The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  ‘Please come with me.’

  The interpreter, who was a young woman, opened her mouth to protest, but Hong Qiu prevented her from speaking. The driver had opened the front door to allow a flow of air into the bus, which had already started to become stuffy, as the air conditioning wasn’t working. Hong Qiu dragged along the interpreter to the other side of the road where the two men had settled down in the shade and were sharing a cigarette. The woman with the heavy burden on her head had already disappeared into the haze.

  ‘Find out how much the sack they put on the woman’s head weighs.’

  ‘About fifty kilos,’ the interpreter informed her after asking.

  ‘But that’s a horrific burden. Her back will be ruined before she’s thirty.’

  The men merely laughed.

  ‘We’re proud of our women. They’re very strong.’

  Hong Qiu could see in their eyes that they didn’t understand what the problem was. Women here suffer the same difficulties that our poor Chinese peasants have to put up with, she thought. Women always carry heavy burdens on their heads, but even worse are the burdens they have to bear inside their heads.

  She returned to the bus with the interpreter. Shortly afterwards they set off – now they had an escort of motorcycles. Hong Qiu let the wind from the open window blow into her face.

  She would not forget the woman with the sack of cement on her head.

  The meeting with President Robert Mugabe lasted four hours. When he came into the room he looked more like a friendly schoolmaster than anything else. When he shook hands with her he was looking beyond her, a man in another world who just brushed against her in passing. After the meeting he would have no memory of her. She knew that this little man, who radiated strength despite being both old and frail, was described by some as a bloodthirsty tyrant who tormented his own people by destroying their homes and chasing them off their land whenever it suited him. But others regarded him as a hero who never gave up the fight against the remnants of colonial power he stubbornly insisted lay behind all of Zimbabwe’s problems.

  What did she think herself? She knew too little about the politics to be able to form a definite opinion, but Robert Mugabe was a man who in many ways deserved her admiration and respect. Even if not everything he did was good, he was basically convinced that the roots of colonialism grew very deep and needed to be cut away not just once but many times. Not least of the reasons she respected him was she had read how he was constantly and brutally attacked in the Western media. Hong Qiu had lived long enough to know that loud protests from landowners and their newspapers were often intended to drown the cries of pain coming from those who were still suffering from torture inflicted by colonialism.

  Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe were under siege. The West’s indignation had been extreme when, a few years previously, Mugabe had forcibly annexed land owned by the white farmers who still dominated the country and made hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans landless. The hatred of Mugabe increased for every white farmer who, in open confrontation with the landless blacks, was injured by rocks or bullets.

  But Hong Qiu knew that as early as 1980, when Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, was liberated from Ian Smith’s fascist regime, Mugabe had offered the white farmers open discussions aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the vital question of landownership. His overtures had been greeted by silence on that first occasion and then many more times over the following fifteen years. Over and over again Mugabe had repeated his offer of negotiations but had received no response, only contemptuous silence. His patience had finally run out, and large numbers of farms were handed over to the landless. This was immediately condemned by the West and protests flowed in from all sides.

  At that moment the image of Mugabe was changed from that of a freedom fighter to that of the classical African tyrant. He was depicted just as anti-Semites used to depict the Jews, and this man who had spearheaded the liberation of his country was ruthlessly defamed. Nobody mentioned that the former leaders of the Ian Smith regime, not least Smith himself, had been allowed to remain in Zimbabwe. Mugabe did not send them into the law courts and then to the gallows as the British used to do with rebellious black men in the colonies. But a refractory white man was not the same as a refractory black man.

  She listened to Mugabe’s speech. He spoke slowly, his voice was mild, he never raised it even when talking about the sanctions that led to an increase in the infant mortality rate, widespread starvation, and more and more illegal immigration to South Africa alongside millions of others. Mugabe spoke about the opposition in Zimbabwe. ‘There have been incidents,’ Mugabe admitted. ‘But the foreign media never reports the attacks on those loyal to me and the party. We are always the ones who throw stones or make baton charges, but the others never throw firebombs, never maim or beat up their opponents.’

