Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  She was tempted to write to Lawrence. He had sent the address of a Thomas Cooke office where he was collecting mail. But what would she say? The bad news is, Aidan’s alive. The good news is, he’s the enemy.

  And what would she then expect Lawrence to do? Come racing back to help her fill out the divorce papers?

  No, she was better off on her own. At least until she was sure.

  Through a young Communist friend of Vijay’s she located a newsstand in Old Delhi that carried the official People’s Daily only a month past date. Even if the U.S. refused to acknowledge a traitor, surely the Chinese would parade this news. She found an old card in Aidan’s desk with the characters for his name and also memorized the ideograms for “rescue,” “American,” “defector.” She spent hours each night scrutinizing the smudged, cramped columns of this impenetrable language, and with each paper’s failure to mention her husband, she became firmer and firmer in her belief that Ben had made a terrible mistake. Yet the revived conviction that Aidan was alive refused to let her rest. If she could find independent proof of that alone, she could take it to the embassy and demand their help.

  She had talked herself into such a corner that when she finally saw what she was looking for she almost glossed right over it. A photograph of high-level Communist cadres at a banquet in Beijing. What could this have to do with Aidan? If his head had been turned, if another figure had even partially blocked him from the lens, if he had stood just a foot or two farther into the background, she never would have looked twice. But he was standing in the front row. Smiling, lifting his glass. He wore that same spare Maoist jacket, and his hair was cut short. His eyes stared straight at her.

  The U.S. embassy reception area was festooned with orange and black crepe paper garlands. A mobile of Pilgrim and American Indian cutouts dangled from the fly fan. On the glass coffee table, surrounded by bureaucratic black leather chairs, squatted an enormous papier-mâché jack-o’-lantern. All of India was poised for the Festival of Light, Divali, but evidently the children of the American School preferred the fall rituals of home.

  Joanna had barely sat down when a young thin-lipped Indian woman wearing a magenta sweater set approached. Though Joanna had called that morning to confirm, the Ambassador had been detained. But, the secretary said blandly, consular attaché Bob Cross would see her.

  Joanna followed the girl out one door and through another. She was being shunted. She knew it, resented it, and yet was almost glad she didn’t have to deal with Minton. Maybe Bob Cross would at least try to act human.

  Her reflection in a wall mirror rose before her. She had on a green serge suit and heels, makeup. She’d done up her hair. She looked a hundred and ten. She felt a hundred and ten. And twelve. At breakfast she’d caught Kamla watching her and wondered which of them was the grown-up.

  “Mrs. Shaw.” The secretary had been replaced by a tall, brawny collegian. Ash blond hair with a ruler part on one side, blue eyes crisp as larkspur, mildly crossed, and that white starched shirt and diagonally striped Ivy League tie that was almost as out of place in New Delhi as his Boston accent. When he shook her hand she could feel every muscle.

  “Won’t you come in here?” He-ah. He was twenty-five, tops.

  She stopped. Down the hall a tinny rendition of “Over the Meadow and Through the Woods” poured from a transistor radio. She could smell the stone floor, secretarial perfume, antiseptic American scrub. She longed for the familiar must and charcoal stink of her own Safe Haven. But she had taken the morning off to come here instead. To show her hand.

  She turned to find Cross watching her. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she lied.

  They entered an office the size of a closet, one window banded with half-closed blinds that sliced the floor into strips of light like tissue paper. Stacks of files and briefing papers covered the battle green metal cabinets and desk. A framed diploma from Brown University hung on the wall beside the chair Cross indicated. A tourist poster of the Grand Canyon hung behind his own chair.

  “How can I help you?” he asked, pulling his pen from its holder on the desk.

  “I don’t know if you can. I came here to see Ambassador Minton.”

  The young man’s lips pressed into a pout. “The Ambassador sends his apologies. He was called to the Prime Minister’s residence this morning. He had to cancel all his appointments.”

  “I don’t know,” she said again and settled her handbag in her lap.

