by Peter May
‘They are night people, the inhabitants of Xi’an,’ Michael said. ‘When the sun goes down this is an exciting city.’
‘Where are we going?’ Margaret asked.
‘To the Muslim Quarter.’ He smiled. ‘An experience not to be missed. I know a little place where we can get authentic Muslim cuisine.’
Margaret raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Muslims? In China? I thought religion was banned here?’
‘Ah,’ said Michael sagely. ‘You’ve been listening to the anti-Chinese propagandists back home. The God botherers. The truth is, in the last twenty years people have been free to worship whatever god they want. But, then, after the appalling religious persecution of the Cultural Revolution, it’s not really surprising that it’s taken a little longer for people to become open about it again.’
‘But is religion not a threat to the Communists?’ Margaret asked. ‘I mean, communism’s an atheist philosophy, isn’t it?’
‘The thing is, Margaret,’ Michael said, ‘Communism’s kind of like the state religion here. It has about fifty million members — the numbers go up and down when the corrupt ones get weeded out and shot, and the next batch of young urban technocrats sign up. But, you know, The Word according to Mao, or even Deng Xiaoping, is not what it used to be. Nowadays the Party’s more like a big club. People don’t join it because they’ve seen The Light. They join for the same reasons a businessman in Chicago signs up for the Rotary. To make contacts and connections. To get on in life.’
Margaret watched him talk, eyes twinkling, his voice animated by enthusiasm. He took pleasure in what he knew, in passing it on to others. She saw exactly why he was such a success on television, regardless of his subject.
A couple of whiskies had relaxed him after the shock of seeing the photographs on her bedroom floor. He had been genuinely shaken by the sight of things that Margaret viewed as routine. It made her wonder again if there was something wrong with her, if she had been desensitised by her job, made indifferent by years of exposure to the horrors of death in all its guises. But whatever effect her work might have had on her, she knew that she was not impervious to the emotional slaps in the face that life seemed constantly to deliver: a husband who had betrayed her and died bequeathing her all his guilt; a lover from an alien culture who would neither accept her fully into his life, nor make the transition to be accepted into hers.
She wondered if Michael would be any different. If she succumbed to those desires that pulled and taunted her, would she just end up being hurt again? And yet she felt so comfortable with him. Safe. There was something wonderfully reassuring in his hand holding hers in the back of the taxi. Here was someone taking care of her, guiding her gently through a strange and fascinating world. A world from whose dangers, she felt certain, she would be protected in his company. And after so many years of being the independent, hard-assed career woman, there was something deliciously appealing in the idea of simply delivering herself into his care.
They turned east now, through the west gate along Xi Dajie, and Margaret watched a whole family on a motorbike overtake them. A small boy nestled between the father and the front handlebars. A slightly bigger girl was sandwiched between the father and the mother who was riding pillion. Four of them on the one bike. Margaret was so taken aback by the sight, that it was several moments before she realised how rare it was to see a family of four in a country whose social structure had been so dislocated by the One-Child Policy.
Ahead of them, a huge floodlit building rose up into the night sky.
‘The Bell Tower,’ Michael said. He spoke to the driver and they pulled in at the edge of a large square, neatly manicured lawns crisscrossed by paths and walkways, a broad flight of steps leading down to the bright lights of an underground shopping centre. They got out and Michael paid the driver. Margaret looked around. At the far side, a great long restaurant built in traditional Chinese style, was traced against the sky in neon. The square itself was crowded, families out for an evening stroll, children playing on mini-dodgems on a concrete apron, people sitting on a wall by a pond reading newspapers and books by the light of an illuminated fountain. A woman tried to sell them a giant paper caterpillar that rippled across the concrete with unnerving realism at the tug of a length of string. But Michael just smiled and shook his head.
As he led Margaret across the square people openly gawped and called, ‘Hello,’ or, ‘So pleased to see you,’ in strange English intonations. They passed beneath the shadow of what Michael told her was the drum tower, and turned into a narrow covered alleyway lined on both sides by hawkers’ stalls filled with tourist junk and religious trinkets.
