by Don Winslow
Like Li Lan.
Yeah, face it. Almost everything that’s happened in this whole sad gig has happened because you were obsessed with Li Lan. You got shit-faced and gaga at the Kendalls’, you went off half-cocked, so to speak, to Hong Kong, where you walked into not one but two traps, and then you had to be spirited into mainland China, all because you were thinking about her and not the job. Now Pendleton gets to spend his life working for the Chinese, your so-called career is dusted, and why? Because you’re in love with Li Lan.
And that’s the saddest thing, he thought. I still am in love with Li Lan.
He got up from his chair. He was too restless to work, too wired to sleep, and there was no booze. Time to go see Buddha.
A thick mist had settled in the night air, and torches barely lit the courtyard. He found the gate and made his way through the garden. The monks had set torches in large stone holders around the Buddha, and Neal could just discern the shape of Buddha’s head as he approached it.
So it took him a minute when he saw the woman to decide that it really was Li Lan.
She stood in the gray mist with the giant Buddha at her back. She was wearing a black silk jacket and black pants. Her hair was long and straight, with a single red comb on the left side. Her eyes were delicately lined, and she wore red lipstick. Her hands were clasped in front of her thighs.
She saw him first and stood still until he recognized her.
“I came to find you,” she said.
A solid ache gripped his chest.
“Why?”
“I wish to explain.”
“I’d sure like to hear that.”
“Can we walk?”
“Wait a second. You want me to follow you down another dark path? What do you have waiting out there this time? Guys with knives? A bamboo cage? Or a nice deep drop into the river?”
She dropped her head. Neal could just see the tears well in her eyes and then spill over. She’s good, he thought. She’s very good.
“You have no reason to trust me,” she said.
“You got that right.”
She looked up at him. “You may choose the path,” she suggested.
“Turn around. Put your arms over your head.”
He patted her down. No knives, no guns. But she hadn’t had a knife or a gun when she’d punted Ben Chin’s head into the wall, either. His hands got sweaty as he touched her. He was shook up, and he didn’t like it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“They say I’m going home tomorrow. I’m trying to make sure it’s not home to Jesus.”
“I am not carrying any weapons.”
“You are a weapon.”
“I only want to talk.”
He turned her around, which was a mistake because then he could see her eyes. They took a lot of the tough out of him.
“So talk,” he said.
“Not here.”
“Why not here?”
“It is dangerous.”
Well, we wouldn’t want to do anything dangerous all of a sudden, would we?
“Where, then?” It was a rhetorical question, because Neal Carey wasn’t following her anywhere.
“Perhaps your room?”
Except maybe there.
18
She sat on the bed. He closed the bamboo shades and turned the lamp down low. There was no lock on the door, so he set the chair against it and sat down. She closed her hands in front of her and looked at the floor.
He wanted to get up and hold her, but he couldn’t seem to move. He felt like he was living inside a marble statue.
“So talk,” he said.
“You are angry.”
“Goddamn right I’m angry,” he hissed. “Do you know what it was like in that shithole in the Walled City?!”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You are well now?”
“Terrific.”
“Good.”
Yeah, good. Except I don’t know if I want to kill you or love you. Get out of here or stay here with you.
“So what’s your story?” he asked.
Li Lan
My mother’s family were rich landowners in Hunan Province, very important members of the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang.
Mother grew up in privileged household, cultured … genteel. Her parents were very progressive. They believed that boys and girls should be equal. And they thought that China must become modernized. So they sent their oldest son to England, the youngest son to France, and the middle daughter to America. Middle Daughter was my mother. So as a young girl, just seventeen, she traveled to America, to Smith College.
But she did not stay very long. The Japanese invaded and killed very many Chinese. Mother came home. Her father was very angry with her, very worried. But Mother was patriotic. She ran away to join the fight.
She became a legend. She ran far away from Hunan, north to the area controlled by communist guerrillas. She trained hard in the mountains. She learned to shoot a rifle, to plant a mine, to make a deadly spear from a bamboo stick. Her officers also gave her political indoctrination, and she became a devoted communist. She learned how her own family’s huge landholdings oppressed the masses, and she longed to purge the burning shame of her class background. She became at first a courier, and then a spy. It was a role in which her family background and her education was useful. She spoke beautiful Chinese, and she could understand Japanese and English. Mother could walk among any kind of people and keep her ears open.
Her work was dangerous and she loved it. Every dangerous act was a redemption, every contribution to the war helped to build a new woman in a new China. And she fell in love.
He was a soldier, of course. A guerrilla leader and a brilliant political officer. She met Xao in the mountains when she smuggled a message from an enemy held in a town nearby. He admired first her courage, then her beauty, and then her mind. They went to bed that night. It was her first time, and it was all somehow the same thing: the war, the communist struggle, and Xao Xiyang. She knew their futures would always be together, hers, Xao’s and China’s. The war was long, so long, and after they defeated the Japanese, they began to struggle against the fascist Kuomintang and its leader, Chiang Kai-shek.
