Gift of the Golden Mountain (61 page)

Almost at first light, as the son poled the boat from the nest of sampans, the old woman started talking. She talked compulsively as she made their morning gruel. She could not stop: stories of her girlhood, of her father and her mother, stories from another time. It was why she took her on, May realized. She was a fresh ear to hear all the old stories. It was why, she supposed, the son had so thoroughly tuned out. The woman gave May some nets to mend, but when she saw the blisters on her hands she took the nets away and brought out some White Flower Medicated Oil and rubbed it
into her palms, murmuring, "so young, so young." It was the only glimmer of interest the old woman showed in May. Not once did she ask her any questions.

     May left the sampan at midday and walked for perhaps an hour along an empty country road. She wished she could have brought a watch; it was terrible, not knowing the time. The only people she saw close-up were two men sitting on their haunches near a flame tree. The colors struck her as outrageous—the orange-red of the tree against a field of brown and green, the tight brown muscles of the men's bare legs, sculpted by years in the fields. She could not let her eyes wander, so intent was she on spotting the hut that would be standing alone in the middle of a field of Chinese cabbage. When finally it appeared, she felt relieved enough to lift her eyes and look out over the green fields which merged in the distance with low hills. Dust and manure and the smell of green things growing filled her nose and mouth and eyes. A water buffalo moved slowly across a field, straining at its harness. She could feel slow beads of sweat slipping between her breasts, the prickly dampness of the money belt around her waist. She sat on a stump and fished two gold coins out of a pant cuff. That is what Joe had said it would cost.

     The short, squat man who had been sitting outside the shack greeted her with, "Have you eaten, Sister?" She knew it was a standard greeting, what the Chinese say instead of "How are you?" and the answer is supposed to be "yes." But the only thing she had had to eat that day was a watery gruel with a few bits of oily fish on top, and she was starved.

     "I have, yes," she told him, "but if you have some food, I would be grateful for a small portion." He looked at her and cocked his head, as if she were some new species of animal, and went to the back of the shack where a small fire was going. In a few minutes she was eating huge black mushrooms and greens she could not identify, cooked in a great black wok and served on top of a bowl of rice. She lifted the bowl to her mouth and shoveled the food in.
It was all she could do to remember the proper way to hold her chopsticks, she was so hungry.

     As soon as she finished, the man ushered her inside the shack where two bicycles were waiting. She offered him the two gold coins, but he took only one. She was puzzled, but there was something about the methodical way he took the coin that told her not to offer more. They set off right away, pedaling along a narrow roadway that struck out through the field, then they veered off onto a smaller road. After an hour or more, when she was beginning to think her legs might fall off, they stopped to have warm tea from a Thermos he had in his kit, and moon cakes. An artist or a photographer might have thought it a charming scene, peasants taking tea and cakes under a lychee tree. The charm escaped May. Her cotton slacks and shirt were wet with sweat, and her period had started, right on schedule.

Eight days after her arrival in Macao, May found herself spending the night in a small farmhouse on the edge of a village in south China. They had arrived after dark, and she had climbed a ladder to a loft where she slept among rough sacks of what smelled like grain. She had a new traveling companion, Xue Lian, a woman May guessed to be in her early thirties who had a smooth, round Mongolian face and who exuded competence and good humor.

     As they were settling in for the night, Xue thrust her feet into a roost of sleeping chickens, causing an uproar of outraged clucking. "Quiet down little babies," she crooned to them, "Xue Lian's big feet did not mean to enter your dreams."

     As soon as May opened her eyes the next morning, Xue was there with a bowl of warm water so she could wash up. "Hurry down," she whispered, "I have fixed our morning meal." May climbed back down the ladder, stepping onto the hard-packed dirt floor of the main room. There was not enough light to see well,
but she thought several bundles in the far corners, under the loft, must be sleeping bodies.

     She breathed in the fresh, cool air of the compound and shook the dust out of her clothes. Smoke was rising from the roof of the cooking room. Xue Lian came out carrying a black kettle filled with gruel, and another pot containing rice with more of the ubiquitous giant black mushrooms and greens. They ate in the gray predawn light, sitting on their haunches outside of the cook house. May started to speak, but Xue Lian shook her head, motioning to her to be silent and eat.

     They pushed hard that morning, traveling along a dusty country road so rutted that they often had to walk the bicycles. Once they passed a young woman shepherding a gaggle of geese. She carried a long wand and prodded the birds along, and all May could think of were the old pictures in a Mother Goose book she had as a child. Softly, under her breath, she began to hum, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Xue Lian turned, smiling, and began to hum it too. The two women crossed a great field, humming the old nursery rhyme as loud as they could, and when they were finished they began to laugh.

