The Interior (Red Princess 2)

When Miaoshan came home for her first visit, she had changed. Underneath her same old jacket she wore a store-bought sweater and American nu zai ku—what were called “cow boy pants.” But what really shocked Suchee was her daughter’s face. Miaoshan had always been considered plain. When other mothers had seen her as a baby, they had shaken their heads in sympathy, which was one reason that Suchee was so relieved when Tsai Bing’s mother had sent the matchmaker. But upon her return from the factory, Miaoshan’s cheekbones, which had always looked angular and pale next to the perfect round faces of the neighbor girls, were tinted pink. Her lips were painted a rich ruby color. Her eyes were outlined with black, and her lids were heavy with a deep gray. She looked like the famous movie star Gong Li. No, she looked like an American movie star. Suchee saw that even in death her daughter looked beautiful, Western, absolutely foreign.

Every time that Miaoshan came home, Suchee grew increasingly disturbed by the changes in her daughter. But during her last visit she had said something that made Suchee go cold inside. Miaoshan had been talking about a meeting she’d had at the factory with some of the other girls. “The right information is better than a bullet,” she had said. “With it, you can’t lose. Without it, you won’t survive.” Then she’d laughed lightly and changed the subject, but the memory of those words stayed with Suchee, because she could remember back many years to when people who recited slogans like that were punished. And now Miaoshan had been…destroyed.

She smoothed the hair away from Miaoshan’s face, feeling how the warmth of the day was seeping into her skin instead of out. Captain Woo was right. Suchee could not let her daughter rot here in the summer heat. Suchee put aside her grief and temporarily covered the private hard purpose that was already growing inside her like a seed after a fresh spring rain, and began to plan her daughter’s burial. She was a poor woman, this was true. But she was also a widow, and during the ten years since her husband’s death she had conserved a little here, a little there, always thinking that the future was uncertain. One could never tell when there might be a drought, an illness, a political upheaval, a funeral.

She carefully set Miaoshan’s body back on the ground, stood, stared for a moment at the motionless form, then went outside for a shovel. She walked along the route that she alone had memorized. Suchee found her spot and dug until the shovel hit the metal chest where she kept her savings and her important papers. After taking the money and once again burying the box, Suchee was sweaty and dirty, but she did not stop to splash water on her face or clean her arms and legs. Instead she simply replaced the shovel and set off down the dirt road.

Her first stop in town was with the local feng shui man. The diviner promised he would weigh, as thousands of years of custom dictated, the attributes of feng shui—wind and water—to find the burial location that was most propitious for the new spirit. To that end he would also examine Miaoshan’s horoscope and contemplate the political backgrounds of her parents. After that he would go to the cemetery and consult with the spirits who already resided there. All of this he explained to Suchee, but when she placed a larger number of bills in his hand than was usual he finalized his decision. Miaoshan would be buried on a slight rise in the cemetery where she might face the warmth of the south for all eternity.

Leaving the feng shui man, Suchee hurriedly did her other errands. But how difficult it was for her now to walk down the main street of this village. She saw the familiar faces—the woman who sold dishes decorated with gaily painted enamel flowers, the man who filled gallon cans with kerosene for lanterns, the old man who fixed broken bicycles. News traveled quickly in Da Shui Village. As she walked past these people, their faces darkened with sympathy and they bowed their heads in respect, but Suchee registered none of it.

Instead her mind filled again with images of Miaoshan in life. As a toddler in split pants. As a girl dressed in a faded blue padded jacket who was devoted to her studies, diligently practicing her Chinese ideograms and reciting her English. As the young woman she had recently become who sometimes seemed such a stranger. “One day I will earn enough money that we will leave this place,” she had often said with such conviction that Suchee had believed her. “We will go to Shenzhen, maybe even America….” Silently Suchee pulled at her hair, trying to drive away her dream-ghost daughter. Silently she screamed, How could this have happened?

From the dry-goods store, Suchee purchased paper in assorted colors so that tonight she might cut them into offerings, which would be burned at the grave. In this way Miao

shan, who was so poor in life, would be accompanied to the afterworld with clothes, a car, a house, friends. To distract Hungry Ghosts from Miaoshan’s funeral belongings, Suchee would cook up a pot of rice to sprinkle on the bonfire. When the flames died down, her daughter would truly be gone forever.

Suchee had one more purchase to make—a coffin. Undertaker Wang, knowing that Suchee was almost as poor as he, suggested that the girl be cremated. But Suchee shook her head. “I want a coffin, a good one,” she insisted.

“I can make you something nice,” Wang said. “See this wood over here? This will be perfect for you.”

But when Suchee ran her fingertips over the rough grain, she shook her head again. She looked about her until her eyes rested on a crimson lacquer coffin with hand-wrought hardware. “That one there,” she said, pointing. “That is the one for Miaoshan.”

“Oh, too expensive! My nephew buys that one in Beijing and sends it here to me. At first I’m thinking, my nephew has put me out of business! That kind of coffin is for a Red Prince, not someone in our poor village. But these days…” The undertaker rubbed his chin. “We have some prosperity in our village now. I am keeping it for one of the village elders. They are all old men, and they can’t live forever.”

