The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  She couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking. He was about the same age as her own son.

  A covered truck rumbled into the field. The nine condemned prisoners were taken down from the back by impatient soldiers. Hong Qiu had always been surprised by how fast everything went on such occasions. There was no dignity in dying in this cold, wet field. She saw Shen fall over when he was pushed down from the back of the truck – he made no sound, but she could see tears rolling down his cheeks. One of the women was screaming. One of the soldiers barked an order at her, but she carried on screaming until an officer stepped forward and hit her hard in the face with a pistol butt. She fell silent and was dragged to her place in the row. All were forced to kneel down. Soldiers with rifles stood behind each of the prisoners. The gun barrels were barely a foot away from the backs of their heads. Then it all happened in a flash. An officer gave an order, shots were fired and the prisoners fell forward with their faces buried in the wet mud. When the officer walked along the row and gave each of them the coup de grâce, Hong Qiu looked away. Now she didn’t need to see any more. The next of kin of the dead would be billed for the cost of the two bullets. They would have to pay for the death of their relatives.

  Over the next few days she thought about what Shen had told her. His words about Ya Ru’s vindictiveness echoed around her head. She knew that in the past he hadn’t hesitated to resort to violence. Brutally, almost sadistically. She sometimes thought her brother was a psychopath at heart. Thanks to Shen, who was now dead, she might get some insight into who he really was, this brother of hers.

  Now the time was ripe. She would talk to one of the prosecutors who devoted themselves exclusively to accusations of corruption.

  She didn’t hesitate. Shen had spoken the truth.

  Three days later, late in the evening, Hong Qiu arrived at a military airfield outside Beijing. Two of Air China’s biggest passenger jets were standing there, bathed in light, waiting for the delegation of nearly four hundred people who were going to visit Zimbabwe.

  Hong Qiu’s role was to conduct discussions about closer cooperation between the Zimbabwean and Chinese security services – the Chinese would pass on knowledge and techniques to their African colleagues.

  As a privileged passenger, she was allocated a place at the front end of the aircraft, where the seats were bigger and more comfortable. Hong Qiu fell asleep soon after the meal was served and the lights had been dimmed.

  She was woken up by somebody sitting down on the empty seat beside her. When she opened her eyes, she found herself looking into Ya Ru’s smiling face.

  ‘Surprised, my dear sister? You couldn’t find my name on the list of participants for the simple reason that not everybody on board is included on it. I knew you would be here, of course.’

  ‘I should have known you wouldn’t let an opportunity like this slip through your fingers.’

  ‘Africa is a part of the world. Now that the Western powers are increasingly deserting the continent, it’s time for China to step out of the wings, of course. I am anticipating huge successes for our fatherland.’

  ‘I see China drifting further and further away from its ideals.’

  Ya Ru raised his hands defensively. ‘Not now, not in the middle of the night. Way down below us the world is fast asleep. Perhaps we are flying over Vietnam at this very moment, or perhaps we’ve gone further than that. But let’s not argue. Let’s get some sleep. The questions you want to ask me can wait. Or perhaps I should call them complaints?’

  Ya Ru stood up and walked off down the aisle to the staircase leading up to the upper deck, which was directly behind the nose of the aircraft.

  She closed her eyes again. It won’t be possible to avoid this, she thought. The moment is approaching when the huge gap between us can no longer be concealed, nor should it be. Just as the enormous split running straight through the Communist Party cannot and should not be concealed. Our private feud mirrors the battle the country faces.

  She eventually succeeded in falling asleep. She would never be able to do battle with her brother without a good night’s sleep.

  Over her head Ya Ru was sitting wide awake with a drink in his hand. He had realised in all seriousness that he hated his sister Hong Qiu. He would have to get rid of her. She no longer belonged to the family he worshipped. She interfered in too many things that were none of her business. Only the day before they left he had heard through his contacts that Hong Qiu had paid a visit to one of the prosecutors leading the investigation into corruption. He had no doubt that he had been the topic of discussion.

  Moreover, his friend, the high-ranking police officer Chan Bing, had told him that Hong Qiu had been displaying an interest in a Swedish female judge who had been visiting Beijing. Ya Ru would talk to Chan Bing when he got back from Africa. He told himself that she would lose this battle before it had even begun in earnest.

  Ya Ru was surprised to find that he didn’t even hesitate. But now nothing would be allowed to stand in his way. Not even his dear sister, currently below him in the same plane.

  Ya Ru made himself comfortable on a chair that could be converted into a bed. Soon he was also asleep.

  Underneath him was the Indian Ocean and in the distance the coast of Africa, still veiled in darkness.

  28

  Hong Qiu was sitting on the veranda outside the bungalow she would be staying in during the visit to Zimbabwe. The cold winter of Beijing seemed far away, replaced by the warm African night. She listened to the sounds emanating from the darkness, especially the high-pitched sawing of the cicadas. Despite the warmth of the evening she was wearing a long-sleeved blouse, as she had been warned of the profusion of mosquitoes carrying malaria. What she would most have liked to do was strip naked, move the bed out onto the veranda, and sleep directly under the night sky. She had never before experienced such heat as overwhelmed her when she stepped off the plane into the African dawn. It was a liberation. The cold restrains us with handcuffs, she thought. Heat is the key that liberates us.

