Beautiful Country

by J. R. Thornton

  We drover farther and passed by a roadside stand selling fireworks. Discarded firework casings, fragments of charred cardboard, littered the street like confetti. To my amazement, I saw men with their wives and children setting off fireworks right next to the stand, in the middle of a busy city street. A car even had to swerve to avoid driving over a bundle of freshly lit firecrackers. It was chaos.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Victoria.

  “Fireworks have been banned for more than ten years,” Victoria said. “They just changed the rule. Today is the first day they are allowed again.”

  “They can just set them off right here? In the middle of the city?”

  “Sure,” Victoria said. “Why not?”

  The slow stop-and-start traffic made me queasy. I opened the window and looked at the acres of buildings that surrounded us, specters in the dark smog. The air was so heavy and stale that I had difficulty taking a deep breath. Everywhere I looked, people were moving. Men and women on bicycles, men and women walking, all pushing toward home at the end of the day. I wondered what Tom would have made of this scene. When we would drive to New York City or to the Hamptons, Tom would make up games for me to help pass the long sit-still hours in the car. A box in a passing car became a box filled with stolen jewels, a sleeping passenger would turn into a kidnapped victim who needed rescuing, and an old man in a vintage Cadillac became a Mob kingpin whom we had to tail. It seems silly now, but back then Tom made it all feel real to me. As we got closer to the center of the city, I saw fifty or sixty bicycles standing in a row. Victoria noticed what had caught my eye, and she commented, “Everyone rides bikes to the bus and subway station.”

  “Don’t they have to worry about them getting stolen?”

  “Stolen?”

  “The bikes.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “You have to lock them. But even if you use lock, your bike still getting stolen. At least two times, every year.”

  I checked my watch. We had been in the car over an hour and a half. I leaned my head back and tried to fall asleep again but I had no luck. I was nervous about meeting the rest of my host family. My father had told me the Zhangs had kids who spoke English. He hadn’t known how old they were though. We made a series of turns and, in one case, I could have sworn our driver went into the lane of oncoming traffic to bypass the clogged lane we were stuck in. I tapped Victoria and mouthed my concern, but she just smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Driver Wu very good.” She smiled again and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Is that what you call him?” I asked. “Driver Wu?”

  “Yes, that’s what he likes to be called. It’s a sign of respect. Like how you say professor or doctor. This a very good job.”

  We drove through a series of construction areas beside a murky, dark green lake and a small park before stopping in front of a six-foot white gate. Behind the gate stood four identical high-rise apartment buildings, twenty stories tall. Two armed security guards appeared from the gatehouse and approached our car. Victoria explained that we were coming to see the Zhangs. One of the guards nodded and returned to the gatehouse where he picked up a phone and dialed a number. The second guard remained by our car holding his rifle.

  “Why do they need guards?” I asked Victoria.

  “You have to be very careful, there many robberies. The Zhangs worried about kidnappings. So many people come to Beijing from the country and many people very desperate.” The first guard hung up the phone and shouted something to the second. The white gate retracted into the wall and allowed us to pass. Victoria took out her pink phone and called someone, speaking too fast for me to understand. “Just tell to them that we’re here,” Victoria said.

  Mrs. Zhang, who was waiting outside the apartment building, was dressed in navy slacks and a white blouse. She spoke rough English and addressed me by my last name. After introducing herself, she turned to Victoria and the two spoke for some time. I was tired and wanted to sleep. Finally there was a pause in the conversation. Mrs. Zhang turned to me. “Hao de,” she said and paused. I had learned in the few lessons I had taken with a tutor before I left that hao meant good or okay. “Okay,” she said in English. “We go now.”

  She led us to the elevator and told us that their apartment was on the sixteenth floor. On the elevator wall I saw a list of elevator rules written in Chinese and English. They were fairly standard, except for rule number two: “2. PLEASE DO NOT PLAYING AND GAMBOLING IN THE ELEVATORS.” I smiled at the thought of four elderly Chinese men hunched over a smoky card table in the center of a crowded elevator. I wondered what the real story was behind that rule.