But Suchee didn’t appear to be listening. She crossed the small, hot room and placed her hands on the crimson surface of the coffin. After a moment she turned and said, “I will take it.” Before Wang could voice his objections, Suchee reached into a pocket, pulled out a wad of old bills, and began counting them. She was not prepared to bargain with him as she might have under other circumstances, and, to his honor, he did not cheat her but accepted a fair price with a solid profit. Undertaker Wang considered that if a peasant woman like Ling Suchee was willing to buy a coffin like this for a no-account daughter, then perhaps that nephew of his should send a few more lacquer coffins to the village.

Her business with Wang completed, Suchee stepped back outside into the harsh sunlight. With each of these stops her determination grew. She would make Captain Woo hear her. She crossed the street to the building that housed the Public Security Bureau, then waited while a secretary went into one of the offices to speak with the captain. When she came out, her face was set in a disapproving grimace. “The captain is busy,” the woman said. “He says you should go back home. Be a proper mother. You have a duty, you know. Take care of your daughter.” The woman’s voice softened just a little. “You have things you need to do for her. Go on.”

“But I have to tell him—”

The secretary’s firmness returned. “Your case has been heard. Captain Woo has already finished the paperwork.”

“How can this be?” Suchee asked. “Captain Woo has not interviewed anyone. He has not asked me if Miaoshan had any enemies. We are a small village, but you and I both know there are many secrets here. Why isn’t he asking about those?”

Instead of answering these questions, the secretary said, “The official file is complete.” As an afterthought she added, “Do not cause trouble for yourself.”

Suchee bent her head, looked at her callused feet, and tried to absorb what she had heard.

“Go on,” the secretary insisted, a strident tone creeping into her voice. “We are sorry for your loss, but you must go away. If you don’t, I will have to call…”

Suchee slowly stood, looked the woman directly in the eye, and uttered the worst curse she could think of. “Fuck your mother,” she said and walked out.

She headed straight for the post office, knowing she would have to pass the Silk Thread Café. Approaching it, she saw the elders of the town—some old, some not so old, but all of them in clean and ironed white shirts that seemed an affront to all those who labored in the rocky fields that surrounded this village—sitting at their customary tables at the front of the establishment. When the men saw her approaching, their banter quieted so that all that could be heard was the sound of the café’s television in the background.

She met their stares straight on. With the vision of her daughter hanging in the shed looming before her eyes, she said, “You will pay. I will make you pay if it takes my last breath and my last drop of blood.”

Then she lifted her chin and continued on to the post office, where she bought paper, a pen, and an envelope. At the counter she slowly, painstakingly wrote out a few characters. It was important to her that their form be neat, that their content be as clear as her simple mastery of the written language would allow. Then—copying from a slip of paper that she had brought with her from that buried box in her fields—she wrote on the envelope the name and address of the only government official she knew, Liu Hulan, who had lived and worked in the village so many years before.

1

THIS MORNING, AS EVERY MORNING THIS SUMMER IN Beijing, Liu Hulan woke before dawn to the deafening sounds of drums, cymbals, gongs, and, worst of all, the horrible squeals of a suo-na, a many-piped wind instrument that resounded for blocks, maybe even miles. Competing to be heard over the instruments were the exuberant voices, cheers, and yelps of the Shisha Hutong Yang Ge Folk Dance and Music Troupe. This was the beginning of what would be a three-hour session, and this morning it appeared to be taking place directly outside Hulan’s family compound.

Hulan hurriedly wrapped her silk robe around her, slipped on a pair of tennis shoes, and stepped outside onto the covered veranda outside her bedroom. Though it was only four, the air was already thick as custard with heat, humidity, and smog. Once the summer solstice passed, Beijingers prepared for the arrival of Xiao Shu, or Slight Heat Days. But this year Da Shu, Great Heat, had come early. This past week had seen five straight days with temperatures over forty-two degrees centigrade and humidity hovering at about ninety-eight percent.

Hulan quickly crossed the innermost courtyard, passing the other pavilions where in the old days the different branches of her extended family had lived. On the steps of one of these, her mother’s nurse—already dressed in simple cotton trousers and a short-sleeve white blouse—waited for her. “Hurry, Hulan. Make them stop. Your mother is bad this morning.” Hulan didn’t respond, she didn’t need to. She and the nurse had followed this routine now for the past three weeks.

Hulan reached the first courtyard, pushed open the gate, and stepped into the alleyway that ran before her family compound. There were perhaps seventy people here, all of them senior citizens. Most were dressed in pink silk tunics, while a few wore electric green. The latter, Hulan had learned a week ago, had come from the Heavenly Gate Dance Brigade after an argument about who would lead the dancing in their own neighborhood. The people looked colorful and—Hulan had to admit it—rather sweet in their costumes: Sequins decorated their fans, while glittering tinsel and tufts of white fluff fluttered in time to the music. The bodies of the old people happily gyrated to the drums and cymbals in a dance that was a cross between the bunny hop and the stroll.