  Mugabe spoke for a long time, but he spoke well. Hong Qiu reminded herself that this man was more than eighty years old. Like so many other African leaders he had spent a long time in jail during the drawn-out years when the colonial powers still believed they would be able to face down attacks on their supremacy. She knew that Zimbabwe was a corrupt country. It still had a long way to go. But it was too simple to place all the blame on Mugabe. The truth was more complicated.

  She could see Ya Ru sitting at the other end of the table, closer to both the minister of trade and the lectern where Mugabe was speaking. He was doodling in his notepad. He used to do that even as a child, drawing matchstick men while he thought or listened, usually small devils jumping around, surrounded by burning bonfires. Nevertheless, Hong Qiu thought, he is most probably listening more intently than anybody else. He is sucking in every word to see what advantages he can gain in future business between the two countries, which is the real reason for our visit. What raw materials does Zimbabwe have that we need? How will we be able to get access to them at the cheapest price?

  When the meeting was over and President Mugabe had left the big conference room, Ya Ru and Hong Qiu met each other by the doors. Her brother had been standing there, waiting for her. They each took a plate and filled it from the buffet table. Ya Ru drank wine, but Hong Qiu was content with a glass of water.

  ‘Why do you send me letters in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I had the irresistible feeling that it was important. I couldn’t wait.’

  ‘The man who knocked on my door knew that I was awake. How could he know that?’

  Ya Ru raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘There are different ways of knocking on a door, depending on whether the person behind it is awake or asleep.’

  Ya Ru nodded. ‘My sister is very cunning.’

  ‘And don’t forget that I can see in the dark. I sat out on my veranda for a long time last night. Faces light up in the moonlight.’

  ‘But there wasn’t any moonlight last night?’

  ‘The stars produce a light that I’m able to intensify. Starlight can become moonlight.’

  Ya Ru eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Are you challenging me to a trial of strength? Is that what you’re up to?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’

  ‘We must talk. In peace and quiet. Revolutionary things are taking place out here. We have closed in on Africa with a large but friendly armada. Now we are involved in the landings.’

  ‘Today I watched two men lift a sack containing over a hundred pounds of cement onto a woman’s head. My question to you is very simple. Why have we come here with an armada? Do we want to help that woman to alleviate her burden? Or do we want to join those lifting sacks onto her head?’

  ‘An important question that I’d be happy to discuss. But not now. The president is waiting.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘Spend your evening on your veranda. If I haven’t knocked on your door by midnight, you can go to bed.’

  Ya Ru put down his glass and left her with a smile. Hong Qiu noticed that the brief conversation had made her sweat. A voice an
nounced that Hong Qiu’s bus would be leaving in thirty minutes. Hong Qiu filled her plate once more with tiny sandwiches. When she felt she had eaten enough, she made her way to the back of the palace where the bus was waiting. It was very hot, the sun reflecting off the white stone walls of the palace. She put on her sunglasses and a white hat she had brought in her bag. She was about to enter the bus when somebody spoke to her. She turned round.

  ‘Ma Li? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came as a substitute for old Zu. He’s been struck down with thrombosis and couldn’t make it. I was called in to replace him. That’s why I’m not on the list of participants.’

  ‘I didn’t notice you on the way here this morning.’

  ‘Somebody pointed out to me rather sternly that I’d sat myself in one of the cars, which protocol forbade me to do. Now I’m where I ought to be.’

  Hong Qiu reached out and grasped hold of Ma Li’s wrists. She was exactly what Hong Qiu had been hoping for. Somebody she could talk to. Ma Li had been a friend ever since her student days, after the Cultural Revolution. Hong Qiu recalled an occasion early one morning, in one of the university’s day rooms, when she had found Ma Li asleep on a chair. When she woke up, they started talking.