In the battle to liberate the country from the Kuomintang, my mother’s background became even more useful. She pretended to become obedient to her father. She went home, she attended parties, she “dated” American officers and spies. All this time she passed information to the Party, many times through her husband, Xao. When the communist forces appeared to be victorious, her family fled to Taiwan, but Mother hid, and stayed behind. She traveled to Beijing and found Father there! They were together on the birthday of the new China. Many times Mother told us the story of how she and Father stood in Tiananmen Square, with thousands of red flags waving in the wind and thousands of people in the square, how they stood there cheering Chairman Mao and weeping with joy as the Chairman declared the People’s Republic of China. Father stayed with the Party and was assigned a government post in Chengdu. Mother became a propaganda officer. I was born two years later, in 1951.
Poor father … he was destined to have only girls. But he did not mind. He loved us very much, and would buy us dresses and pretty things, and tie ribbons in our hair. Blue for me, red for my sister. So we became called Lan Blue and Hong Red. Xao Lan and Xao Hong.
At first, everything was well. We were so happy! Although we were sisters, Hong and I were so different. I was shy, she was very forward. I studied painting and music. Hong studied acrobatics and theater. I liked to walk in countryside, Hong liked to make fight. Mother and Father would joke that perhaps they had daughter and son also. There was much laughter in our house, much laughter and music and art. Great happiness.
Then the bad times came. When Chairman Mao said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” That was 1957, when the Chairman invited all people, most especially intellectuals, to criticize the Party.
Mother did so. With enthusiasm. She loved the Party, but she
also loved freedom, and she thought that the Party had become too … authoritarian, too “one way.” Mother did not believe in “one way.” She said the world was too large for that. So she taught us everything. Chinese, but English also. Communist thought, but also Jefferson thought, Lincoln thought. Chinese music, but also Mozart. Chinese painting, but also Western painting, Cézanne, Mondrian. So Mother criticized the Parry, thinking that was her duty. She wrote letters to newspapers, she joined the students at Sichuan University who were putting up posters. She even criticized Father for not listening enough! This was also a joke in our house, because after that Father would cook and ask Mother to criticize his soup!
But Hundred Flowers Movement was a trap. It lasted one month only, May to June, one breath of fresh spring air before the doors slammed shut. Those who made criticisms were called traitors, called Rightists, and a new campaign replaced Hundred Flowers Campaign. They called it “Anti-Rightist Campaign.”
The Chairman did not really want free speech. Police suppressed newspapers, silenced speakers, and tore down the posters. Students in Chengdu rioted.
Mother came home in tears. She had seen the police use batons on the students and beat them bloody. Father argued that order had to be restored, and she became very angry with him. That night the police came for her.
We were little and didn’t understand, but we were very frightened. Mother did not return for two days, and when she did, she looked older and sad. We discovered later that the police asked her about her family, accused her of being a Kuomintang spy, waved the letters she had written at her, and ordered her to write out a “confession” of her mistakes. She refused. A week later the police came back and arrested her. Father explained that she had gone back to school to learn more about Mao’s thought. I remember that I asked if I could go to school with her, but Father said that I was too young. Hong wanted to fight the police, of course, but Father said that they had just made a mistake and would correct it soon. Why, Mother was a war hero and a patriot!
Mother was in jail for over a year. We visited her twice, which was all we were allowed. Father helped us get into our prettiest dresses and our ribbons, and get together a bundle of flowers. We went to a big building on the edge of the city. Mother came to a table behind a wire fence, and we took the petals off the flowers and pushed them through the wire to her. I tried not to cry, but I cried. Mother tried not to cry, but she cried. Hong did not cry and Father did not, but he looked sad and angry. I asked Mother what she had done wrong, and she said that she was a Rightist, because her parents were Rightists. I did not know what a Rightist was, but I remember I said that if she was one because her parents were, then I must be a Rightist, too. I remember that Father laughed a harsh laugh, but Mother looked serious and told me that I must never say that, that we children must be good communists and study the thought of Chairman Mao. She said that she was studying hard and had written many confessions, and when she had learned to overcome her own Rightist thought, she could come home and we would be together again.
We were together again, but not at home. Father was sent to the countryside “to help reorganize the peasants,” but really because he refused to divorce Mother, or even denounce her. This was the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, when the land was divided into production brigades, and Father was to educate the peasants about the great changes. We left our apartment in Chengdu and moved to a small village—Dwaizhou. It was very strange to us, very new, and we were frightened. The peasants did not want us there at first, because we were more mouths to feed and we knew nothing about farming. Father worked very hard, though, and learned much, and helped the peasants explain their problems to the Party cadres. The peasants began to respect him, and then love him, because he fought for them and got them equipment, and fertilizer, and medical supplies. He taught classes at night also and conducted political struggle sessions to explain to the people the great goals of the revolution. Mother joined us after a year, and we were so happy! We wore peasant clothes now, and had no pretty dresses, but we were happy to have our mother back. And we could see that Father and Mother were so happy to be together.
