Zhang closed his eyes for a moment and tried to breathe deeply, in and out. His breath was shallow. The exchange with Xi had disturbed him. What his friend was saying now had been on his mind for months.
Of course he had hoped for serenity. He had not left his old life in Shenzhen behind in order to go on an adventure. He had retreated to Shi only to realize that the city now merely shared its name with the place of his birth. He had not recognized anything: not a single building or street or park. His childhood and youth seemed to have been erased.
Zhang had traveled to a monastery in his home province of Sichuan in the hope of finding something. He had wanted to meditate and devote himself to the teachings of Buddha, but not as a goal in itself. The studying was to help him achieve more peace and serenity, to help him towards an inner equanimity. It was to drive away the melancholy that had followed him like a shadow ever since the Cultural Revolution. The older he grew, the more he longed for a peace of mind that, if he was honest with himself, he had never had in his life.
He had hoped to find answers but now he was no longer sure what the questions were.
He cleared his throat. Paul waited patiently.
“I don’t know if I’m in the right place,” he said. “Even after three years I’m finding it difficult to get used to life without Mei. I miss her laugh. I miss her smell next to me in the morning. I even miss her grumbling.”
“And I miss my son, even though we were never as close to each other as I would have wished. Or maybe that’s precisely why I do. Since I moved to the monastery we’ve had no further contact. My phone messages to his voicemail box remain unanswered, as do my emails. At some point I just gave up. I think that in his eyes I’m simply a loser. Someone who’s too old or too stupid to adjust to the new times. He can’t understand that I don’t want any of it. Apparently he’s working as an estate agent in Shenzhen.
“There are many ways a man can lose his children, Paul. I know who I’m talking to, so I don’t say that lightly.”
He had never formulated this thought so clearly, let alone spoken it aloud to anyone. It was only now that he heard these words himself that he understood how sad they sounded. How wounded he was.
Paul knew him well enough not to ask him any questions at this point.
“I imagined life in the monastery to be different. The first abbot was a Maoist in gray robes. He believed that the Enlightened One had preached his teachings directly into his ears and his alone. He was strict and severe in his interpretation of the words of Buddha. He knew of no doubts or contradictions and wouldn’t hear of either. You were either a believer or a nonbeliever. This suited the other monks very well but I could barely tolerate it.
“When he left a year ago to lead a monastery in Yunnan, I was relieved. With the new abbot everything is different but no better. He wants to extend the monastery and turn it into a tourist attraction. We now have a souvenir shop that sells jade pieces blessed by us monks. It’s clear that there is a big market for it in the city. Those were his words – can you imagine? Last week a marketing team from an advertising agency was here. The abbot wants to buy a second monastery in the countryside and offer retreats, yoga classes and weekend seminars there.
“I keep thinking about leaving the monastery.
“But what should I do instead? Who will employ a sixty-something former policeman, former monk and former husband? I could go and work as an advisor for a private security firm. I had an offer to do that once. That isn’t affected by the ups and downs of the economy and it has a future.
“People are always fearful.
“I even find meditating more difficult here than I did in Shenzhen. I don’t know why. Questions pile up. Doubts. Yes, even fears. But look who I’m saying this to.”
Zhang fell silent for a while and lit himself another cigarette.
“Living in a monastery requires passion and commitment,” he said pensively. “It is full of privations, though I couldn’t even say what I miss exactly, apart from Mei and my son. When I was in Shenzhen I didn’t have any friends apart from you. I wasn’t sociable. I was always a loner.
“Maybe it’s the dedication that I can no longer summon up. The passion for an idea. The humility. Or is it the ignorance that a person needs to follow the dogma of another without question? Perhaps I lack the will or the ability to feel at home in a community. Or maybe I’m making it much too complicated and it really is very simple: perhaps I have simply had enough of believing in my life.”
V
Paul woke before his son did. David had been restless in the night, as he had so often been in the last few months, talking in his sleep, and kicking Paul and waking him up several times. Now they lay quietly next to each other. Nose to nose. Paul looked at his sleeping child. The dry air of the air-conditioning had chapped the boy’s lips. He must remember to put some cream on them later.
He listened to the rapid, regular breathing. He looked at the high forehead and the small nose. David had inherited the southern Chinese skin color from his mother; he looked completely different from Justin, who had had pale, almost transparent skin.
Justin. A small child. Even at birth.
Paul shuddered. He did not want to remember. Why did his thoughts have to turn to the past again right now? He was here. In Shi. In a hotel, in bed. Next to David. He wanted to experience nothing else in this moment. There was no yesterday. And no tomorrow. He repeated the words and concentrated on the breathing next to him.
For a short, precious moment he felt only the warm air that came from David’s nose. It streamed gently over his skin. It still had the slightly sweet smell of childhood that would soon disappear forever.
Then the fear in him rose again, and he was unable to defend himself against it. It was the fear that the beating of this little heart could suddenly stop.
Just like that.