On the other side of the wall, to their left, Michael said, was the Great Mosque. Religion and commerce, it seemed, went hand in hand. They ran the gauntlet of traders trying to sell them everything from teapots to ornamental swords. Occasionally Michael would stop and speak to one of them. You could see the astonishment on their faces as he spoke in fluent Chinese, and whatever he said would invariably make them laugh.
The alleyway was crowded with shoppers and kids on bicycles, the occasional motorbike inching its way past, and soon they turned left, past the entrance to the mosque itself, and into the comparative quiet of a crumbling, dusty hutong.
‘It must be wonderful to speak Chinese as well as you do,’ Margaret said. ‘It must open up the whole culture of the place to you in a way that most people could never hope to experience.’
Michael inclined his head doubtfully. ‘It can be a double-edged sword,’ he said. ‘China was once described to me as being like an onion. It is made up of layer upon layer upon layer, with only subtle differences between each one. Most people usually only get two or three layers deep. People and places, a little history, a little culture, become familiar to them. But the heart of the onion, the very core of China itself, is still many more layers away. Out of reach, almost untouchable.’
He thought for a moment. ‘When I first started learning the language people were great. The Chinese love it if you can pay them a compliment, or give instructions to a taxi driver, or order up a meal in Mandarin. But when you’ve been here a while, and your grasp of the language gets good enough so you can start talking politics and philosophy, suddenly they get cautious. The encouragement stops. You’re getting too close to something the Chinese don’t really want foreign devils like you and me getting too close to. The heart of China, the core of Chineseness.’
‘Wow!’ Margaret was taken aback. ‘I always thought the Chinese were very welcoming.’
‘They are,’ Michael said. ‘I love them. They are warm and friendly and wonderfully loyal.’ He paused. ‘Just don’t get too close, that’s all. Because you’re not one of them.’
And Margaret wondered if that’s why her relationship with Li was doomed to failure. Because she was not Chinese, because she could never hope to understand him the way another Chinese could.
A couple of chickens, startled by their approach, skittered away up an alley. A Chinese labourer humping coal into a siheyuan shouted, ‘Ni hau,’ and then laughed raucously as if he had said something funny. They passed a tiny girl displaying remarkable skill in keeping a weighted pink ribbon in the air by kicking it up repeatedly with the instep of her foot. A group of her friends watched patiently waiting for her to make a mistake so that they could take their turn. At the far end of the hutong they turned into the outer edges of the Muslim Quarter, passing beneath a large character banner that straddled the street. Up ahead, shop fronts and food stalls blazed light into the road. Tables, with the now familiar red shades hanging over them, were set out down the middle of the street as far as you could see, lost in a blur of lights and people.
As they approached the frenzy of eating and cooking, they passed a wagon piled high with ox livers crawling with flies. A little further on another wagon groaned with great heaps of stinking intestine. Other smells rose to greet them on the warm night air. The ripe stench of an open sewer, the stink of dea
d animals as they walked past lines of pelts hung between trees. Then, as they left the gloom on the outer fringes of the Quarter, and wandered deep into the very heart of it, the olfactory sensations became a little more pleasant. Indian spices. Cumin, coriander, garam masala. The smells of cooking. Spiced lamb and roast chicken. Braziers were pumped up to extremes of heat and light by electronic blowers placed directly beneath them. Long troughs of charcoal glowed and smoked and filled the air with the mouthwatering smells of barbecued meat. Savoury chestnuts and black beans were being roasted together in huge woks, great vats of brown sesame sludge brought to high temperatures on fiercely burning fires to separate the oil from the tahini. There were barber shops, seed stores, sweet sellers, hardware stands. A boy was rolling out noodles on a sidewalk cooking table while a woman behind him washed dishes in a big stone sink. Through a doorway, Margaret saw a man stretched out on a barber’s chair, sleeping under green covers as he waited for the barber to finish reading his paper and give him a shave.