  It seemed to be preordained that they should be friends. Hong Qiu could still remember one of the first conversations they’d had. Ma Li had said that it was now time to stop ‘bombarding headquarters’. That had been one of the things Mao had urged the cultural revolutionaries to do. Not even the very top officials in the Communist Party should be spared the necessary criticism. Ma Li maintained that, instead, it was now necessary for her to ‘bombard the vacuum inside my head, all the lack of knowledge that I have to fight against’.

  Ma Li trained to become an economic analyst and was employed by the Ministry of Trade as one of a group of experts whose job it was to keep a constant check on currency variations throughout the world. Hong Qiu had become an adviser to the minister responsible for homeland security, for coordinating the top military leaders’ views on the country’s internal and external defence, especially protection for the political leaders. Hong Qiu had been at Ma Li’s wedding, but after the birth of Ma Li’s two children their meetings had been irregular.

  But now they had met once again, on a bus behind Robert Mugabe’s palace. They spoke non-stop during the journey back to the camp. Hong Qiu noticed that Ma Li was at least as pleased as she was at their reunion. When they reached the hotel, they decided to take a walk to the big veranda with the magnificent views over the river. Neither of them had any important engagements until the following day, when Ma Li was due to visit an experimental farm and Hong Qiu was supposed to attend a discussion with a group of Zimbabwean military leaders at Victoria Falls.

  The heat was oppressive as they walked down to the river. They could see flashes of lightning in the distance and hear faint rumbles of thunder. There was no sign of animal life. It seemed that the whole place had suddenly been deserted. When Ma Li took hold of Hong Qiu’s arm, she gave a start.

  ‘Did you see that?’ asked Ma Li, pointing.

  Hong Qiu looked but couldn’t see any sign of movement in the thick bushes that lined the riverbank.

  ‘Behind that tree where the bark has been peeled off by elephants, next to the rock sticking up out of the ground like a spear.’

  Now Hong Qiu saw it. The lion’s tail was swinging slowly, whipping against the red earth. Its eyes and mane were occasionally visible through the leaves.

  ‘You’ve got very good eyes,’ said Hong Qiu.

  ‘I’ve learned to notice things. Otherwise your surroundings can be dangerous. Even in a city, or a conference room, there can be traps to stumble into, if you’re not careful.’

  In silence, almost reverentially, they watched the lion venture down to the river and begin lapping up the water. Out in the middle of the river, a few hippos’ heads bobbed up and down. A kingfisher just as colourful as the one on Hong Qiu’s veranda alighted on the rail, with a dragonfly in its beak.

  ‘Peace and quiet,’ said Ma Li. ‘I long for it more and more, the older I become. Perhaps it’s the first sign of getting old? Nobody wants to die surrounded by the noise from machines and radios. The progress we make costs us a lot in the way of silence. Can a person really live without the kind of quiet we are experiencing right now?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘But what about the invisible threats to our lives? What do we do about them?’

  ‘I suppose you are thinking about pollution? Poisons? Plagues that are constantly mutating and changing their appearance?’

  ‘According to the World Health Organisation, Beijing is currently the dirtiest city in the world. Recent measurements recorded up to one hundred and forty-two micrograms of dirt particles per cubic metre of air. The equivalent figure in New York is twenty-seven, in Paris twenty-two. As we know only too well, the devil is always in the details.’

  ‘Just think of all the people who discover that for the first time in their lives it’s possible for them to buy a moped. How can you persuade them not to?’

  ‘By strengthening the party’s control over developments. What is produced by goods, and what is produced by thoughts.’

  Ma Li stroked Hong Qiu’s cheek gently.

  ‘I’m so pleased every time I realise that I’m not alone. I’m not ashamed to maintain that baoxian yundong is what can rescue our country from disintegration and decay.’

