, who said, “I’ve spent my life building this company. We’ve always done well. But in this last year our sales have skyrocketed thanks to Sam & His Friends. If there’s a time to sell, this is it.”

  The reporter didn’t see it that way. Why sell the company when the financial forecast looked so rosy, with Knight’s new technologies guaranteed to expand profits geometrically in the next century? She went on to answer her question. Henry Knight wasn’t as young as he once was. He’d been in and out of the hospital for heart problems during the last two years. Most important, several sources, who refused to be named, suggested that Henry didn’t want to leave the company to his son, Douglas Knight. “The old man is a visionary, but he’s a hard man,” offered one observer. “He should have stepped down and turned the company over to Doug years ago, but he won’t let go.” When asked why, the unnamed source answered, “Henry’s the kind of man who brought himself up by his bootstraps. If it was good enough for him, then it’s good enough for his son.” Pearl Jenner noted several examples of other family-owned businesses where the founders preferred to sell or hand the running of a company over to outsiders rather than give it to their less talented offspring. Ironically, however, Henry hadn’t founded Knight, his father had. Perhaps a more logical explanation was that by selling now—when profits were at an all-time high—the company would get the best price. This had the added benefit of giving Henry the chance to help his son with estate taxes while he was still alive.