The Interior (Red Princess 2)

As twilight faded into darkness, Hulan began to see her girlhood friend hiding behind the old woman’s face. Under the flickering light of a kerosene lantern—electricity was too expensive to use on a daily basis—Hulan saw how a lifetime of backbreaking work under an unforgiving sun had taken its toll. As a twelve-year-old Suchee had been stronger and far more robust than Hulan. But Hulan had spent the rest of her teenage years in America, eating meat at almost every meal, so now she was perhaps four inches taller than Suchee. Beyond this, Suchee’s back was already curving into a dowager’s hump due to years of carrying water and produce on a pole slung across her shoulders. Suchee’s face pained Hulan most of all. As a girl Suchee had been beautiful. Her face had been round and full of life. Her cheeks had glowed pink. Now her skin was wrinkled and stained dark brown from the sun.

Of course, she had lived a much fuller life than Hulan. She had married and borne a child. She had also lost both her husband and her child. When Hulan looked straight into Suchee’s eyes, she had to turn away. Behind the polite words Suchee was suffering from a loss that Hulan could not begin to imagine. Hardening her heart against the details that she knew would come, Hulan reached across the table and took Suchee’s hand. “I think it’s time you tell me about your daughter.”

Suchee talked late into the night, recalling in painful detail Miaoshan’s last day. Suchee had just finished locking the ox into its shed when she met her daughter, who was coming home for the weekend, having been away for several weeks at the Knight factory. Seeing Miaoshan on the dusty pathway that led to the house, Suchee instantly knew that her only child was pregnant. Miaoshan denied this accusation. “I told her, ‘I am a peasant. I have grown up on the land. Do you think I don’t know when an animal comes into season? Do you think I don’t know when a creature is with child?’” Faced with these basic truths, Miaoshan had broken down completely. With tears streaming down her face—the Western display of emotion doing little to settle Suchee’s fears—Miaoshan had confessed everything.

There were so many sayings that covered chastity and what happened when one didn’t protect it: Guard your body like a piece of jade, or, One blunder can lead to remorse. But Suchee didn’t believe in these kinds of reproaches. She had been young once herself. She knew what could happen in a moment of passion. “I told her that there was nothing wrong that couldn’t be fixed.” Then Suchee went on as if her daughter were in the room with her at this moment. “You can be married to Tsai Bing next month,” she said. “You know he has waited a long time. Tomorrow I will go to the Neighborhood Committee director. That old grandma will understand. You will have your marriage permission certificate by the end of the week. The child permission certificate may be a little more difficult. You and Tsai Bing are still young, and this will be your only child. But I am not concerned. I have known that busybody director for so long. If she wants to make trouble for you, I will tell stories of when she was young, eh? So don’t worry. I will take care of everything.”

But her comforting words had done little to calm Suchee’s own emotions, and during the night she’d been jarred awake many times, feeling a sense of foreboding that went beyond the news of the pregnancy. “The next morning Miaoshan was dead, and the police wouldn’t listen when I said that the men in our village were getting rich by sending girls and women to that factory,” Suchee continued. “They don’t care what happens so long as they make their profit.” Before Hulan could question her about this, Suchee said in a voice filled with remorse, “But I let her go there! And when I saw she was happy, I let her stay! She liked the work and brought home most of her salary.” With that money Suchee had been able to buy extra seed and some new tools. But her worries blossomed again with each visit home, which became increasingly rare as Miaoshan began spending her weekends at the factory too. One minute Miaoshan talked sweetly, the n

ext her words were filled with turpentine. One day she combed her hair into pigtails, and the next week she came home from the factory in new clothes and with makeup all over her face. She talked about marriage, then almost in the next sentence switched to the subject of her desire to leave Da Shui and go to a big city—somewhere much larger than either Taiyuan or Datong.

As Suchee talked, Hulan wondered if these were just the naïve dreams of a simple country girl. In her job at the MPS, Hulan had firsthand experience with members of this class who were illegally leaving their villages and flooding cities like Beijing and Shanghai, looking in vain for a better life, only to find bitterness. In their innocence they were often the victims of criminals and crime syndicates. Without residency permits or work units in the cities, they were also subject to harassment and arrest by the police. Was Miaoshan just another one of these dreamers?

And parts of Suchee’s story didn’t make sense. Where was Miaoshan getting the money for new clothes, especially if she was giving the bulk of her salary to her mother? Where did Tsai Bing fit in? And what about Suchee’s comment about the men in the village? If Hulan had been in Beijing and if Suchee had been a stranger, she would have felt no compunctions about asking whatever she wanted, but she was in the countryside now and Suchee was a friend. She would need to tread softly.

