“There she is,” Da Lin called. “There she is.”
His mother looked very different from the way he remembered her. Like the other women, she was wearing a short black skirt and a T-shirt that was much too tight. She had painted her lips bright red. Da Lin thought she looked awful. Suddenly he was no longer sure if he wanted to see her at all.
“Should I go with him?” Christine asked.
Luckily, Paul said, “No, I’ll go.” Da Lin did not like the thought of Christine face to face with his mother.
They got out of the van and went towards his mother. He automatically reached out for Paul’s hand again.
V
“What are you doing here?”
Paul took a deep breath. This was what he had feared.
Her voice was deep and her tone was cold. He wished he could have gathered Da Lin up in his arms and turned away on the spot. But there was no way to spare him the next few minutes.
He could feel Da Lin’s hand growing even colder.
She looked Paul up and down. The face that was looking at him was not a beautiful one. Small suspicious eyes with dark rings beneath them, heavily made-up out of necessity. Narrow, hard lips made to look wider with gaudy red lipstick. She looked tired and haggard. He suspected that she was on drugs.
“Who are you?”
“Could we speak in private somewhere?” Paul asked in as calm a manner as he could manage.
She looked around her. “Where?”
“In the salon, perhaps?”
“There’s no space there.”
“In a restaurant?”
Yin Yin thought for a moment. Then she turned on her heel and opened the salon door. “Come in.”
She reluctantly led them up the stairs and into a small room with two beds and two chairs. The ceiling was so low that Paul could not stand up straight. A bare red light bulb hung from the middle. He sat down with Da Lin on one of the beds. Yin Yin perched on the other one. The air in the room was heavy and warm.
“Why aren’t you with Grandpa?”
Da Lin had been staring at his mother all this time and shrinking into himself. Now he looked down and did not answer her.
“I’m talking to you.”
“His grandfather can no longer care for him,” Paul said.
“I can’t either.” She hesitated briefly. “What’s happened to Luo?”
Paul did not want to tell her anything, not about the death of the policeman, nor about Luo’s. Not yet, at least. From what he saw of her, he feared that she would not want to keep her son with her if she knew that the police were looking for him.
“His health is not good. He can . . .”
“Is he dead?”
Paul didn’t know what he should say. It was Da Lin who helped him.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Grandpa is dead.”
Yin Yin sighed heavily. “And who are you?”
“We’re friends.”
“Whose friends?” she asked. Her tone of voice made it clear that she thought the statement completely absurd.
“Your father-in-law’s.”
A suspicious look. “I don’t believe a word you’re saying. He never knew what a friend was.”
From somewhere below they heard quiet groaning that grew louder and louder with each second.
Paul was finding the situation more and more unpleasant. He started sweating.
They could feel the violent movements even up here. A brief cry. Silence.
“Shall I take you back to the van?” he asked.
Da Lin shook his head.
They sat in silence. Yin Yin looked Paul straight in the eye, refusing to let him look away, as though she was waiting for him to suggest a solution.
“You can’t stay here with me,” she finally said in a firm voice. “I have no room for you.”
Paul was so startled that he thought he had not understood what she had said. Maybe it was her Mandarin, which she spoke with a heavy Sichuan accent. “What do you mean?”
“It’s quite simple. Da Lin can’t stay with me.”
Maybe it would have been different if he had heard a note of regret in her voice. A hint of sadness. A feeling of guilt. A pang of conscience.
But maybe, he thought later, that was too much to expect. Perhaps her brusque, harsh tone and cold manner was her way of hiding what was going on inside her. With hindsight, he regretted the way he reacted.
In the moment, though, Paul felt nothing but rising anger and indignation.
“What do you mean he can’t stay here with you?” He had to make a great effort to keep his voice down. “Where should he go? Do you want to leave him on the street? Da Lin is your son. You have a goddamn duty to care for him. Who else should do it? His father is dead! His grandfather is dead! You can’t sit there and say he can’t stay with you. He has to. He has to. You’re his mother! Apart from you he has no one left.”
Yin Yin looked at him expressionlessly and said nothing.
Paul had worked himself up into such a fury that he did not realize that Da Lin had started crying.
VI
What was going through the mind of a mother who had not seen her son for nearly two years and did not even embrace him? Who said that she had no room for him even though she knew that there was no one else who could take him in? Christine could hardly believe what Paul told her. How could a person be so cold and hard-hearted?