In a butcher’s shop, men in white coats hacked at carcasses with great cleavers, and a boy threw joints of meat through the open doors of a van backed up to the shop. They passed racks of barbecued chicken legs, and tables laid out with tray upon tray of candied fruits and baskets of nuts.
Old men in round white hats sat eating at tables and watched with a dull-eyed curiosity as Michael and Margaret strolled by, hand in hand. This circuit was not on the tourist itinerary, and white faces were almost unheard of here. But all the young children, clinging to mothers’ hands, were desperate to try out the English they were being taught in school. ‘Hello,’ one of them said. And then, bizarrely, ‘So happy you could come.’
Banners and flags fluttered in profusion overhead in the evening breeze. And above them, the leaves of overhanging trees whispered into the night sky.
‘Told you it was an experience,’ Michael said.
Margaret was wide-eyed and held his hand tightly. ‘That’s the thing about you, Michael,’ she said. ‘You never take me anywhere interesting.’
‘Come on,’ he said suddenly, and drew her off the street, past a young man tending a brazier, and into a tall, narrow room that opened directly on to the street. Hanging fluorescent strips reflected light harshly off cracked white tiles lining the walls and floor. There were several round fold-up tables with melamine tops and low wooden stools. An open concrete staircase led off, it seemed, to nowhere.
‘What are we coming in here for?’ Margaret asked, alarmed.
Michael grinned. ‘To eat,’ he said.
‘You’re kidding!’ Margaret was shocked. She had recurring visions of flies crawling over piles of ox liver and intestine.
‘It’s OK,’ Michael said. ‘Muslims are very particular about preparing and cooking their meat.’
‘Yeah, I’d noticed,’ Margaret said. She remembered the boy throwing joints of meat into the back of his van. ‘Like the health inspector would be redundant here.’
Michael was amused by her fastidiousness. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘Honestly. I’ve eaten here many times and lived to tell the tale.’ He sat down on a low stool, and reluctantly she followed suit. A gaggle of graceless young girls in pink and white immediately flounced around their table, bringing dishes of plain soy and chilli soy for dipping. They couldn’t take their eyes off Margaret. One of them spoke quickly to Michael and he grinned. He said to Margaret, ‘They want to know if they can touch your hair.’
‘Sure. I suppose,’ Margaret said apprehensively, and they all tentatively touched her soft, blonde curls, withdrawing their hands quickly as if it might burn them. They giggled and gabbled excitedly. Another one spoke to Michael and drew a laugh from him. He shook his head and spoke quickly, making them laugh in return. ‘What was that about?’ Margaret asked, a little put out by her sense of exclusion.
‘They wanted to know if I was a film star,’ Michael grinned.
Margaret snapped her fingers. ‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, wasn’t it? Must be sickening being so good-looking, huh?’
He smiled. ‘And they want to know if you want chicken feet.’
Margaret pulled a face. ‘No thank you. I’m quite happy with the ones I’ve got.’
He sighed patiently. ‘To eat.’
She pulled another face. ‘Why would I want to eat chicken feet?’
‘The Chinese believe they are good for your skin. Make you look younger.’
‘Oh, yeah? Ask them how old they think I am?’
He asked them and they looked at her and had an animated discussion. Then, ‘Twenty-two,’ Michael said.
Margaret laughed. ‘Yeah, well, I’m thirty-one.’ She stuck a finger in her face. ‘And if they want to know how I keep this looking so young, you can tell them it’s McDonald’s. Quarter-pounders with ketchup and French fries.’
First they brought steaming bowls of soup filled with noodles and pieces of chicken and mushroom. It was scalding hot and full of flavour. And then came a plate piled with fried dumplings filled with pork and spring onion and beansprouts and coriander. Margaret struggled to handle them with her chopsticks. But they were worth the effort, spicy and delicious dipped in chilli soy.
‘What do you want to drink?’ Michael asked.