Why should it? Christine had asked him when he had told her about his worries once. She understood his fears, but David was a healthy boy who was growing perfectly well. That’s what the doctors said at every examination. Children’s hearts don’t stop beating just like that, Paul. Not without a reason.
He had nodded sadly. How could he have expected her to understand what he meant?
Paul got up and opened the curtains a little. He sat at the desk, picked up his phone and looked up the Hong Kong stock exchange on the Internet. He had earned a lot of money on shares in the last few years. He always bet on a falling market, which, as Christine remarked, was in line with his pessimistic nature.
_________
“Were you four once?”
Paul turned his phone off and looked round in surprise. “Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Were you four once?” David repeated his question.
“Of course.”
“And where was I then?”
“I don’t know,” Paul replied. The wrong answer. Admitting to not knowing anything always unsettled his son and led to more questions that Paul had no answers to.
David shot him a troubled look. “Why not? You always know where I am.”
Paul pulled the curtains back, sat next to him on the bed and thought for a moment. “I was talking nonsense. You were in Mummy’s tummy, of course.”
His son nodded contentedly.
Paul didn’t know what to say next. He found the silence uncomfortable. “Are you hungry?”
David did not respond. He was not a good eater.
“Shall we have breakfast in bed?”
“What are we having?”
“Whatever you want. An egg. Cornflakes. Bread rolls. Someone will even bring it to our room.”
“Really?” David seemed to like the idea. He sat up and thought about it. “I want to eat in the bath.”
“We can’t eat in the bath. Everything will get wet there.”
“In a cave, then!”
“What kind of cave?”
“Like the one you built yesterday.”
Half an hour later, Pa
ul was crouching with his head lowered under the blanket that he had stretched like a tent between the desk and the armchair, held down by an iron, an alarm clock, and a kettle. David lay in front of him under the desk and they ate toast with raspberry jam and drank orange juice, hot chocolate and green tea. They were escaping from a green dragon spewing fire, so they could only speak very quietly.
“What are we going to do today?” Paul whispered.
“See the pandas,” David said immediately.
“But we saw them yesterday.”
“That doesn’t matter. Didn’t you like them?”
“Yes, I did. Very much.”
“Then we can go and see them again.”
Since Paul did not have a better suggestion, he could not counter this logic.
_________
He had actually liked the panda zoo very much. He had not seen a place like this in China before. The lawn was freshly mown and the trees were well tended. Elderly women emptied the rubbish bins. There were no plastic bags or empty bottles lying around. The toilets in the souvenir shop were clean and they worked. At every other bend in the path there were signs telling visitors what they were not allowed to do: spit, curse, push, step on the grass, be rude, wear dirty clothing. To Paul’s amazement, people obeyed the rules.
They walked through a dense bamboo grove, whose tall canes leaned over them like a roof. It looked like they were walking through a long green tunnel. A gust of wind made the bamboo sway and the loud cracking sound startled David. He stopped. “Are there dragons in China?”
“No.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read it somewhere. They died out many years ago.”
Satisfied with this reply, David carried on walking. Soon he could no longer wait to see the pandas, and ran ahead, drawing curious glances. Paul was used to that: wherever he went with his son, the boy attracted attention, even in Hong Kong.
David waited for him at the first enclosure. He had climbed up on a bench and was watching five pandas, who, separated from the visitors by a trench, were sitting less than ten meters away from him and chewing bamboo branches undistracted by the many spectators. Behind them, a panda lay sleeping in the fork of a tree.
“Why is he sleeping in a tree?”
“Because he finds it comfortable. Do you want to try sleeping in a tree in the garden at home?”
David gave him a stern look. Before he could reply, disquiet rose among the spectators. Men with walkie-talkies came down the path and brusquely ordered everyone to make way. They pushed the visitors in front of the enclosure roughly to one side and everyone made way without complaining. Two children stumbled and started crying but their parents hushed them. David climbed into his father’s arms.
Paul saw a dozen young people walking through the bamboo grove towards them. Their laughter and their loud voices could be heard from a distance. They were in their early or mid-twenties and were conspicuously well dressed. The women were carrying expensive handbags and wearing high-heeled leather boots, a lot of jewelry, and big sunglasses.
The other visitors shrank back as they approached. One young man was quite clearly the focal point of the group. Paul could see that from his body language and from the way the others looked at him, vied for his attention and made way for him. He was wearing a tight white T-shirt and his sunglasses were propped on his forehead. The prettiest of the women walked by his side. They stopped in front of the panda enclosure.
Suddenly the young woman shrieked several times.
“Oh, how sweet, how sweet!” she exclaimed rapturously.
Everyone around her looked at what she was staring at. The woman was not interested in the pandas – her eyes were fixed on David.
“How sweet!” she cried again. Her companions were also looking at David curiously now. A few of them laughed. Others pointed their mobile phones at father and son and took photos of them. Paul found the attention unpleasant. He turned away and made to leave.
“Hey!”
