Avenue of Eternal Peace (9 page)

That year Wally got his doctorate and they crossed the Atlantic to the other Cambridge. The Vietnam War was in full cry and Bets came to believe that the war was invented especially to indulge operatic American agonising. She despised the war, and the United States for it, and wretched Australia, and her own gutless homeland too; she hated anything that bullied in the name of ideology. The Pope, Stalin, Uncle Sam, the wire photos of the tear-stained faces of Chinese Red Guards adoring their leader: all alike made her shudder. She was a political agnostic; she believed only in the anarchy of growth, which was how she reared her son. She stood for an eccentric, resistant individualism far removed from Wally's kindly, lofty ameliorism. They ranted a lot about the issues in those days and Bets often gave offence at faculty dinners by snorting at some pompous professorial remark. They survived Harvard only by joining their own personal discussions with the general fight by which values were thrashed out for the Republic and the world. There was simply no escape in the place. Despite the liberal reverence for all forms of personal choice, all antiquarian highways and byways, all useless and irrelevant pursuits, in spite of venerable, salvation seeking, perpetually pilgrim New England on all sides, there was no private nook to which to retreat.

But in the end they were outsiders. An attractive offer came from Prince Henry's Hospital in Sydney. For Wally it was not an easy choice to forsake centre stage. How many Nobel prizewinners came from the Northern Beaches, while in Cambridge, Massachusetts, every block had its own? But he acknowledged the facts of geography, the nearness of Bets's family across the Tasman. And they wanted their child to be Antipodean.

Aged five, Jerome returned to Australia speaking of cookies and cookouts, of ‘small is beautiful' and ‘do your own thing' in a Hahvahd drawl. Now, more than ten years later, he spoke Strine. He'd hung on to his United States passport. He had a London haircut and Japanese clothes and a global knowledge of fast food and cocktails, a mingy computer hacker's physique and an expression when he looked at his father that was—Aztec.
Aiya!
He was a citizen of the world.

The gaps had widened after the nuclear family returned to Australia. Why? Who or what was to blame? He and Bets had shared a little fancy that their roots were common, though, unlike him, she came from a well-heeled family that frittered its capital away on self-fulfilment. Wally used to joke that when they were kids he and Bets must have been lovesick for each other across the Tasman Sea. As a youth he had been drawn to the peak of beloved Pigeonhouse Mountain to dream eastwards, and Bets as a teenager on family holidays at the beach had loved to stray to the western tip of the headland, to dive fearlessly off the rocks into the ocean, already knowing their direction, already seeking their centre.

But Wally's time in Sydney became allotted to committees for good works, always on the side of the angels, while Bets preferred the Angel, a pub where her motley friends hung out. She had few responsibilities. Teaching had been tried; no one faulted her performance, but the laboured nurturing ran against the grain for her—especially when she ended up teaching music, which she hated. They had money anyway, since Wally got the Chair of Oncology over the heads of his elders. He was a haggard social reformer now in his own sphere, in strife with numerous administrative bodies, sticky with the politics of New South Wales and always feeling he had no time over for his Real Work. Bets laughed at him with her wide mouth. What passed for social reform in Australia was a kind of white sugar on which a new mendacious class would have grown obese had they ever stopped jogging. Bets did not believe in solutions, and Wally waged his battles alone. Carried along by the undying love of a baggy gang of happy social misfits, Bets would sometimes, at the Angel, sing the blues. They told her she should go professional; she threw back her shoulders and laughed till she coughed.

Her other pregnancies miscarried till she gave up trying. Jerome was always there when she needed him. Otherwise he was down on the beach or up to something.

Bets was bony, golden. Always she was restive, sometimes brittle and destructive and hilariously angry. She got drunk and shocked friends with her reckless, often reactionary opinions. When the black mood was on her she jeered at the Royal Commission into Human Relationships and scoffed at the Whitlamites, and got an earful of gutter language in return. ‘Just get nucked,' she would counter in flattest Kiwi. She blamed people—society—herself, for handing over the individual quest to a government—an official—a husband—who would take the matter out of your hands with the ringing conviction of progress ever onwards. In these moods she turned to her special friend Aldo, a joiner turned harpsichord maker, who was plump, jesting, kind to a fault. She rang him every day and he wouldn't let her hang up till the hard edges softened.

Wally never stopped needing her, yet their separate and irreconcilable lives divided them by a space wider than the Tasman. If he lifted his head even a minute from his commitments, which went on twenty-four hours a day across the nation and round the globe, Wally froze. He had failed to come up with the goods. The papers he still managed to churn out added not a hair to the mountain of human knowledge. All the challenges were still in place, budged not an inch, as pressing as ever. He got in the habit of ringing Cindy, a nurse. They would go to her flat at Coogee where she would roll a joint; she patted him—‘Relax, relax'—as she chased cockroaches off her mattress.