     "Where did you learn that song?" May wanted to know.

     "Some missionaries taught my mother, my mother taught me," Xue Lian said proudly. "I used to sing it to the children, but no more. Not since Western influences have been discouraged."

     "Then you are a teacher?"

     "Once I was. In nursery school, I think you say."

     "And now?"

     A broad smile grew into an irrepressible laugh. "Now I guide travel tours for American ladies." She pushed far enough ahead, then, to make talk impossible.

     Usually they skirted the villages, but now they were headed directly into one, a very old place surrounded by a brick wall, streaked black with age. Clustered at the road leading in was a group of young men in uniform and behind them, at the gate, two
older men who were checking identification cards. May glanced anxiously at her companion who said, "Be calm, do as you were told." She tried to remember what Joe had said to say when they asked for her card, she tried to remember her alias, but she couldn't. Her mind was utterly blank.

     She almost lost her balance when she got into the queue to present her card. Xue's hand shot out to steady her bicycle. Her underarms felt prickly, a sweat bee buzzed around her neck but she did not dare free a hand to brush it away. Xue was next in line, then it would be May's turn. She concentrated on breathing deeply, on swallowing the rising panic when an old man came running toward them shouting something incomprehensible. A dozen villagers rushed up to him, older people mostly, pushing in front of Xue and May, surrounding the man and the officials, and soon everyone was shouting and gesturing.

     She felt a tug on her sleeve. Xue was moving ahead, through the gate, and May knew she should follow. She started slowly, keeping her eyes on Xue, who was entering the gate . . . only a few steps more and she would be safe.

     "Stop. You there." He meant May, she could feel it in her back.

     "What is your name?" he asked.

     "Kwan Da-yong," May was amazed to hear herself answer in a voice she scarcely recognized, as she handed over her card.

     He examined it carefully, holding it close to his eyes. Then he looked at her and frowned. "What business have you here?" he asked, holding the card up between them.

     She reached for it with her hand open, so he could see the single piece of jade that was nestled in her palm.

     At this moment the other official extricated himself from the hubbub and approached them.
This is it
, she thought,
you're caught on illegal entry . . . spying, probably . . . forged papers, bribing an official, it's all over.
She forced herself not to look to see if Xue Lian had fled.

     With the dexterity of a magician, the official lifted the jade
from her palm with his middle fingers and pocketed it, while handing back her card from the Revolutionary Committee. "Just another student," he said, waving her through.

     Xue Lian was waiting around the first turn. "He took a bribe," May said, her voice quavering.

     Xue shrugged and said, "If the troubles we have just been through have taught us anything, it is that greed is inevitably part of the human condition."

They went down narrow streets, turning right and left and right again until May was lost. The buildings were close together, crowded along the narrow lane so she saw only the doorways, was aware only that the buildings were old and high, of stone that was black with age. She turned into a narrow doorway in a house that was dark and smelled as if animals were kept there. She was led up a steep flight of wooden stairs to a room that was empty, except for a table covered with a blue and white flowered cloth, and two elaborately carved chairs that she guessed had been salvaged from some grand place.

     Her companion smiled enigmatically, and said she should wait and not to go near the window, and then she left. Ten minutes passed, to May it seemed an hour. This was not her mother's town, she knew that. It would be another day, possibly two, before they reached the remote village where her mother lived. This stop had not been on the schedule.
Do exactly what you are told to do
, Joe had said, but this wasn't Macao and she had no idea what was happening. What if someone had turned her over to the authorities? But if that had happened, she asked herself, what would she be doing in a home?

     She heard someone enter below, a door pushed firmly shut, slow and shuffling steps. She stood, pressed against the wall, hardly daring to breathe. The window was the only way out. She
wanted to run over to it, to see if she could climb out.
Stay away from the window. Do exactly as you are told.
It was too late, she was committed to trust them. She had no choice.

     Voices rose from below: Xue Lian's, laughing, and another. Then someone was climbing the stairs, slowly. The head appeared; it was bigger than the body. At first she thought it was a boy, a dwarf. Its twisted body seemed to sidestep into the room, moving with difficulty. She turned to face it.

     "Wing Mei-jin," it said in a voice so feather soft it seemed to float across the room to her, and then in a very old-fashioned, stilted English: "Do not be afraid, my child. I am Tsiao Jie. My father—your grandfather—had the name for me 'China Rose.' I should like to present myself to you as your aunt."

     She smiled, a big, open, glorious smile that spilled over into her eyes. May felt something come loose inside her which began to roll around, making her feel giddy. "You," she said, with a laugh on the verge of becoming a cry, "it is you."

     "Yes," Tsiao Jie laughed too, a wonderfully sweet laugh. "Have I surprised you, dear one?"