Paul flinched.
“Come here.”
He turned back slowly. The young man waved him over. His voice did not sound unfriendly, just strangely authoritative for a person of his age. Every sentence sounded like a command.
The visitors stepped to one side. The gap in front of the young man seemed like an urgent demand to obey a summons. Paul did not wish to be impolite, so he took a few steps towards the group of people. The young man was a head shorter than he was. He had full lips, a large nose, unusually large eyes, and was very muscular. He sized Paul up.
The woman whispered something in his ear. He nodded and they both laughed.
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy,” Paul said, doing his best to be friendly.
“How old?”
“Four.”
“I’ll be five soon,” David chimed in.
Laughter.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Bao.”
“ ‘Precious treasure.’ What a beautiful name.”
She stretched her arms out as though she expected David to come to her. “A photo.” Paul involuntarily tightened his grip on his son. She stood next to him and her friends and many of the onlookers took photos, as though she was a Hollywood starlet. Then a friend wanted to join in the photo. And another one. And yet another.
She stretched her arms out again. David held on tight to his father. She took a black and white lollipop shaped like a panda head out of her bag and offered it to David, who cast a questioning glance at his father. Paul nodded.
“Only if you let me hold you,” she said, smiling, withdrawing the lollipop.
David hesitated, and then he slid from Paul’s arms into the young woman’s. Her friends cheered and laughed and took more photographs. The woman herself was so happy that she was quiet. She gave David the lollipop, sniffed his hair and stroked his neck gently.
Paul was finding the situation more and more uncomfortable. “We must go,” he said, taking his son back. He could feel that she did not want to let go from the way she clung to David and resisted, only reluctantly letting him go after some delay.
“One more photo with my friend,” she demanded.
It was the tone of voice that annoyed Paul. “No, that’s enough,” he said curtly, turning away.
“You’ll stay here until my girlfriend and I get one more photo with your son.”
Paul wondered if he should respond to this outrageous behavior or ignore it. He did not want to get into a fight, but before he could take another step, two bodyguards were standing in his way. He moved to the left, then to the right, and the two men followed him each time. They meant business. He would not get past them. Paul turned around.
“Tell your men to let me pass.”
The young man crossed his arms. There was a challenging look of mocking laughter on his face.
Paul walked right up to him, straightened himself to his full height and said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Asshole”.
Without waiting for a reaction, he pushed him roughly to one side and walked with firm steps towards the bamboo grove that led to the exit. Half a dozen men with walkie-talkies caught up with him but were unsure about what to do. They were clearly waiting for orders. Paul heard the walkie-talkies crackling and a voice repeating words that Paul did not understand. After twenty meters they fell back and let Paul continue.
David had watched the whole scene attentively without reacting. Now he gave his father a stern look. “You’re not allowed to say ‘asshole’.”
VI
Paul needed the toilet so urgently that his stomach hurt. He had wanted to go by the zoo exit but the line had been too long and David had become impatient. The streets had been jammed with traffic and the taxi ride to the hotel had taken almost one and a half hours. Paul could hardly hold out any longer.
He rushed across the foyer in long striding steps and parked the pushchair next to one of the pillars in front of the gentlemen’s toil
ets. “Wait here for me. I’ll be right back.”
When he came back two minutes later, the pushchair was empty.
Paul looked around the foyer. More annoyed than worried. How often had he told his son that he mustn’t just run off somewhere? On Lamma he had once nearly fallen from the jetty into the sea doing that. He owed his life to an alert passer-by.
“Bao!” When Paul was being stern with his son he often switched to Chinese.
He looked behind the pillars. Behind two luxuriant potted plants. A bench. A display cabinet.
David liked hiding under tables. Paul kneeled in front of a sofa suite and crawled around it on all fours.
Nothing.
“David?”
He got up again and realized that the chatter in the foyer had died down. People were frozen in their places and not moving. As though someone had paused a film. All eyes were on him.
“Has anyone seen my son?” Paul shouted in the quiet foyer.
Silence.
They averted their gazes. The receptionists, the concierge, the three businessmen next to him. The two hotel porters.
“Has anyone seen my son?” Paul called out again. Louder and more urgently. No reaction.
Paul walked toward the exit and everyone fell back into doing what they had been doing as if by command.
Several black Audi sedans and two Mercedes SUVs were parked in the driveway. The doorman stared at Paul.
“Have you seen my son?”
An empty, dismissive look in reply.
A deep bass beat was growling from one of the SUVs. The windows were tinted so Paul could not see if anyone was sitting in it. He knocked against the driver’s window. The window was lowered a little. At the wheel was a man with a crew cut and a mole on the forehead of his pockmarked face. He gave Paul a questioning look.
“Have you just seen a child come out of the hotel on his own?”
The music boomed in the vehicle. Paul was not sure if the man had even understood what he had said. He repeated his question, more loudly this time. The man shook his head and the window was raised again.
The Far Side of the Night Page 3