“I’m wondering about Tsai Bing and Ling Miaoshan,” Hulan ventured. “Was theirs a true love or an arrangement?”

Instead of answering the question, Suchee asked one of her own: “Are you asking if we were following a feudal custom? Arranged marriages are against the law.”

“There are many laws in China. That doesn’t mean we follow all of them.”

“True.” Suchee allowed herself a small smile. “It is also true that in the countryside many people still prefer arranged marriages. This way we are able to consolidate our land or resolve disputes. These days we have even more concerns. The one-child policy—”

“I know,” Hulan interrupted. “Too many abortions or girl babies given up for adoption. Now not enough girls to go around. Of course families want to make sure their sons will have wives.”

Suchee nodded. In the golden light of the lantern, Hulan saw Suchee’s eyes mist up again. “As a neighbor, Tsai Bing was always a good match for my daughter, but you know me, Hulan. I myself married for love.”

“Ling Shaoyi.” As Hulan spoke Suchee’s husband’s name, she was cast back again over the years. Hulan had met Shaoyi on the train from Beijing. He was older, perhaps sixteen, and not so afraid to be leaving home. He was a city boy clean through. Like all of them who’d come from Beijing, he knew nothing about farm life. Suchee had been the peasant placed on their team to teach them. At that time Western ideas like “love at first sight” were considered bourgeois at best and capitalist roader at worst. For a long while the kids in the brigade decided to look the other way when they saw Shaoyi’s blushing face each time he spoke with Suchee, or when they observed her bringing him home-cooked treats while the rest of them were subsisting on bowls of millet porridge. After those years of turmoil were over, Shaoyi could have gone home to Beijing. He could have resumed his studies, maybe even become a party official. Everyone was surprised when he married Suchee, stayed in Da Shui, and became a peasant.

Suchee’s voice cut into Hulan’s thoughts. “Do you think I could let my daughter marry for anything less than true love?”

“No, not you,” Hulan answered, knowing that this still might not be the full truth. The aphorism “Only speak thirty percent of the truth” was valid even in the countryside, even between old friends.

“Is there anything else I should know about Miaoshan?” Hulan asked. “Did she keep any papers here? A diary perhaps or letters?”

Suchee stood and went to one of the beds. From underneath she pulled out an oversize manila envelope, then laid it on the table.

“Miaoshan had a special place where she kept her private things,” Suchee explained, “but I am a mother and this is a small farm. I knew that she hid her treasures in the shed behind the grain bin. After she died, I went there to look for objects to put on the altar.” She took a deep breath, then continued, “I know some ABC letters and words that I learned in the Peasant Woman’s School, but I can’t understand these papers. And there are drawings…”

Hulan opened the clasp and pulled out three sets of papers. One set was folded into quarters, which Hulan opened and smoothed out on the table. Quickly Hulan leafed through them, while Suchee held up the lantern so they might see better.

“It says Knight International,” Suchee said, “but what are they?”

“They look like specifications for an assembly line, and these look like they could be the floor plan for the factory itself. Have you been there? Can you tell?”

“I have seen the outside, but I’ve never gone inside. Even so, I don’t understand the pictures.”

Hulan drew with her finger along the lines. “This must be the exterior wall. And see, this says workroom, bathroom, office…. Let’s see what else you have.” She refolded the plans and picked up a stack of papers held together by a paper clip. It was a list of some sort with several columns. On the left were names—Sam, Uta, Nick, and the like. In the adjacent columns were account numbers and what looked like deposit amounts.

Silently Hulan put the papers back in the envelope, then took her friend’s hand. “I’ll tell you the truth. When I came here, it was because you were my friend and I thought I could offer help in your time of mourning, but now I don’t know. So many things you’ve told me don’t make sense. What you said about the men in the town and the fact that Miaoshan was pregnant, well, these are common occurrences in our country. But these papers make me look at things differently. What are they? Why did Miaoshan have them? Even more important, why did she hide them?”

“Are these ABC papers why she was killed?”

“I don’t know, but I want you to put them back in Miaoshan’s hiding place. Don’t mention them to anyone. Can you promise me that?”

Suchee nodded, then asked, “What will you do now?”

“If Miaoshan was murdered, then the best way for me to find her killer is to understand who Miaoshan was. As I begin to know her, I will begin to know her killer. Once I know her, I will know her killer.” Hulan paused, then added, “But, Suchee, remember this. There may not even be a murderer. Your daughter may have simply killed herself. Either way, are you prepared for whatever I find?”