  Her bungalow was surrounded by trees and bushes in an artificial village made for prominent guests of the Zimbabwean government. It had been built during Ian Smith’s time, when the white minority proclaimed unilateral independence from England in order to retain a racist white regime in the former colony, then called Rhodesia. At that time there was only a large guest house with an accompanying restaurant and swimming pool. Ian Smith often used it as a weekend retreat where he and his ministers could discuss the major problems faced by the increasingly isolated state. After 1980, when the white regime had collapsed, the country had been liberated and Robert Mugabe put in power, the area had been extended to include several bungalows, a network of country walks and a long veranda with views of the Logo River, where you could watch herds of elephants come to the riverbank at sundown to drink.

  Hong Qiu could just make out a guard patrolling the path that meandered through the trees. Never before had she experienced darkness as compact as this African night. Anybody could be hiding out there – a beast of prey, be it with two legs or four.

  The idea that her brother could be watching, waiting, gave her pause. As she sat in the darkness, she felt for the first time an all-consuming fear of him. It was as if she had only now realised that he was capable of doing anything to satisfy his greed for power, for increased wealth, for revenge.

  She shuddered at the thought. When an insect bumped into her face, she gave a start. A glass standing on the bamboo table fell onto the stone paving and smashed. The cicadas fell silent for a moment before beginning to play once more.

  Hong Qiu moved her chair in order to avoid the risk of standing on the glass shards. On the table was her schedule. This first day had been spent watching and listening to an endless march of soldiers and military bands. Then the big delegation had been conveyed in a caravan of cars, escorted by motorcycles, to a lunch at which ministers had delivered long speeches and proposed toasts. According to the programme President Mugabe
should have been present, but he never showed up. When the lengthy lunch was over, they had at last been able to move into their bungalows. The camp was a few dozen miles outside Harare, to the south-west. Through the car windows Hong Qiu could see the barren countryside and the grey villages, and it struck her that poverty always looks the same, no matter where you come across it. The rich can always express their opulence by varying their lives. Different houses, clothes, cars. Or thoughts, dreams. But for the poor there is nothing but compulsory greyness, the only form of expression available to poverty.

  In the late afternoon there had been a meeting to plan the work to be done over the coming days, but Hong Qiu preferred to stay in her room and go through the material herself. Then she had gone for a long walk down to the river and watched the elephants moving slowly through the bush and the heads of the hippos popping out above the surface of the water. She had been almost alone down there, her only companions a chemist from Beijing University and one of the radical market economists who had trained during Deng’s time. She knew that the economist, whose name she had forgotten, was in close contact with Ya Ru. At first she wondered if her brother had sent a scout to keep an eye on her activities. But Hong Qiu dismissed the idea as a figment of her imagination – Ya Ru was more cunning than that.

  Was the discussion she wanted to have with her brother going to be feasible? Was it not the case that the split dividing the Chinese Communist Party had already passed the point where it was possible to bridge the gap? It was not a matter of straightforward and solvable differences about which particular political strategy was most appropriate. It concerned fundamental disagreements, old ideals versus new ones that could only superficially be regarded as communist, based on the tradition that had created the republic fifty-seven years previously.

  If men like her brother were allowed to call the shots, the final fixed bastions of Chinese society would be demolished. A wave of capitalist-inspired irresponsibility would sweep away all the remnants of institutions and ideals built up on the basis of solidarity. For Hong Qiu it was an undeniable truth that human beings were basically reasonable creatures, that solidarity was common sense and not primarily an emotion, and that, in spite of all setbacks, the world was progressing towards a point where reason would hold sway. But she was also convinced that nothing was certain in itself, that nothing in human society happened automatically. There were no natural laws to account for human behaviour.

  Mao again. It was as if his face were beaming out there in the darkness. He knew what would happen, she thought. The future is never assured, once and for all. He repeated that wisdom, over and over again, but we didn’t listen. New groups would always emerge and seize privileges for themselves, new revolutions would constantly take place.

  She sat on the veranda and let her thoughts come and go. Dozed off. She was woken by a noise. She listened. There it was again. Somebody was knocking on her door. She checked her watch. Midnight. Who would want to visit her this late? She wondered whether she should open the door. There was another knock. Somebody knows that I’m awake, she thought; somebody has seen me on the veranda. She went inside and peered through the peephole. An African was standing outside. He was wearing the hotel uniform. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened the door. The young man handed over a letter. She could see from her name on the envelope that it was Ya Ru’s handwriting. She gave the boy a few Zimbabwe dollars, unsure if it was too much or too little, and went back to the veranda. She read the short message.