  ‘A campaign to preserve the Communist Party’s right to lead,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘I agree with you. But at the same time we both know that the danger threatens to come from within. Once upon a time it was Mao’s wife who was the mole for the new upper class, despite the fact that she waved her red flag more ardently than anybody else. Today there are others hiding within the party who want nothing more than to undermine it and replace the stability we enjoy with a sort of capitalist freedom that nobody will be able to control.’

  ‘The stability has been lost already,’ said Ma Li. ‘As I’m an analyst who knows the way in which money flows in our country, I know much that neither you nor anybody else is aware of. But, of course, I’m not allowed to say anything.’

  ‘We are alone. The lion isn’t listening.’

  Ma Li eyed her up and down. Hong Qiu knew exactly what she was thinking – can I trust her or can’t I?

  ‘Don’t say anything if you are in doubt,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘If you make the wrong choice when it comes to people you can rely on, you are both defenceless and helpless. That is insight we were given by Confucius.’

  ‘I trust you,’ said Ma Li. ‘Nevertheless, you can’t get away from the fact that one’s natural instincts for self-preservation always encourage caution.’

  Hong Qiu pointed to the riverbank.

  ‘The lion has gone now. We didn’t notice when he left.’

  Ma Li nodded.

  ‘This year the government has increased military expenditure by almost fifteen per cent,’ Hong Qiu continued. ‘In view of the fact that China doesn’t have any real enemies close at hand, naturally enough the Pentagon and the Kremlin wonder what is going on. Their analysts can see without too much of an effort that the state and the armed forces are preparing to cope with an inner rebellion. In addition, we are spending almost ten billion yuan on our Internet surveillance systems. These are figures impossible to conceal. But there’s another statistic that very few people know about. How many riots and mass protests do you think took place in our country during the past year?’

  Ma Li thought for a moment before answering. ‘Five thousand, perhaps?’

  Hong Qiu shook her head. ‘Nearly ninety thousand. Work out how many that is every day. It’s a figure that casts a shadow over everything the politburo undertakes. What Deng did fifteen years ago, when he liberalised the economy, was enough to tamp down most of the unrest in the country. But not any more, it isn’t. Especially when the cities are no longer able to find space and work for the hundreds of millions of p
easants who are waiting impatiently for their turn to enjoy the good life we all dream about.’

  ‘What will happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. It makes sense to be worried and on the alert. There’s a power struggle going on in the party that’s more serious than it ever was in Mao’s day. Nobody can foresee what the outcome will be. The military is afraid of chaos that can’t be brought under control. You and I know that the only thing we can do, the one thing we have to do, is restore the basic principles that used to apply.’

  ‘Baoxian yundong.’

  ‘The only way. Our only way. It’s not possible to take a short cut to the future.’

  A herd of elephants was making its way slowly down towards the river to drink. When a party of Western tourists came onto the veranda, the pair returned to the hotel foyer. Hong Qiu had intended to suggest that they eat together, but Ma Li forestalled her by saying that she had an engagement that evening.

  ‘We’re going to be here for two weeks,’ said Ma Li. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to talk about everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Everything that’s happened and is going to happen,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘All the things we don’t yet have an answer to.’

  Hong Qiu watched Ma Li walk off on the other side of the big swimming pool. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, she thought. Just when I badly needed to talk to somebody, one of my oldest friends turned up out of the blue.

  She dined alone that evening. A large party from the Chinese delegation had gathered around two long tables, but Hong Qiu preferred to be on her own.

  Moths danced around the lamp over her head.

  When she had finished eating she sat for a while at the bar by the swimming pool and drank a cup of tea. Some of the Chinese delegation got drunk and tried to make advances on the beautiful young waitresses moving from table to table. Hong Qiu was annoyed and left. In another China that would never have been allowed, she thought angrily. The security guards would have intervened by now. Anybody who got drunk and started throwing his weight around would never again have been allowed to represent China. They might even have been imprisoned. But these days, nobody pays any attention.