Once he came home at three o'clock in the morning. He never told Bets when he would be home. His was the only car on the northbound highway. The lights were on in their bedroom and bathroom, and—it was a cool night—Bets was outside on the terrace that opened off their bedroom. Below on Whale Beach the white surf and black sea pounded steadily under the stars. She was in her nightie. He couldn't guess what reverie and rancour was upon her, or deeper passion that would not let her sleep.

From the roar of ocean he distinguished her singing in full low voice the old song, fragment without words. She had not heard the car, and only stopped when he came into the bedroom—and she came towards him, to meet him, her gold hair brushed down, her figure straight and strong, her eyes almost smiling, her mouth half open, not quite daring to break into speech. What could she utter? Not a word of complaint, of recrimination, not even the dead calm of resignation. She was entirely beautiful, in her thirty-seventh year. She loved him. And he had not been there.

Now she was not here.

5

The day Wally and his friends returned to Beijing was the Festival of Pure Brightness, a Chinese All Souls Day when, as Jin Juan explained cheerfully, you should sweep the graves of your ancestors and step on green. But the original pilgrimage to dilapidated country graves had given way nowadays to a park visit or even a token stroll on roadside grass. Around the Medical College the old white tufts of grass at the corners of the buildings had green tips. He placed his big feet on the young grass, and asked Jin Juan if that would do. The magnolia tree, however, that stood outside his window, was unchanged.

He wanted to invite his friends in for tea, but Song and David's child was playing up so they agreed to separate. He shook hands with each of them in turn, thanking them, with awkward sincerity.

Then waiting for him in his room he found a thick letter from Uncle Lionel that began,

‘My dear boy—'

SIX
Extraterritorial

1

Western feet tread a beat in Beijing between the Friendship Store that supplies needs and the Hong Kong-run hotel that offers comforts at a price. The beat is featureless save for the determined dragging of feet and the hiss of the scruffy Central Asian moneychangers: ‘Change your money, change your money.' Frozen in winter, windswept in spring, dust blown in summer, Mongolian boy soldiers guard the fenced compounds of uninspired tower blocks along the way. Inside live the eyes and ears of Outside, the diplomats and journalists who are paid to know China's image. At night from high in the darkness the boom of rock and roll or of orchestras descends, for they are partying people.

Word comes as an encoded address that leads to an entrance, a lift attendant (desultory informant), a doorbell behind which a ‘personalised' space is made as un-Chinese as a stage set, Africa or Manhattan, a plastic magic carpet on which extraterritorials float over the dark street.

Wally needed an evening out. He arrived early, and the familiars were already there: the Bostonian economist whose hair rose above her head like the top of a Corinthian column, the tired, gracious Australian Cultural Attaché in his yellow suit, the sharp-witted Canadian Trade Commissioner with her punk son. Already vigorous on the dance floor were Dulcia and Jumbo, together. They had become a couple. The man from ABC was there; the teachers of English; the ex-Maoist who advised the Pentagon; and others Wally could classify among the Five Foreigns.

Included in Type One were the diplomats and embassy types who had opted for China and were neither illusioned nor disillusioned as they battled on beneath a required gloss of optimism and discretion; or those who came to China as to any post, hoping to bank all their pay and live on allowances while enjoying an exalted station, miserable, sarcastic, half-mad as they shopped in vain for the washing powder, the breakfast cereal, the beer to which they were accustomed.

Category Two covered the journalists who hated no-news no-information China, but loved her because by sheer dint of hanging on they became lone authorities to a gullible world. Clubbable, joking creatures with a magnanimous streak, they became weirder as the restrictions and surveillance pressed in on them, driving them eventually to drink, sex, paranoia, outrage and outrageousness.

Sleekest and most disgruntled were the business operatives, victims of the notorious joint ventures and other forms of economic cooperation, with a fund of stories as to how the Chinese screw without being screwed. They were young men and women mostly, who, seeking gainful employment in the People's Republic, found themselves as go-betweens in multinational arms deals or struggling with projects of gargantuan fantasy designed to save the company's bacon back home. How their scorn brimmed!

Number Four were the teachers, on their wanderers' passports, expert in anything from artificial intelligence to light opera that was deemed relevant to China's Four Modernisations. They were specimens to be studied, balls in the global game of educational ping-pong that China wished to join. Confucius stressed education. In New Age China there were more institutes, research centres, universities, colleges, think tanks, scholarly societies, more underpaid and idly employed ‘intellectuals' than there were green vegetables. The intellectuals would not make the mistake again of suffering as they had done during the Cultural Revolution. To enlist the help of foreign teachers was one way of feathering the nest.