  Cross took up the chrome pitcher on his desk and poured some water into a Dixie cup. Both pitcher and cup, American issue. He offered her a drink, and when she shook her head he emptied the cup in a single gulp and crushed it in one hand. “I assure you, I’m well briefed before taking the Ambassador’s appointments,” he said. “I assume you’re here about your husband. You want to know if there’s any news.”

  His eyes were like windows at night, thinly curtained but brightly lit so that she could see the shadow of someone walking back and forth across them. Someone pacing. Uncertain whether to throw open the drapes and show himself.

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s been well over a year and in all that time—”

  He opened a folder and ran his finger down the top sheet inside. “You’ve remained here in India the whole while?”

  “Yes.” She frowned down at her purse. “This is where my husband would expect to find me.”

  He cleared his throat, not looking at her. The broad shoulders pulled back and he stretched his neck. Wrestling, she thought. That’s his sport. Without the physical contact, he’s lost. Aidan used to say American men craved that skin-to-skin struggle because they were still trying to figure out who they were. Also, they thought with their muscles and not their minds. Unlike the Chinese, whose ancestry went back so far that they never questioned their identity—or the supremacy of their intellect.

  “I admire your faith, Mrs. Shaw,” he said. “I wish I could offer some news or evidence to support it.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to the Ambassador,” she said pointedly.

  “I assure you, we went over your husband’s file together. There is nothing—” He stopped. “That is, we know nothing. I’m making a terrible presumption here. Perhaps you’ve learned something we haven’t?” He leaned toward her, smiling.

  She swallowed. And suddenly, she was so enraged she could not look at him. He was baldly lying, assuming her to be some nitwit wife who would lie down and invite him to step on her. Well, if that’s how they wanted to play… She sighed to conceal her anger, brought her voice into line, and shot back at him, “I’ve been to the Chinese embassy, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “The Communist embassy?” You’d have thought she’d talked to the devil himself.

  “I was terrified, of course,” she said. “But what did I have to lose?”

  “And…?”

  “Oh, they don’t know anything. Or won’t tell me anything. I might as well have been talking to a bunch of stone statues.”

  “Yes,” he said sympathetically. “I understand they’re like that. You were very brave.”

  She opened her handbag, pushed the photograph of Aidan into the depths, and pulled out a white handkerchief. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. Cross busily scribbled notes.

  “There was one thing the Ambassador asked me to discuss with you,” he said, “that may come as good news. Though it’s not about your husband.”

  He flipped through some papers on his desk. “You have a little girl, I think. You’ve adopted her.”

  “Kamla?”

  The shadow marched back and forth again, larger. Closer. “Yes. Well, restrictions have eased a bit, what with our involvement in Korea. And when the Ambassador saw Mrs. Solomon’s article about you and your daughter in the Gazette, he remembered how much you wanted to take her home with you to the States. He thinks he can get you a visa for her as early as New Year’s. Of course, you’ll have to formalize the adoption back in the Stat
es.”

  She looked at the visa application he was thrusting toward her. Pre-stamped with today’s date and Minton’s signature. Trading one life for another. She’d behaved, and this was her reward. She took the form and stood up.

  Cross stood as well. “It must be so hard,” he said. “I admire you tremendously. We all do.”

  You lying bastard, she thought. But she had to get out of here. Her teeth were clenched so tightly that her whole face felt numb.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cross,” she managed. “I appreciate your concern.”

  She waited four days, deliberating. Watching. Noticing for the first time the driver of the white Ambassador parked outside the rescue home. And the clean-shaven, turbaned man who appeared to be dozing under the plane tree across from the house. And what about those two policemen chatting with the tonga driver up the street? Or the green Mercedes stopped at the corner?

  She told the children nothing of her visit to the embassy, even about the visa. It would be too cruel to get Kamla’s hopes up—to get both their hopes up about going to the States—when the fact was, her only hope of seeing Aidan—confronting him—now lay with the Chinese here in Delhi. And, she realized, that had to be handled with such secrecy that she didn’t dare breathe word of it to anyone.