  The elevator opened onto an empty gray corridor. At the end was a bright red door with a huge, golden door-knocker. A savage-looking animal, a dragon or a lion perhaps, glared back at me, its teeth gripped tight around the golden ring that hung from its mouth. Mrs. Zhang ignored the knocker and pressed an intercom to the side of the door.

  I heard the sound of several locks being undone before the door swung inward. A small woman who looked to be in her forties or fifties peeked her head around the door. Mrs. Zhang shooed her out of the way and walked into the apartment. Victoria and I followed, but the driver hung back in the hallway with my bags. Mrs. Zhang took her shoes off and handed them to the woman who had just opened the door. The woman, whom I took to be a maid, was holding three pairs of slippers, the cheap, thin kind you find in hotel rooms. I saw that Victoria was now also wearing the slippers, and I noticed that Mrs. Zhang was staring at my shoes. I took them off and took the last pair of slippers from the maid. They were too small, and my heels stuck out far beyond the end of the soles.

  Mrs. Zhang gave Victoria and me a quick tour of their home. She explained that they had bought three apartments and connected them. First she led us through two sparsely furnished living rooms, which she said they used to receive guests. The walls were painted white and were bare except for several large and elaborate paintings of flowers and mountainous landscapes. The chairs in the dining room had a shiny gloss to them, and the large sofas that sat in front of the television had a plastic quality that made them look unnaturally clean. She showed me her family’s living quarters. I was surprised to find a European-style four-poster bed in the master bedroom and a large bathtub in the middle of the room. The tub was white and had gold taps in the shape of swans. Mrs. Zhang smiled and nodded her head when Victoria told her how beautiful the room was. I could tell by Victoria’s reaction that she was overwhelmed by the opulence and size of this apartment.

  Several months later, Victoria told me that she and her husband had been saving up for several years to have enough cash to buy their own apartment. She told me that in Beijing, it had become common for government officials and businessmen to launder their “gray money,” money that came from bribes and corrupt deals, by buying second and third apartments in cash. The practice had artificially inflated the housing market to the point where just finding a place for herself and her husband had become extremely difficult. The luxurious bathtub placed in the middle of the gigantic bathroom was an extravagance she would never have even contemplated.

  Mrs. Zhang brought us back to the dining area where a maid served tea. She passed around a bowl of small packages of nuts. I took a sip of the tea. It was green and tasted like bitter licorice.

  “You don’t like?” Mrs. Zhang laughed at my expression.

  “No, no, it’s good,” I said. I raised the cup to my mouth and pretended to drink.

  “This is called Long-Jing tea, from Hangzhou. Very expensive,” she said.

  I noticed a bowl of sugar packets on the table, and I picked up several, emptying three into my tea. Mrs. Zhang, who had been talking to Victoria, looked back to me and saw what I was doing. “Ah!” she exclaimed. “No, no. For coffee. Okay, no matter.” I raised the tea to my lips again and took a small sip. It was better.

  Mrs. Zhang explained that for security reasons, I must always wait in the building for Victoria. Under no circumstances was
I ever to leave unescorted. “Not safe,” she said. She also said they had only one key to their apartment. It stayed with their live-in security guard. The key never left the house unless they were all going on vacation, in which case Mr. Zhang kept it. “They can make a copy,” she explained. “So we only have one key.” She never did explain who “they” were. Mrs. Zhang told Victoria that we were to use one of their four drivers. Driver Wu would be free to take me to school in the morning and tennis in the afternoon. She said that she had made these arrangements with my father and that these instructions were not to be modified in any way.

  In all the months I lived in Beijing, I never heard or read about any kidnappings and robberies, but I didn’t know if that was because they did not happen or because they were not reported. I wondered if my father had arranged all of these precautions to protect me or to supervise me.