Fifth came students and scholars of all kinds, the lubricating oil. Because they spoke Chinese and lived on a pittance, the city turned to them a different face. They served no one but themselves; had nothing to lose; dared anything. They boasted of explorations, fights, schemes, lovers. A girl student from West Germany might stride into a noodle shop at midnight and sit down to get drunk with the truck drivers, just for the language experience. For those like her, the wall dividing the two worlds in Beijing was at its most porous.

There was also a sixth category, absent from the party, of tourists and transit passengers, short-term visitors who would hear no word against China, who marvelled at having seen a peasant, who prided themselves on having travelled for three weeks without paying a cent to the hospitable locals, who loved the simplicity and sincerity of the Chinese people, who neither knew nor cared about Deng Xiaoping, for whom the politics meant nothing more than a chipped coffee cup at breakfast, who on return to their country of origin wrote letters to the highest authorities urging the dear, dear people of China to never, never change. Long-stayers would snuggle up to such visitors in the hope that the jaundice of years would fade and first love be rekindled. But Category Sixers avoided the expatriate residents like the plague. Why bother, when they could go out to enjoy a real Chinese experience?

All categories were insulated, all were exposed.

It was Clarence's party. One of his photographs had been used by the agency around the world and he had been paid his highest ever fee. It was a personal satisfaction that could not be shared, so he threw a party instead and invited everyone he knew. He came up to the Doctor with welcoming light in his eyes, purring all over.

‘You got the word, I see. Glad you could make it. Got a drink? Help yourself anyway. I'm just popping down to let the Chinese in. Back in a mo.'

Wally poured himself a Stolichnaya, sparing the ice. When foreign friends came up to him beaming, he was faintly suspicious. Since he was known as the Doctor, parties were apt to turn into consultations on anything from bloodshot eyes to Japanese encephalitis or worse. He wasn't in the mood. Creeping round, he plomped down on the sofa beside Sabina, the zany Jewish correspondent for
Der Spiegel
who, as always, wore black.

‘You know,' she said, ‘I have cut all my ties with Chinese. Every time I go to visit a Chinese friend I am followed by a limo and a motorcycle. For three weeks now. I tell my friends not to call me, not to visit. The Public Security Bureau is on to me.'

‘Do you know why?'

‘There's no point wasting brainpower to guess how their crazy minds work. You know I was expelled from Taiwan for writing nasty things about the military dictatorship.'

‘They should love you here.'

‘No-oo,' she made a long German no-oo. ‘It's one country, don't you know? We foreign devils are not supposed to meddle with internal affairs.'

‘Have you written anything nasty lately?'

‘I wrote a review ridiculing a film that the propaganda people want to win the Golden Cock. I said there were technical problems. The film was not in focus, the soundtrack was out of sync. That wasn't nasty, was it? I didn't say the film was utterly banal and xenophobic. Shit! I know too many people here anyway. They hate that.' Sabina knew everyone from Party leaders to prostitutes. ‘At least their techniques are obvious. I know that motorcycle
shifu
who trails me. And the big black limo is incredibly obvious. I love to go into the narrow lanes where the limo can't follow. Make them miss out on the fun. Last week I visited some friends in the evening, in a tiny little
hutong
near the Drum Tower. We were talking and laughing together when the knock came. Some busybody from the Neighbourhood Committee and the
shifu
with the motorcycle. My friend went out to speak with them. The security guy said, “Where's that German in black you got in there?” Sabina was in fits. ‘Where's that Jew in black you got in there? Too much!'

‘So what can you do about it?'

‘Nothing—I stay at home like a bad girl.'

The Chinese contingent had arrived. If there were the Five Foreigns, there were also the Three Chineses at such parties. They were mostly Category One, the self-styled artists: people protected through family or profession from the dangers of contact with foreigners. Some were at the cutting edge of thought and style, as Westernised in the head as it was possible to be; others were parasites with something to gain, if only in esteem, from mimicking the imported lifestyle, people who maybe hoped to go abroad to study, who could avail themselves of foreign patronage. Neo-expressionist painters just behind the beat, poets more published abroad than at home, pianists of exemplary technique, a drummer with a James Dean hairdo, members of a Mongolian dance troupe and their hangers-on, boys, girls, sisters, cousins, some of whom had studied at Beijing's prime institutions and could act as interpreters, Chinese men outnumbering the Chinese women three to one, the women holding hands in protective pairs.