  Finally, she was satisfied. Her act as the idiot wife must have worked. She wasn’t worth following. Besides, she thought, pleased with herself, she’d already been to the Chinese, hadn’t she? So why should she go back again?

  She drove to Lytton Road late in the afternoon, telling the children she had a meeting. In the twilight she could barely see the red stars that marked the guards’ navy caps. The iron gates stood closed, and beyond the compound walls strains of martial music spilled from the old British colonial mansion. Even across the street the air smelled faintly of garlic and peanut oil, an aroma distinct from the sweeter, more complex spice of Indian cooking.

  She turned the corner, parked two blocks away on a side street filled with vendors and beggars, and sat for several minutes fingering her wedding band. She hadn’t worn it since she started sleeping with Lawrence. Now it felt loose and heavy. Through the windshield the full moon shone like a mirror fractured by the leafless branches of the plane trees.

  She pulled a black shawl up over her head and climbed out. She locked the door after her and placed her keys inside her pocketbook, which she tucked up under her arm. The beggars stretched out their palms. She steeled herself and walked quickly past them. At the intersection she waited for a break in the six-lane river of bicycles. Finally she darted across and up the opposite curb.

  She approached the embassy gate. “Excuse me,” she said to the guard. “I have business inside.”

  He had a thin face, wary eyes. He looked her up and down, then pressed a buzzer. In a minute a door opened at the side of the embassy, and a man wearing the formless blue suit of a civilian came out.

  “May I help you?” His English was good. He was older than the guard, and he smiled.

  “I’ve come about my husband,” she said. “Aidan Shaw.” She lowered her voice. “I can’t talk here.”

  He barked something at the guard, and the gate swung back to admit her.

  “I am Comrade Chou,” the man said.

  He led her inside to a barren green reception area with a dozen or so identical hard-backed chairs and low occasional tables lining the walls. The regimentation made her think of firing squads, but Chou’s tone was polite, even engaging. He pulled two of the chairs out to face each other and urged her to sit down.

  Although she hadn’t seen him alert anyone to their arrival, a young Chinese woman appeared almost as soon as they were seated, bearing covered pots of tea. She set these down within their reach and went away. Chou offered Joanna a cigarette. When she declined, he lit one for himself.

  He had thickly lidded eyes, a wide face, and closely cropped gray hair. His mouth was soft and expressive. So this is the great Red Menace, she thought. He might have been Aidan’s father.

  She opened her purse and pulled out the clipping from the People’s Daily. “My husband disappeared a year and a half ago,” she said. “My government tells me nothing. But I am certain this is Aidan.”

  Chou glanced at the picture. He nodded. “Actually, I am familiar with your husband, Mrs. Shaw. He has been in Beijing for some time now.”

  She felt as if the floor were dropping out from under her. She had braced herself for more lies. Denial. Not this.

  Chou puffed on his cigarette and asked calmly, “He has not been in contact with you himself, then?”

  She shook her head.

  “And does your government know that you are here?”

  “No.”

  He leaned forward and tapped his ash into a porcelain dish. “I was told that you might come here at some point. It is my understanding that your husband intends to remain in China.”

  He looked at her. “Please,” he said gently. “Drink your tea. It will warm you.”

  She cradled the pot in her hands.

  “A year and a half is a long time, Mrs. Shaw. I believe it has been suggested that you and your son join your husband in Beijing.”

  She felt the pot slipping and barely managed to set it down without breaking it.

  Chou nodded. “But your husband refuses.”

  She thought of the picture they’d found of Simon. What matters most. She could still feel where Aidan had touched her cheek the last time he said goodbye.

  This was wrong. All wrong. Aidan had not left her and Simon by choice. And he was not pushing them away by his own choice now.

  Careful, she warned herself. Be very careful.

  “Mr. Chou?” she asked. “Could you deliver a letter to my husband?”

