“He is an important businessman in our country. You would not be here if not for him.”
“And his son was considered a Red Prince?”
“That is not a term I like to use.”
“Nevertheless…”
“Nevertheless,” Hulan acceded.
The afternoon wore on. The room became darker and colder as whatever sunlight there had been disappeared behind the thickening cloud cover. Hulan turned on her desk lamp and tried to come up with another subject. But they had said all there was to say about the case, and this wasn’t the place to talk about the past.
“What do you want me to do now?” he asked.
“I think it will be best if Peter takes you back to the hotel.” David shook his head, but Hulan continued, “You are in China. I will make our appointments.” She stood and extended her hand. “Tomorrow then?”
“Hulan…”
“Good,” she said, reluctantly loosening her hand from his. She crossed to the door and held it open. “I will leave a message for you at your hotel telling you the time.”
Peter, who waited just outside the door, jumped to his feet, spoke in rapid Chinese to Hulan, then led Stark back through the maze of corridors and stairwells to the courtyard. In her office, Hulan stood with her back against the closed door, trying to catch her breath.
By the time Hulan left her office it was already dark. She buttoned her coat against the cold and draped a scarf over her head. Others in the building hurried to their bicycles. She was aware of how they kept their distance, how they ignored her as she walked with them along the length of the bicycle park.
She hitched up her skirt, swung her leg over her silver-blue Flying Pigeon, pedaled out of the compound, and melted into the anonymity of hundreds of her countrymen commuting home. How peaceful this was compared to the fits and starts of Peter’s driving.
The smooth, quiet rhythm of her own bicycle among hundreds of others all around her became a soothing meditation.
She relished those moments when she stopped at a traffic light and was able to witness the city’s domestic life. On a street corner stood a cart laden with candied crab apples on bamboo skewers. On another, a man grilled fragrant strips of marinated pork. On yet another, a small crowd of people clustered around a kiosk to slurp redolent noodles from enameled tin bowls before handing the empties back to the proprietor.
Hulan parked in front of one of the city’s new high-rise apartment buildings. She rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor and knocked on a door at the end of the hallway. A maid escorted Hulan into the living room. There was little in this room to suggest the personalities of the people who lived here. The couch was covered in a polyester floral print. Several straight-backed chairs were grouped around a low coffee table. Plastic plants collected dust in wicker baskets. Oil paintings of decidedly Western landscapes hung on the walls.
A woman sat in a wheelchair staring out the window.
“How is she today?” Hulan asked the maid, taking off her coat. She much preferred the cold of old buildings like her hutong home and public facilities to the overheated rooms of the new apartments and Western-style hotels that had sprung up in recent years.
“Quiet. No change.”
Hulan crossed the room, knelt next to the wheelchair, and gazed up into her mother’s face. Jiang Jinli stared into the middle distance. Hulan gently reached for her mother’s hand. The skin was translucent and Hulan traced the delicate veins with a finger.
“Hello, Mama.”
There was no response.
Hulan pulled a porcelain garden stool to her mother’s side and began talking about her day. “I had an interesting visitor, Mama. I think you remember me talking about him before.”
Hulan carried on as if her mother were fully engaged in the conversation, because sometimes—after hours or even days of total silence—Jinli would become quite talkative. At those times, few as they were, Hulan realized how much of her monologues had seeped into her mother’s consciousness.
As a girl, Hulan had been in awe—and sometimes a little jealous—of her mother’s beauty. After all these years and after all that her mother had been through, Jinli still looked much the same as when she was the young wife of a rising cadre assigned to the prestigious Ministry of Culture. Hulan could remember how her mother had loved to dress in vivid colors—fuchsia, emerald, and royal blue—made all the brighter next to the proletarian gray of the people who used to gather in the Liu family home for an evening of folk songs and Peking Opera, dumplings, and shots of mao-tai. She could remember how her father used to invite friends like Mr. Zai, who could play the old instruments so that they might accompany Jinli as she sang of unrequited love. Hulan remembered how still her father sat while he listened to Jinli as her voice lilted and her eyes sparkled with love for him.
Hulan treasured the memories of her parents’ friends taking her into their laps and laughingly whispering in her ear, “Your mama and baba are like a pair of chopsticks, always together, always in harmony,” or “Your mama is like a gold leaf in a jade branch”—meaning Jinli was the ideal woman. All these years later, it seemed as if her mother had frozen in that time like jade buried beneath so much rock. She had not aged. Her beauty was untouched by the physical and mental hardships she had endured. It was as though time only passed in those infrequent periods when Jinli was lucid.
For almost twenty-five years, Jinli had been immobilized in her wheelchair. Hulan’s father had been single-minded in his care for his wife. He paid back-door bribes so that Jinli would have access to the best Western doctors. He paid exorbitant fees for special traditional Chinese herbal concoctions designed to improve and strengthen Jinli’s physical health. Whether due to Western medicine or Chinese medicine, Jinli was not prone to the usual opportunistic infections that plagued paraplegics. However, nothing had improved the ailment that dwelled in Jinli’s mind. In fact, her mental condition had slowly deteriorated since the “accident.”
When Jinli’s head was clear, she and her daughter spoke of light things. How the cherry blossoms looked lovely along the hillside at the Summer Palace. How Old Man Chou was selling the first snow-pea greens of the season. How the silk that Hulan had chosen for a dress shimmered. They never spoke of Jinli’s illness. They never spoke of Hulan’s father—how he had been posted to the Ministry of Public Security twenty years ago, how he had worked his way up through the ranks, how he had been promoted into his current position after the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Naturally, they never spoke of Hulan’s work, as her mother had no idea of what her daughter did for a living. So on this evening, as the lights of Beijing glittered below them, Hulan didn’t talk about the case or even how David had come to be in Beijing, but only how he looked and sounded.
When Hulan’s father arrived, she stood hastily, kissed her mother, and began to gather her things.
“Ni hao,” he called out, “hello.” He came into the room rubbing the cold from his fingers. His posture was correct, his gait brisk. A warm smile spread across his features.