  I finished the remainder of my tea and declined a second serving. Mrs. Zhang then clapped her hands, and a servant appeared. She rattled off something in Chinese, and the servant disappeared only to return a few minutes later with two small children. Due to the One Child Policy, it was unusual for a Chinese family to have more than one child. The Zhangs had lived in Hong Kong, I suspected, so they could have more children, and had just moved back to Beijing because, as Mr. Zhang had told my father, the children’s written Chinese was very poor. They had attended the American International School in Hong Kong, where half the classes were in English, half in Mandarin. Ten-year-old David arrived holding a Nintendo DS in front of him as if it were a steering wheel. Mrs. Zhang laughed that David was never without his Nintendo. He stood motionless staring at the tiny screen in front of him until his mother said something to him that sounded like a reprimand. He looked up and waved a hand. “Hi,” he said.

  “Okay, you two talk now, yes?” Mrs. Zhang said. It was a command, not a question. David clearly resented the interruption from his video game, and he gazed at me sullenly. There was an awkward silence. Exhausted from my flight and wanting only to lie down, I was not thrilled by the prospect of having to struggle in conversation with a grumpy ten-year-old.

  “David,” Mrs. Zhang said sharply. Her tone got his attention. “Chase plays tennis, very good,” she turned to me. “Yes. David likes to play tennis, too.”

  “Do you play a lot of tennis?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes,” he said.

  “How about soccer?”

  David shrugged again and did not answer. Mrs. Zhang hid her irritation with a laugh. “David plays too many computer games. I hope you will inspire him to play sports,” Mrs. Zhang said.

  David’s six-year-old sister, Lily, was dressed in a pink Disney princess outfit and was hiding behind her nanny. Victoria knelt down to say hello, but Lily hid her face in the back of her nanny’s leg. Mrs. Zhang told Lily to speak, but she just burrowed her face deeper into the folds of her nanny’s skirt. Finally a small hand stretched out from behind the nanny and waved a timid hello.

  Victoria squeezed me on the shoulder and said that she was going to go home. She said good-bye to Mrs. Zhang and the two spoke in Chinese for a few minutes. When they had finished, Victoria turned to me and told me that she would pick me up the next day at 10 a.m. and take me to the tennis center where I would have my trial with the team. Mrs. Zhang nodded her approval.

  “Tomorrow?” I asked. “In the morning?” Victoria’s words caught me by surprise. I knew I was scheduled to have a trial, but I assumed it would be several days from now, after I had a chance to adjust to the time difference.

  “Yes, tomorrow,” Mrs. Zhang said. “Don’t worry, everything already organized.”

  Her words gave me the sense that there would be no use in trying to postpone the trial a few days, and in any case, I was too tired to protest. Victoria waved good-bye and disappeared with the maid who had let us in.

  Mrs. Zhang brought me back to the kitchen where two maids were washing dishes. She explained that if I wanted any food when they were not home to feel free to help myself. She also showed me the room next to the kitchen where the maids lived. In this dark room, with low ceilings and not larger than twelve by nine feet, were a pair of bunk beds that had been set up side by side. Four women were living in a space smaller than the size of the single dorm rooms my friends were currently occupying at New England boarding schools. “If you need something just ask them,” she said. “You want water?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” I replied.

  She clapped her hands, and one of the maids from the kitchen appeared. Mrs. Zhang spoke so quickly that I could only understand shui, the word for water. The maid disappeared and reappeared with her arms full of plastic water bottles. “Okay,” Mrs. Zhang said, “we go now.”

  Mrs. Zhang brushed past the maid and walked through the kitchen to the door at the back. I turned to the maid and extended a hand to take the water bottles from her. She shook her head and lifted her chin for me to follow Mrs. Zhang down what appeared to be a narrow, dark hallway. The maid followed behind us carrying the water. It looked as though the hallway was used for storage. Tall, thin picture frames were stacked in layers against the wall. I paused to take a closer look. The maid didn’t see me stop and knocked into me, spilling the water bottles. Mrs. Zhang spun around. Her smile disappeared and she chastised the maid in a fast staccato outburst.

  The maid hid her face and began picking up the water. I bent over to help, but Mrs. Zhang snapped, “No, no. She do it. We go now.”