  “That depends…”

  “I understand it will be censored.”

  His mouth stretched apologetically.

  She drew the envelope from her purse. The foolscap inside was almost weightless. She’d written and rewritten the message so many times that it was etched on her brain. Why, Aidan? In spite of everything, I love you, I believe in you. But I must see you. Please.

  A loyal wife’s plea. Nothing more, nothing less. She handed Chou the envelope.

  “Do you think, Mr. Chou, that if Aidan were willing…?”

  He smiled and stubbed out his cigarette. “Anything is possible,” he said.

  “And when…if it is allowed through, when might it reach him?”

  “That is difficult to say. Perhaps one week. Perhaps one month. I wish I could promise.” He lifted his palms.

  “No one can promise anything. Thank you for your time.”

  6

  My encounter with Surie, I decided as the weeks passed, was less a threat than an omen. He did not come again, and though I woke often in the middle of the night to the sensation of Golba’s fat hands at my throat or Indrani’s gold teeth winking in the darkness, though I scoured the streets with my eyes and grilled old Musai to know if he had seen unsavory characters hovering about the compound gates, I found no further evidence to support my fears. But Surie forecast doom nonetheless.

  The longer Lawrence was gone, the more unhappy Mem seemed to become. She never laughed anymore. She hardly spoke to Simon and me. And her rules at our house on Ratendone Road were now as strict as her rules at Safe Haven. She fired the new cook, a sweet man from Madras with a velvet voice and a gift for making fragrant rice, because he once forgot to boil the drinking water. She snapped at Musai for leaving his gardening tools in the driveway, and she was even short with our beloved Nagu for allowing his sons to play their radio at night in the servants’ quarters. Simon and I were to go to sleep promptly at eight o’clock with no more talk or song or even reading, and once, when she caught me cutting photographs for a class project from one of her American magazines, she grabbed them away from me and said I must never, ever, touch her books or papers without asking permission.

  I blamed Lawrence for leaving us. I told myself everythin
g would return to normal if he would just come back. But week after week, he did not come.

  On the last night of Ram Lila, much to my surprise, Mem suggested that we should go out to the maidan by Delhi Gate to watch the fireworks. Ram Lila, you see, celebrates the god Rama’s victory over the demon Ravana. Every year on the final night Delhi turned out in throngs to cheer the triumph of goodness, and many of our wealthy neighbors along Ratendone Road had private fireworks parties. Last year with Lawrence we had simply watched from our rooftop and agreed it was quite a show. At the time Simon begged to go to the old city, having heard of the spectacle from Nagu’s sons, but Mem refused, saying the noise would be deafening, and the crowds too rowdy, and we might get too close to some of the fireworks and be burned by falling cinders. This year, I think, she was trying to please Simon.

  Every so often she would seem to realize that days had passed since she last heard a word we said, or even truly looked at us. Then, as if waking from a dream, she would sweep us into the car and off for ice cream or a trip to the bookstore or cinema, and for an hour or maybe two she would lean close and stroke our hands. And Simon would kick me under the table and make a joke of it, but I understood that this was Mem’s way of showing her good intentions. So, on this last night of Ram Lila, I did not upset those intentions by mentioning my own concerns about making an outing to the old city. In any case, Nagu and his boys came with us. Nagu would not allow us to go alone.

  The broad lawns of the maidan were indeed mobbed with families when we arrived, and Delhi Gate twinkled with a thousand flickering wicks. It was a cool night, dry and clear and moonless but pulsing with artificial light. We had to park near the river and walk a long way. As we walked the smoke burned my throat. Already the ground was treacherous with burning ash and dropped sparklers, and as a result the crowd had a fluid quality, moving this way and that like rings of water backing away from each newly ignited firecracker or roman candle. Vendors continuously jostled past us selling sweets and soda pop. Trained bears and monkeys did their dances to drums, and snake charmers waved their flutes. Up ahead, enormous effigies of Ravana and his cohorts sailed forty feet up in the sky.