Her indignation did not last long. She thought about her dead brother. He had not been able to escape to Hong Kong as a child and had spent his life in China. They had not heard from each other for more than forty years. After they met again, Christine had wondered every so often what would have happened to her if she had stayed in China. It was a matter of luck, not merit, that she had been able to grow up in Hong Kong. What kind of person would the China Years have turned her into? Certainly not into a mother who rejected her twelve-year-old son. So she thought. So she hoped. Was it foolhardy to even think she had the answer to such a question?
Hard times created hard people.
Without looking at anyone, Da Lin crept past her onto the rearmost seat in the van, lay down, and curled himself up in a ball.
“What’s wrong with him, Mama?” David wanted to know. “Does he have ow-ow?”
“Yes.”
David clambered over the armrests into the back of the van and patted Da Lin. Da Lin did not resist.
“What are we going to do now?” Her question was directed at no one in particular. The reply was a helpless silence.
“We can’t stay here anyway,” Gao Gao finally said. She started the engine.
Christine was not able to formulate any clear thoughts. She felt nothing but a deep emptiness within her. What to do with Da Lin? Was there a chance they could take him with them to Hong Kong? Or just to the US embassy in the first instance? Would they take care of him there? Probably not. Christine saw from Paul’s exhausted expression that he could not think of a solution. Even Zhang, who she thought could see a way out of even the most difficult situations, sat slumped with defeat in the passenger seat.
David was the only one who knew what to do. He sat down next to Da Lin on the rear seat and kept on stroking him.
VII
Gao Gao turned north onto the first ring road. Her pale, almost translucent skin was flushed red in the face and the neck. She sat upright, gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and looked straight ahead with a strained expression.
“Where are we going?” Zhang wanted to know.
“I don’t know.”
She merged with the flow of traffic and Zhang got the feeling that she was simply joining in with the cars on the right-hand lane rather than actively determining the speed she was driving or the direction she was going in.
“Do you have any suggestions?” she asked, without looking at him.
He did not. Zhang turned around. He saw Christine and Paul sitting next to each other like a couple of strangers. She had leaned her head against the glass and was staring out
of the window. He sat next to her with his head lowered.
He could not expect to get an answer out of them.
Zhang tried to focus. Going back to where they had spent the night was not an option. The longer they spent in Beijing, the greater the risk of being found. Paul and his family had to get to the US embassy as quickly as possible. Even if the authorities did not permit them to leave the country while they were wanted in connection with murder. That was a problem the diplomats would have to deal with.
He would find a solution for Da Lin later. He hoped.
The traffic began to slow down.
“Is there a hotel near the embassy?”
“No idea. Have a look.” She passed him her phone.
Zhang found a Hilton Hotel less than ten minutes away. Paul, Christine, and David could take a taxi from there. That would be safer than if the three of them arrived in the van driven by Gao Gao. He entered the address into the phone for it to find the route. They were driving in the wrong direction.
Gao Gao braked hard, until they came to complete standstill.
“What’s wrong?” Paul asked.
“Traffic jam,” Gao Gao said.
Lots of blue lights were flashing three or four hundred meters away from them.
“An accident, probably.”
Or a police roadblock, Zhang thought. Not very likely at this time of the day on the first ring road, but not out of the question.
Zhang could see that Gao Gao was getting concerned. She looked to the left and the right as if to see if she could turn round on the main road. “We’re stuck,” she said quietly, more to herself than anything.
The minutes passed and they did not move. The red spots on her throat grew larger and darker.
Suddenly they heard sirens behind them. A police car was making its way through the jam doggedly, followed by an ambulance.
“Where are we going?” Paul asked.
“To a hotel near the embassy. You’ll take a taxi from there. We’ll wait in the hotel with you for a little while.”
Paul leaned all the way forward. “What about Da Lin?” he whispered.
XVIII
Paul saw him first. A young man on a street corner. His hands buried in the pockets of a light jacket, waiting patiently on the spot as though he had turned up early for an appointment. Conspicuously inconspicuous.
He sized up every car that turned into Donglin Lu with watchful eyes.
It was the look of suspicion in his eyes that gave him away.
Christine kept her son hidden on her lap; he lay beneath a black blanket that stank of stale smoke. Her eyes were closed, as though she was asleep.
Paul knew she wasn’t.
