Suchee went back to fretting the hem of her pants. “She didn’t apply. She said she would do it on her own with no help, which was a good thing, because as soon as Miaoshan graduated, Tang Dan no longer asked me to marry him and I couldn’t very well ask him.”
“But he has asked you again.”
Suchee nodded. “Since Miaoshan’s death he has asked me several times. He says I shouldn’t be alone. He says that once Siang is married away to another village, he will be completely alone too. But I have said no. He says it’s okay if we don’t have sex. He understands that I grieve for my daughter. But I still said no. Last night when you were here, he said that he would buy my land. That way I could leave this place of unhappy memories. He said he would pay me enough that I could move to Taiyuan City and be comfortable for the rest of my life. I thanked him for his friendship, but I had to say no to that as well. I’m an end-of-the-liner now. All I have left are my memories. The good ones and the bad ones are here, not in Taiyuan City. To leave this place would be to say good-bye to my life.”
What was brutally obvious to Hulan seemed invisible to Suchee. During the period that Miaoshan had come home, Tang Dan had probably turned his full attention to her. For whatever reason, she’d rejected him. Now that Miaoshan was gone—and the thought that Tang Dan might have killed Miaoshan for refusing him weighed heavily on Hulan’s mind—he once again zeroed in on Suchee. Miaoshan was beautiful and young, and, as Hulan had already said to Suchee, that was reason enough for any man of a certain age. But what was his interest in Suchee? The saying went: A family without a woman is like a man without a soul. But Tang Dan, as a millionaire, could have any woman he wanted. He could even buy a young girl from a neighboring province to prove his virility to the village. Why then would he chose a prematurely aged peasant who didn’t have many years left in her? The only answer, it seemed to Hulan, was that Tang Dan wanted something from the Ling family. Hulan decided to tuck this line of inquiry away for now, as she had other, more important questions she needed to ask about Miaoshan.
“Your daughter was trying to organize the women in the factory,” Hulan pressed on. “Did you know about that?”
Cicadas whirred about them. The air hung thick as porridge.
“She wanted the women to strike for better conditions,” Suchee acknowledged at last. “That—and not some man—is the reason she stayed at the factory on weekends.”
“You knew this, but you didn’t tell me?”
“I thought if you knew my daughter was a troublemaker, you wouldn’t come. It is your job to punish troublemakers, not help them.”
Hulan didn’t know how to respond to the truth of her friend’s statement. Instead she said, “I need to know exactly what Miaoshan was doing.”
“I’ll tell you what I know. Miaoshan was smart, smart like you. But she didn’t have your opportunities. I was proud of her, but that was never enough. ‘A mother is supposed to be proud,’ she used to say. ‘What does it matter if you are proud of me?’ Do you know the old proverb, ‘He who has a mind to beat his dog will easily find a stick’?”
Hulan hadn’t heard it, but she understood the meaning. Miaoshan had been an angry person who had wanted to strike out. But as a poor but intelligent peasant girl, she had little opportunity either to use her brains or to strike out. Knight International gave her the chance.
“She would come home and say things. ‘Fight selfishness! Puncture the arrogance of imperialism! Repudiate revisionism! It is right to rebel!’ Oh, the slogans I heard! They cut into my heart like shards of glass.”
“But those are slogans from the Cultural Revolution. Did you teach them to her?”
“Me? Never! I wanted to forget those days.”
“Then where did she learn them?”
“I don’t know.”
“The factory? At school? From your neighbors? From Tang Dan?”
“Maybe from one, maybe from all. I don’t know. But I can say this, those words frightened me, not just because of their content but because she was willing to change the meaning to suit her own purposes.”
“How do you mean?”
“‘A tree may wish to stand still, but the world will not subside,’” Suchee quoted.
“I remember that one. Mao meant that class struggle was unavoidable. She must have been thinking of the American owners.”
“Exactly, but what scared me was that she saw herself as the wind, a wind that was so strong she would be able to blow the others along with her.” Suchee repacked the thermos, stood, and picked up her hoe. “My torment is that I always viewed Miaoshan with mother eyes. Since I saw her hanging before me, I have cursed myself for refusing to see her as she truly was. My blindness prevented me from guiding her away from danger. In the end I failed as a mother, because I couldn’t protect my child.” With that, Suchee disappeared into the wall of green, leaving behind her a wake of rustling stalks.
Hulan didn’t move. Her mind wrestled with this contradictory girl. By all accounts and on the evidence of her own belongings, Miaoshan had become increasingly Westernized. But what Suchee had just told her made Miaoshan sound like a fervent Communist of the old school. Had one of these personifications been an act? If so, which one was the real Miaoshan? In a way it didn’t matter, because even with these contradictions the character of
Miaoshan was emerging. In fact, Hulan understood the dead girl intimately, because at one time in her life she had been like Miaoshan. Years ago Hulan had been consumed with political fervor, with grievous consequences. Miaoshan too had been filled with a Communist zeal that could also be dangerous in the new China. She had gone to the factory and immediately understood that she could profit from it. Today Hulan could see from the wisdom and pain of time that those windows of opportunity were rare and dangerous. Like Hulan, Miaoshan had been smart and beautiful. But Miaoshan had an extra attribute: the ability to make herself beautiful for a wide variety of men with whom she could be quite persuasive. Now the question was, which of Miaoshan’s amorous or political manipulations had gotten her killed?
The persistent honking of a car horn snapped Hulan back to the present. She looked at her watch, realized how late it was, then ran through the fields until she reached Suchee’s little compound, where David and Investigator Lo were waiting for her.
“Where’ve you been?” David asked. “We’ve got to get to the airport.”
“I’m ready,” she said.
David and Lo exchanged looks that said otherwise. “You’re, ah, dirty?” David said, giving up any pretext of diplomacy.
Hurriedly Hulan drew water from the well, dipped her arms in the bucket, rubbed them as clean as she could, and splashed water on her face. She threw the filthy water out on the ground and drew up another bucket of water. “Investigator Lo,” she called out as she tipped her head over, “get my bag out of the trunk and put it in the car.” She poured the rest of the water over her hair, shook it out, then smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”