  Hong Qiu

  We ought to keep the peace, for the sake of the family, of the nation. I apologise for the rudeness of which I am sometimes guilty. Let us look one another in the eye again. During the last few days before we return home, please let me invite you to accompany me into the bush, to see the primitive nature and animals. We can talk there.

  Ya Ru

  She checked the text carefully, as if she expected to find a hidden message between the lines. She found none, nor could she fathom why he had sent her this message in the middle of the night.

  She gazed out into the darkness and thought about the predators who have their prey in their sight, without the victims having the slightest idea of what is about to happen.

  ‘I can see you,’ she whispered. ‘No matter where you come from, I shall discover you in time. Never again will you be able to sit down beside me without my having seen you coming.’

  Hong Qiu woke up early the next morning. She had slept fitfully, dreaming about shadows creeping up on her, menacing, faceless. Now she was on the veranda, watching the brief African dawn, the sun rising over the endless bush. A colourful kingfisher with its long beak landed on the veranda rail, then flew off immediately. The dew from the damp night glittered in the grass. From somewhere in the distance came African voices, somebody shouting, laughing. She was surrounded by strong aromas. She thought about the letter that had reached her in the middle of the night and urged herself to be alert. She somehow felt even more wary of Ya Ru in this foreign country.

  At eight o’clock a specially selected group of delegates, headed by a trade minister and the mayors of Shanghai and Beijing, had gathered in a conference room off the hotel foyer. Mugabe’s face looked down from several walls with a smile that Hong Qiu couldn’t quite place: Was it friendly or scornful? In a loud voice the trade minister’s state secretary called the assembly to attention.

  ‘We shall now meet President Mugabe. The president will receive us in his palace. We shall enter in a single file, the usual distance between ministers and mayors and other delegates. We shall greet one another, listen to our national anthems, then sit down at a table in assigned seats. President Mugabe and our ministers will exchange greetings via interpreters, after which President Mugabe will deliver a short speech. We have not been given an advance copy. It could be anything from twenty minutes to three hours. Advance visits to the toilets are strongly advised. The speech will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Those of you who have been given prepared questions will raise your hands, introduce yourselves when called to speak and remain standing while President Mugabe answers. No follow-up questions are allowed, nor is anybody else in the delegation permitted to speak. After the meeting with the president, most of the delegation will visit a copper mine called Wandlana while the minister and selected delegates will continue their discussion with President Mugabe and an unknown number of his ministers.’

  Hong Qiu looked at Ya Ru, who was leaning with half-closed eyes against a column at the back of the conference room. It was only when they left the room that they established eye contact. Ya Ru smiled at her before clambering into one of the cars intended for ministers, mayors and specially selected delegates. Hong Qiu sat down in one of the buses waiting outside the hotel.

  Her apprehension was growing all the time. I must speak to somebody, she thought, somebody who will understand my fear. She looked around the bus. She had known many of the older delegates for a long time. Most of them shared her view of political developments in China. But they are tired, she thought. They are now so old that they no longer react when danger threatens.

  She continued searching, but in vain. There was nobody there she felt she could confide in. After the meeting with President Mugabe she would work once more through the whole list of participants. Surely there must be someone whom she could trust.

  The bus headed for Harare at high speed. Through the window Hong Qiu could see the red soil stirred up by the people walking by the side of the road.

  The bus suddenly stopped. A man sitting on the other side of the aisle explained to her.

  ‘We can’t all arrive at the same time,’ he said. ‘The cars with the most important people must arrive first. Then we will arrive, the political and economic ballet to make up the pretty background.’

  Hong Qiu smiled. She had forgotten the name of the man who had spoken, but she knew that during the Cultural Revolution he had been a hard-pressed professor of physics. When he returned from h
is many privations in the country, he had immediately been put in charge of what was to become China’s space research institute. Hong Qiu suspected that he shared her views about the direction China ought to be taking. He was one of the old school still managing to keep going, not one of the youngsters who have never understood what it means to live a life in which something is more important than they are.

  They had stopped close to a little marketplace running along both sides of the road. Hong Qiu knew that Zimbabwe was close to economic collapse. That was one of the reasons that their large delegation was visiting the country. Although this would never be made public, it was in fact President Mugabe who had begged the Chinese government to make a contribution towards helping Zimbabwe out of the country’s severe economic depression. The sanctions imposed by the West meant that the basic infrastructure of the country was close to collapse. Only a few days before leaving Beijing, Hong Qiu had read in a newspaper that inflation in Zimbabwe was now approaching 5,000 per cent. People tramping along by the edge of the road were moving very slowly. It seemed to Hong Qiu that they were either hungry or tired.

  Hong Qiu suddenly noticed a woman kneeling down. She had a child in a carrier on her back and a head ring made from folded cloth for supporting heavy loads. Two men by her side helped each other to lift up a heavy sack of cement and balance it on her head. Then they helped her to stand up. Hong Qiu watched her stagger away. Without a second thought she stood up, hurried down the aisle and spoke to the interpreter.