The naifs were Category Two, those brought on the arm of a new-found foreign friend, drawn like fish to a bait. Since Beijing was a honeycomb of secret worlds within worlds, courtyards behind locked doors, the unperturbed naifs accepted the affluence and decadence of the foreigners' compound as one more privilege beyond their reach. The naifs were rejected as pariahs by the artists of Category One. They spoke no English. They roamed the room like ghosts or stood alone or clung tight to their foreign friend. They did not know what spies or informants or foreign nutters might lurk.

Clarence returned with a couple of naifs under his wing. As they headed towards the sound system, Clarence gave a stoned giggle. He was the perfect host, as he had been brought up to be, indulging his guests absolutely. He only longed for the stage in the evening when he could let himself go too, and express through tipsy tenderness the affection he felt towards his Chinese friends. His photography had absorbed something of the Chinese aesthetic, moods rather than analysis; he was catching moments in a performance rather than making a factual record, and that contributed to his success, to the point where the social reality was melting, and he saw the Chinese as a billion aesthetic permutations of pathos or absurdity.

Category Three (Chinese) were the New Age barracudas, the moneyed and lawless taxi drivers, bellboys, waitresses and import-export people who could cruise anywhere at no risk to themselves. The foreigners' parties simply provided a medium where they could crack on to each other.

Wally felt himself to be among a crowd of energetic, frantic kids. Some Chinese boys were drunk already and jumping about. He was pouring another drink himself when Dulcia accosted him with a clink of her glass and asked how he'd been doing.

He started to tell the story of Beidaihe but she interrupted, having a more urgent story of her own. Jumbo, she related, her abstract artist, had turned out to be a fast learner and more than a match for her competitiveness. Underneath he had the energy of a combustion engine. If he didn't get out of China, his drive would destroy him. But with Dulcia Jumbo had to subjugate himself. Much as he hated it, his head was still Confucian. Although he had read Freud and physiological tomes and the Chinese classics of pornography and even stumbled through the copy of
The Joy of Sex
she gave him, his language remained puritanical. What two bodies might do, drifting into his imagination in distressing dreams, came under the sinister shadow of terminology as cold and disapproving as any Victorian circumlocution.

The first night her patience had been exhausted rapidly. She yawned and lay down on his bed and as he covered her with the quilt they came neck to neck; he switched off the light and they were in bed. But he lay stiff as a board, not understanding her body rhetoric, and gradually the power was consigned to her. He shrivelled into himself and she used him as a massage manikin. Afterwards he sat up in the dark for a smoke, sighing deeply in self-criticism.

From then on he became her student. In her apartment at the Friendship Hotel she showed him, when the Do Not Disturb sign was out and Tina Turner on the machine, how
The Golden Lotus
could be made their own and the ‘mouth evil', the ‘hand evil' and the ‘back entrance evil' became delicious liberating impulsions. He learned to take and give any amount, and stayed after hours in her quarters, and she in his, until their relationship was seen to transgress the bounds of what a decent Chinese citizen might do with a Red-Bristled Devil (Dulcia's bristles were very red). The spies were put to work. One was stationed by Dulcia's stairwell and the half-witted porter at Central TV—a poor kid who ate white rice for lunch because he couldn't afford vegetables or meat—was instructed to report. The staff at Central TV were forbidden to speak freely to the probable foreign-agent woman.

She told Wally she could look after herself but feared for Jumbo. Should she stop seeing him? Perhaps Jumbo's aim was only to get a visa for the States, but she didn't care. She wanted to have his baby and write a novel in which the American heroine and Chinese hero communicate purely through body language. If her divorce had come through, she would have married him, only he refused to marry her because he was determined to reach America without taking that step, to arrive free in the Land of the Free.

‘Should I give'm up? Should I stop seein'm?' Dulcia appealed to Wally, sweat beading her brow.

‘Can you do that?' he asked.

She stamped her foot. ‘No, I can't. It would kill me.'

He held up the palm of his hand, smiling wryly. ‘There's your answer then.'

‘But Jumbo could be in big trouble.'

‘You'll have to make sure you stand by him. If he wants out, you'll have to work harder for it. He'll get no support from his unit if he's under suspicion. It's one fish against the ocean. Not easy.'

‘I'll stand by him, Doc, but he won't take my help. I respect that. Only since I'm the one got him into this mess, so I'm the one's gonna have to get him out.'

‘You're a good woman. You probably understand more about this game than he does.'

‘I doubt it. China's China.' Dulcia would take on anything as long as she knew the strength of the opposition. Here the enemy was impossible to estimate.

‘Hi,' said Jumbo, rolling his eyes as he came up. He looked like Al Jolson. ‘I never understand the foreigner party. Every person puts on the best clothes and stand around looking so serious and don't want to have fun.'