A Death in China (6 page)

“Linda, I’m sorry … ” But nothing gave way. No tears, no rage. Just a trace of color in her cheeks—and again the question.

“Tom, will you do it? Please.”

“No,” Stratton said. “I’ve already got my ribbons, remember?” A bloody stage, a pitchfork, a scream. He remembered.

“Nothing I can say or do to change your mind?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

They did not speak of it again. Leaving the restaurant, Linda Greer once again became an earnest tour guide. She drove competently on parking lights, dipping here and there into seemingly unpeopled alleys. Stratton had lost all sense of direction by the time Linda wheeled through a gate set in a twelve-foot brick wall. She nodded to two armed soldiers posted there, as though to trusted doormen.

“The diplomatic compound,” she announced. “This is where I live.”

Stratton waited.

She killed the motor and half-turned in the driver’s seat. Her arm crawled up Stratton’s shoulder and around his neck.

They kissed.

“That would be delightful, but the answer is still no.”

“Mata Hari goes off duty after dessert,” she murmured. “Besides, Peking is a lonely post, and you aren’t bad-looking—in an almost middle-aged, professorial kind of way. You think you’re the only one who needs some company?”

Stratton didn’t believe a word of it, but he went.

She drove alone through the night. The great city slept. Waxen pools of light marked a twenty-four-hour dumpling restaurant that was a nocturnal refuge of the young men and women who drove the number-one buses; a mindless twenty-mile route, back and forth endlessly, along Changan, and nary a turn. Her groin ached deliciously. Her mouth felt bruised. Maybe she had fibbed about going off duty, but she’d told the truth about one thing: she had needed the company. Peking was not exactly swarming with available American men. She yearned to be back in bed, but the digital clock on the dashboard read 3:15. Linda Greer was late.

She had roused Stratton with a lie, saying her reputation would be ruined if the night guards’ report showed that a visitor to Miss Greer’s apartment had not left. He had gone willingly enough—a goodbye kiss and a hug.

Her route led through the northern quarter of the city, and she knew it by heart. She turned right at a corner marked by a dusty bicycle shop and flashed her lights before a gray metal gate set firmly into the usual Peking-anonymous concrete wall. The gate creaked open at the urging of an old man in worker blue. She—or some other consular officer—was expected on duly appointed diplomatic rounds.

After nearly a year in Peking, she still did not understand why the Chinese had to do it in the dead of night. Was it distaste? Or left-over superstition that had survived the arrival of the Communist era? She had asked, at first, but all of her questions had been answered with a shrug. This is how it has always been done. After a while, she, too, had learned to shrug. By embassy tradition, it was a job reserved to the junior member of the consular corps. If that happened to be a woman, who also happened to be an intelligence officer, too bad. In another month, a new junior vice-consul would report for duty and Linda Greer would drive no more by night in Peking.

There were no preliminaries. The Chinese had no more liking for this chore than she.

“I am Miss Greer of the American Embassy. Where is Mr. Li?”

“Mr. Li is ill tonight. My name is Mr. Hu.”

Linda nodded. Hu’s on first, a pockmarked man with a cowlick. She was glad she had worn a skirt. Her panties were damp with the aftermath of love; no, of good old-fashioned, hard-and-fast sex. For a wild moment Linda imagined driving to Stratton’s hotel, rushing to his room on some pretext and … no, that would never do. That ruggedly aloof professor with the scarred body and great stamina was not for keeping; strictly a half-night stand. Still, it was better to think of him than to contemplate her late-night diplomatic duty.

“I believe there are two,” she said primly, waving a pair of manila folders.

Mr. Hu nodded. It was not unusual. The average was about twelve a year, but they tended to cluster in the peak tourist months. Twelve ducks.

The inner room was chilly, smelling of things Linda Greer never thought about. The welder, too, was new to Linda. She thought of asking Mr. Hu if the entire crew had been changed, but didn’t bother.

“Friedman, Molly R., Fort Lauderdale, Florida,” she read from the file.

Mr. Hu gestured. The lid was open. Linda looked, nodded.

“Wang, David T., Pittsville, Ohio.” Her own voice seemed strained.

“We have already begun on that one.”

“I am required to see it first.”

“You were late.”

“That is procedure.”

“It is very hot.”

A Chinese standoff. Linda could insist. They would shout and argue and, finally, with ill grace, they would probably snap the welds and open the lid. Linda had a sudden vision of herself, screaming like a harridan in Mandarin in the foreigners’ morgue in Peking at the deadest hour before dawn. She shivered and surrendered.