She said, ‘Something cold and plenty of it to cool down my mouth. Beer would be good.’
‘Sorry,’ Michael said. ‘No can do. Muslims don’t drink. No alcohol in the Muslim Quarter.’
‘Of course,’ Margaret said. ‘Coke, then.’
Michael spoke to one of the girls who ran across the street to an old woman selling soft drinks off the back of her bike and returned with two plastic bottles.
‘Love the glasses,’ Margaret said, and she took a long pull from the neck of the bottle. But, then, she thought, it was probably more hygienic this way.
The lamb arrived. Great bunches of metal skewers laden with tiny pieces of barbecued lamb, half of them marinaded in a chilli sauce. They were tender and sweet and full of flavour. Margaret watched Michael as he stripped the meat from a skewer and into a dish of soy with his chopsticks, and then delicately picked out the pieces to eat one by one. This was an experience, she thought. Extraordinary, exciting, unlike anything she could have imagined. And yet Michael seemed completely at home, confident and relaxed. She watched how dexterous he was with his chopsticks, and felt the butterflies starting up again in her stomach. She had been attracted to him from the first moment they had met, but now she found herself being drawn inexorably towards him, like a moth to the light.
He caught her eye and smiled. ‘Enjoying it?’
She nodded. She wanted to get closer to him, draw him in, drink from the vast pool of his knowledge, find out everything there was to know about him, his life, his dreams.
‘You were going to tell me about the stuff they found in the coffins at the Ding Ling tomb,’ she said.
He waved a hand dismissively. ‘You don’t want to hear about that.’
‘I do. You said much worse was to happen than the smashing of the coffins.’
Lights shone in Michael’s eyes as he leaned towards her and took her hand. ‘They found the most wonderful things in the coffins, Margaret. Beautiful Ming vases, Buddhist scriptures, dozens of pieces of jade, which the ancient Chinese believed would stop the bodies from decaying. But most extraordinary of all was an array of stunning hand-embroidered quilts and brocades. In the coffin of one of the empresses they found an exquisite jacket embroidered with one hundred boys at play. In the other, they found the body of the empress dressed in a jacket and skirt embroidered with dragons and bats and swastikas. All in perfect condition.’
‘Swastikas?’ Margaret was taken aback. ‘Ancient oriental Nazis?’
Michael smiled. ‘No. Hitler only borrowed it from the Chinese. It was the ancient Chinese character for long life. The cretin even managed to get it the wrong way round.’ He paused, and she saw that intensity in his eyes again. ‘The
thing is, all these wonderful embroideries, quilts and jackets and skirts, gold brocades — they had been in there for hundreds of years at a constant temperature, never exposed to the air. No one knew what the effect of oxygen and different humidity levels would be. Hu Bo and the others were still pioneers. They had no idea how to preserve materials like this.’
‘Oh, God,’ Margaret groaned. ‘What happened?’
‘Politics happened,’ Michael said grimly. ‘The great Anti-Rightist Movement of 1958. The leadership ordered work on the tomb to stop. And it ground to a halt for six whole months. The brocades, which the team had tried to preserve by sticking down to plexiglass, hardened and turned brittle. Their colours faded. The wonderful embroideries developed large black spots and began to rot.
‘Hu Bo and his mentor, Xia Nai, had been summoned to Beijing to take part in the political movement. But when they heard what was happening, they hurried back to the tomb. There they found the warehouse, where they had stored the treasures, filled with the smell of mildew. The brilliant colours of the brocades and embroideries had turned into dark clouds. The materials had puckered and shrunk, and when Hu reached out to touch them, they disintegrated in his fingers. Lost for ever. All that remains now are a few sketches made and photographs taken when the coffins were first opened.’
Margaret let out a tiny gasp. ‘It’s unimaginable.’ She shook her head. ‘It must have broken their hearts.’
‘It did,’ Michael said. ‘But there was worse to come.’
‘Jesus,’ Margaret breathed her exasperation. ‘Don’t any of your stories have happy endings?’