  We ascended a narrow staircase at the end of the hall to a small, dark annex that consisted of one bedroom with a small bathroom. The walls were painted white and were entirely bare. Across from the doorway was a narrow window with opaque glass. The room was not as small as the one occupied by the four maids, but still, the full-size bed took up most of the room, with a cupboard, one bedside table, and a desk taking up the rest. There wasn’t enough room between the bed and desk for a chair. The bed occupied far too much space, and the position of the desk made it impossible to open the cupboard door all the way. I was about to ask where my bags were when I saw them tucked in the space between the far side of the bed and the wall.

  Mrs. Zhang raised her arm. “Okay, yes? You will stay here. It’s okay?”

  I wondered if two of the four bunks I had seen before had been in this room. “I hope I’m not taking anyone’s room,” I said.

  “No, no,” she assured me, “this room was empty. Empty room.”

  I wasn’t certain I believed her, but there was nothing I could do about it. Mrs. Zhang told me there would be breakfast on the table in the morning. Satisfied that I was settled in, she departed.

  Finally alone, I collapsed on the bed and closed my eyes and listened to the lawless percussion of fireworks exploding in the night air. Everyone back home would be waking up soon. I thought about the friends that I had left behind who would be getting ready for another day at school. I thought about the school dances and the parties that I would never attend, and the jokes and stories that I would never be a part of. Here I was, seven thousand miles away from home—¹⁄32nd the distance to the moon—in a small white box of a room on the sixteenth floor in a country in which I was a stranger. I could disappear and no one would know.

  四

  It was dark when I awoke. My mouth was dry and my legs ached, and I had no idea where I was. I reached down to rub my legs and noticed I was wearing jeans. I sat up and looked around. I had fallen asleep on top of the bed, but someone had placed a blanket over me. On the bedside table were a dozen bottles of water and a digital clock that had not been there the night before. The clock read 5:27 a.m. I stood up and reached my arms out to find the light switch. The light stuttered and then filled the room with the fluorescence of a hospital. I turned it off.

  After I showered, I pulled my duffel onto the bed and dug through piles of neatly pressed tennis clothes and looked for my lucky yellow Nike shirt. The clock now read 5:55. I was awake but not alert. Everything was slight
ly off, as if it were raining in my head. I remembered what Mrs. Zhang had said about breakfast. I was starving but I didn’t go down to the kitchen. It was too early, and I didn’t want to wake anyone. But I also dreaded having to cobble together bits of my meager Chinese to communicate with one of the maids.

  I cleared a space among the clothes strewn about my bed and pulled out my laptop and watched a film I had started on the plane. I tried not to think about the tryout, but the more I attempted to keep my mind off it, the larger it loomed. I wished Mr. Zhang hadn’t scheduled my tryout with the team for the day after I arrived in China.

  The film finished, and I still had two hours before Victoria would arrive. I called my father, but it went straight to voicemail both times. I checked and rechecked my tennis equipment, regripped my rackets, and stenciled a red “Wilson” logo on the strings. Satisfied that I had done all I could do to prepare, I called my father a third time. He picked up but told me that he couldn’t talk. He was at a business dinner and would call me tomorrow to find out how the trial with the tennis team went. He hung up. I sat there for fifteen minutes and then I called him once more, hoping that there was a chance he had finished dinner. But he hadn’t, and so I told him that I’d been trying to call Victoria and must have accidentally hit redial. It was still nice just to hear his voice again.

  When I came down for breakfast, Mrs. Zhang had just left with David and Lily. The housekeepers were clearing away the children’s breakfast bowls of clear broths and noodles and plates of thinly sliced meats. I startled them, and they disappeared into the kitchen before I had a chance to greet them. On the dining room table, someone had left an unopened box of cornflakes. I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. One of the younger maids appeared. I asked her for milk. She shook her head. “You know, milk. Um . . . cow?” I said and followed with my best imitation of a cow’s moo. She gave me a bewildered look and started laughing. I looked in the refrigerator and saw nothing that resembled a carton of milk. Hoping to avoid dry cornflakes, I drew a picture of a cow that looked more like a goat. The maid smiled and opened a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard box from which she took a plastic bag. I shook my head and pointed to my poorly drawn picture again and raised an imaginary glass to my mouth. Undeterred, she pulled a pair of scissors from a drawer, cut off the corner of the bag, and poured the contents into a bowl. It was milk.