We came to love Dwaizhou. I helped in the fields and the kitchens, and wandered all over with a stick of charcoal and rice paper, making little childish drawings. Hong played that she was a brave PLA soldier, and she acted out stories of revolutionary heroes for the peasants. And she was so proud of her nickname—because red was the color of the Party, and she was Red!
But then food became scarce. The Great Leap Forward had failed, and even Sichuan began to feel hunger.
Father tried to stop the foolish edicts. He fought the cadres when they ordered the peasants to slaughter all their livestock because livestock was property and ownership of property was Rightist. But the cadres overruled him, and the peasants had to kill their pigs and chickens and ducks, and send the food to workers in the city. But then, of course, there were no animals left to breed. I remember Father standing with the peasants as they killed their cherished breeding stock, remember him standing in puddles of blood, weeping along with the farmers. I remember the trips through the countryside, where I saw farmers standing in once fertile rice paddies and begging for food. I remember families who were once good friends fighting each other over a few fish or vegetables. I remember hunger.
My family did not starve, because Father was still an official, and had yuan to buy food. But there was often not a lot of food to buy, and many meals were made up of some cabbage and perhaps some peanuts. Sister and I missed the bowls of white rice and the steamed rolls and the “mooncakes.” But we did not complain, because so many people around us were worse off, and it was the price we all had to pay for the revolution.
But I never forgot. Hong and I would eavesdrop on Father when he would tell Mother about his latest inspection tour. He would whisper to Mother about the sights he had witnessed: dead bodies on the roadside, men chopped to pieces by villagers for stealing grain, children with open sores from malnutrition. He would sit, smoking one cigarette after another, saying that they must put a stop to it, and never let it happen again. And Mother would ask, “What is wrong with the Chairman? Has he gone mad?” Father would just shake his head.
Then suddenly it seemed that Father became very important. We learned later that he had joined with a group of reformers led by Deng Xiaoping. It was in 1960, I think, that investigations were started, and then reforms, and Father was a leader of the reforms in Sichuan and the cadres hated him. But the hunger ended, and Deng Xiaoping supported my father, and after two more years we moved back to Chengdu because Father had been made Party Secretary, a very important position.
We didn’t know then, of course, that Chairman Mao was just biding his time. We were once again very happy. We had our family and we had our dreams. I was to become a great painter and Hong was to be a great actress. We studied our arts and worked hard in school, and our evenings at home were wonderful. Mother was always curious about our work, and we always had to tell her about our day at school. I would show her my painting and Hong would perform. Father would come home late and then we would have to do it all over again, but that was wonderful, too.
And mother had been “rehabilitated.” She even began to write for the newspaper. We all went together for walks in the parks or strolls through the city streets or drives in the countryside. We often went to visit Dwaizhou, because the people there were our family now. It was a happy time and we were still children.
But our childhoods ended in 1966. Then the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution turned all the children into Red Guards.
I was fifteen and it was springtime. Why do all the campaigns start in springtime? I was old enough then to have some small understanding of politics, so when the attacks began on Peng Zhen, the mayor of Beijing, I understood that it was really his sponsor, Deng Xiaoping, who was under attack. That was the method, you see—attack the subordinate to erode the ground beneath the superior, I was afraid, because Father worked for
Deng. Then Chairman Mao himself attacked the Party professionals—such as Father—accusing them of taking the capitalist road, and we became very worried.
But also excited, because all the students at school were buzzing with Mao Thought and Making Revolution. We painted big posters supporting Chairman Mao and urging revolution. I felt badly, thinking that I was perhaps being disloyal to Father, but Hong explained that our duty to Chairman Mao and to the revolution came first, and that Father would be proud of us for our honest criticisms. She criticized our teachers for lack of revolutionary ardor and purity. She even criticized me for making “useless” paintings of hills and trees instead of “useful” paintings with revolutionary themes. I tried at first, but the pictures just would not come. Soon I did not make paintings at all.
Then the Red Guards began to appear, first in Beijing, then in Shanghai, soon after in Chengdu. Hong was one of the first to join, of course. She was so proud in her green uniform and red armband. I remember when she first walked into the house in her uniform. Mother turned pale and said nothing, and Father only observed that revolution was a complicated and sometimes painful thing. Hong was angry and said that they should support her in making revolution, in wiping out “The Four Olds”: Old Customs, Old Habits, Old Culture, Old Thinking. Father asked her if she wanted to wipe out Old China entirely, and she answered that the Red Guard was supporting Chairman Mao.
That August, Mao stood on Tiananmen Gate and reviewed a big parade of the Red Guard. That loosed the flood. Students all over China went crazy with power. Red Guard groups started everywhere, sometimes three or four groups in a single school! Mao officially announced the start of the Cultural Revolution. Students denounced teachers, professors, and party officials. They stopped going to classes. Schools shut down. All we did was make revolution.
I did as little as possible, but Hong was involved in everything. She marched with the Red Guard, she organized a theatrical troupe to act out revolutionary plays in the streets, she sometimes spent days away from home, staying at our school that the Red Guard had turned into a barracks.