“Very well,” she said.

Mr. Hu nodded. The welder, a stocky, middle-aged woman, twirled a knob and ignited her torch.

Then, as procedure dictated, Linda watched in the eerie, smoking blue light of cascading sparks as the welder worked methodically, up one side and down the other. When she had finished, Linda checked to make sure that the labels were correct—that was really the most important part of her night’s work. Neither coffin would be opened again, but it would never do to dispatch heart attack victim Wang—Stratton’s friend—to Florida, or obese Mrs. Friedman, victim of complications of a broken hip on the Great Wall, to Ohio.

Linda Greer walked with cowlicked Mr. Hu to a small office. There, with a pen and a seal, she testified, in parallel English and Chinese documents that Linda May Greer, consular officer of the United States of America, had witnessed the sealing of two caskets and certified their contents. She drove home in the breaking dawn, trying to think of sex, but the images would not come and the effort left her feeling dry and brittle.

The setting was exactly as Linda Greer had predicted.

“It’s a ritual, Tom. All official meetings in all parts of China are staged exactly the same way,” she had said. “Maybe it’s something they borrowed from the Russians early on—or from the emperors—but it is literally a case of ‘See one, you’ve seen them all.’ “

Wang Bin had sent a car to the hotel. A Red Flag, no less, one of those dying-breed hand-tooled lustrous black limousines that are such a conspicuous status symbol in China that they have their own relaxed set of traffic regulations. The driver wore white gloves and had no English. He deposited Stratton at the apex of a circular driveway at the entrance to the museum. A young man with bottle-bottom glasses sprang for the door.

“Welcome, Professor Stratton. My name is Mr. Zhou. Comrade Wang is waiting for you. Follow me, please.”

They passed quickly through a marbled lobby bristling with watchers, turned left immediately, and left again at the first doorway.

The formal reception room was just as Linda had sketched it: long and narrow, filled by two lines of parallel overstuffed chairs and sofas in gray-brown wrapping. Between them ran a set of low coffee tables. Before each seat was a flowered tea mug, an ashtray and an ornate wooden box of tea leaves. On the wall was a large mural of the traditional dwarfed-by-nature theme.

Inside the doorway stood Wang Bin, a gently rounded ghost of his brother. From a few steps away, the resemblance to David was startling; nonplussed, Stratton faltered at the door. Wang Bin motioned him in kindly.

As they shook hands, Stratton saw the differences. Wang Bin’s face seemed leaner and older than David’s; the hair was shorter of course, but also thinner, and more liberally dashed with gray at the temples. The deputy minister’s bearing, in a crisp gray Mao suit with a black mourner’s band on one arm, was rock-hard military. But the greatest difference welled in the eyes. To look at David Wang’s almost-almond eyes was to have seen wisdom, humor, compassion. In Wang Bin’s eyes Stratton saw intelligence, strength—and something else. A certain intrepid determination that had no doubt stood him in good stead all these years.

Stratton and Wang sat at right angles in adjoining chairs and the interpreter took up a priest-at-confession pose to one side. Stratton’s last private meeting with a Chinese official had been with a snarling, saucer-faced man who’d punctuated shouting questions with blows from a rubber truncheon. When the time had come to leave, Stratton had shot him, twice.

Wang Bin was speaking. Stratton leaned forward attentively, letting the sibilant Mandarin wash over him in uncomprehended waves. A girl in pigtails and a white jacket materialized. Gently, she eased the top off Stratton’s tea cup and added boiling water from a thermos. She soundlessly recovered the cup. Tea leaves had already been placed in the cup.

” … to meet a distinguished scholar such as yourself and hopes you are enjoying your stay in China,” the interpreter hissed.

“Please tell Comrade Wang that I am pleased and excited to be in China. It is a fascinating country and my trip has been very educational.”

A pause for translation. Wang’s response. Then the translation floating back toward Stratton. An agonizing way to communicate, he reflected, about as lively as geriatric shuffleboard.

“Comrade Wang asks if this is your first trip to China.”

“Tell Comrade Wang that, yes, this is my first trip. I have always wanted to come before, but it was too expensive.” Stratton had told that same lie dozens of times. He would die proclaiming it. And why not? The first time he had come without a passport.

“Comrade Wang asks, What cities besides Peking have you visited?”

The conversation meandered like the Yangtze for nearly fifteen minutes; three offers of cigarettes, two cups of tea and banalities uncounted. Stratton let it wander. It was Wang Bin’s ball park, and if he was in no hurry, neither was Stratton. The art historians had voted unanimously to spend their last morning in Peking—a rare, unprogrammed three hours—on a return visit to the Friendship Store.

“Comrade Wang says his brother spoke well of you to him. He said you were a treasured former student and a distinguished professor. Comrade Wang says he is pleased.”

Stratton smiled.

“Tell Comrade Wang that David had many spiritual children like me and that some of them are truly distinguished. I am not, but I mourn David as I would my own father.”

When the translation ended, Wang said something to the interpreter that brought him to his feet. Stratton, too, started to rise, thinking the colorless encounter ended. Wang stopped him with a gesture of his mourning-banded arm. When the door closed behind the young interpreter, Wang lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“I would like to speak of my brother, Professor Stratton. I believe we can dispense with protocol,” he said in nearly accentless English. Stratton did not comment on the language shift. Wang had never allowed the interpreter to complete a translation of anything Stratton had said.

“You will be returning with my brother to the United States, the land he made his nation. Many people will ask about his death. I will tell you, so you may tell them.”

“I would like to know.”

“Let me start with life, Professor Stratton. That is where all death begins, does it not? In life? Once we had been close, my brother and I, close in that special way that only brothers know. I can still see the cobblestone courtyard in Shanghai where we would play.

“We took our piano lessons and studied our math and our English and when no one was looking we would sneak away to play by the river. We loved the river. So much life, excitement. Once we saw a knife fight between two sailors. Then came the day for my brother to leave. Back to the river, but this time in rickshas with trunks and my brother in a Western suit. We tried not to cry, but we cried and my father was angry. At first my brother wrote every week. After my parents had done with them, I would take those letters and read them until they entered my memory. But already the Revolution was beginning, Professor Stratton, and the letters became more infrequent. Soon I left with my mother to join the people’s struggle. I heard no more from my American brother for many, many years. Some good years, and a few that were very bad. For several years my job was to collect night soil in a big barrel that I pushed on a cart. Do you know what night soil is?”

“Human excrement, collected for fertilizer.”

“Yes, I am glad to see that you have done your lessons, Professor. Human excrement, to be collected by leaders in punishment when the Revolution is betrayed by fools. I know you have read of the Cultural Revolution, Professor, but it was worse than anything that is written about it. Much worse. Then came some good years, and now … who knows?” Wang Bin slipped some tea and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old. “My brother … one may lose touch with a brother, but one never forgets him. Brothers are part of you, like parents. I have heard that when parents go to visit their grown children in America, they are asked to pay for their meals, Professor Stratton. Is that true?”

“Certainly not.”

“I thought not. It is a lie then, published in our newspapers to make people less envious of America. Revolutions require many lies, you know.” Wang Bin smiled without mirth.

“One day, I decided to write my brother. I cannot tell you why, exactly, except that he was my brother and we are—were—old men. That must have been three years ago; a friend in our embassy in Washington got me the address. At first, the letters were respectful, distant, like the opening moves in a game of chess. But, eventually, they became letters between two brothers. I invited David to come for a visit. Hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese have returned for visits to their families in the past few years, from America, Canada, Europe, everywhere. Did you know that?”

“It must have been very emotional, your reunion with David.”

“Oh, yes, it was. A wonderful experience, happy and sad. Last week, when I saw my brother for the first time in nearly fifty years, I wept. So did he, although Chinese do not display their emotions publicly. Americans are much more open about that, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“As David—that was not my brother’s given name, but that is what he asked me to call him—as David may have told you, I was unfortunately not in Peking when he arrived, but in Xian, a city in the west. Do you know it?”

Stratton shook his head.

“A beautiful city where the emperors lived when Peking was still just a village. So David flew to Xian and there we reunited. We wept, and laughed, and at night after dinner we would go to his room, drink tea and remember; be little boys again.”

“Did he show any signs of being sick?” Stratton asked.

“Only the excitement, at first. But then, perhaps it was the day before we returned to Peking, he complained of pains in his chest. We sat for a while and then continued our walk; we were in a park. He took a little pill, I think, and when I asked him if something was wrong, he laughed and said he had some trouble with his heart, but that it was not serious. His doctor had joked, David said, that the problem was just grave enough for him to take two or three little pills a day for the next forty years.”

“I hadn’t known that,” Stratton said.

“Well, he tried to do too much, you see. He was so excited about being in China again and being with me. He tried to do too much, rushing everywhere. I tried to slow him down, but you know how David was … “