She had not believed that they would make it. Not when they had first fled, nor later on, as they had left Shi further behind them with each passing day. Not even this morning.
The traffic lights turned red and the taxi stopped. Christine opened her eyes briefly and he could see that she still did not believe it. One more street to go, he wanted to say. Look out of the window. Reassure yourself. Two hundred meters, maybe three hundred, no more than that. What was one more street after thousands of kilometers on the run?
The man on the street corner would not be able to stop them on his own.
Then he saw a second man.
And a third.
A black Audi with tinted windows, with its headlights off, drew up and parked not far from the security zone in front of the embassy. He noticed a group of young men lurking under one of the gingko trees, keeping watch.
“Don’t stop. Drive on,” he said to the taxi driver.
“The embassy is here.”
“I know where the embassy is. Keep driving.”
Christine. Alarmed. How fear could show so strongly on a face, Paul thought. That was something it had in common with love.
“But you wanted to go to the embassy.”
“Carry on driving. Go!”
“Where to?”
Sometimes there were no answers to simple questions. Especially not to those questions.
“Where to?” the driver said again.
“Back to the Hilton Hotel.”
The car made a sharp turn and the driver sped up in order not to have to wait at the next red light. The lights turned red just as they passed the junction. Paul turned round. He couldn’t see a car following them.
They drove towards the ring road and stopped at the hotel a few minutes later. A porter opened the door for them, welcomed them warmly and asked them if they had any luggage.
“No luggage, thank you.”
They hurried into the foyer. Paul looked round for Gao Gao or Zhang but could not see them.
“Are we in the right hotel?” Christine whispered.
“Of course. We were just here a few minutes ago. They said they would wait a little while.” They stood in the foyer feeling lost.
“Can I help you?” the concierge asked.
“We’re . . . we’re looking for friends.”
“Perhaps they’re waiting in the café?”
They walked across the foyer and found Gao Gao, Zhang, and Da Lin in a corner at the very back of the café sitting in front of three slices of cake that were untouched. They were the only guests.
Paul told them what he had seen.
Zhang sank deeper and deeper into the cushions. “I was afraid that would happen,” he said. “Did they see you in the taxi?”
“I don’t think so.”
Zhang buried his head in his hands. All eyes were turned on him.
“They’re keeping watch on the telephones,” he said. “There’s only one way to reach the embassy now. Paul has to write a short letter explaining the desperate situation you’re in, and ask for a diplomat to pick him up here from the hotel in a car. Vehicles with diplomatic license plates are not stopped when entering or leaving the embassy. Out of all of us, Gao Gao will attract the least attention. She must go to the consular section of the embassy on the pretext of applying for a visa and deliver the letter there.”
He did not sound convinced by his plan.
“What if Gao Gao is stopped outside the embassy?” Christine asked in a doubtful voice. “The letter will say where we are. We’ll lead them to us. They will only have to come and get us.”
Zhang nodded.
“And what if they only read the letter in the embassy tomorrow morning? Or don’t even accept it in the first place?” Paul added.
“I don’t know. Does anyone have a better idea?”
They fell silent, deep in thought. After a while, Christine stood up and got some headed paper from the reception desk.
In a few sentences, Paul described the kidnapping of David, their subsequent flight, and the secret police outside the embassy. He did not mention the death of the policeman. Under his name, he added his American passport number and his date and place of birth so that his details could be checked.
Gao Gao picked up the letter. It was ten minutes’ walk from the hotel to the embassy. She hoped to be back in two hours at the most.
IX
A waiter came to ask if they wanted anything else. They ordered some water, tea, an espresso for Paul, and an ice cream for David. Da Lin did not reply when they asked him if he wanted anything to drink. He had not spoken at all since the meeting with his mother. Apart from glancing at David a couple of times, he did not look at them at all. David did not leave his side.
Zhang grew more and more restless with every passing minute. He could barely sit still. He jiggled his left leg so hard that the water in the glasses sloshed around.
When Christine went to the toilet with the two boys he turned to Paul. “It would be better for me to leave with Da Lin now.”
“Why?”
“The Americans won’t protect the boy. And if the police come . . .” He let his words fade away without finishing his sentence.
“Where will you go?”
“We can stay one more night with Hong Mei.”
&nbs
p; “And then?”
“I’ll travel to the monastery in Tibet and take him with me as a novice. He’ll be safe from the police there for the time being. In a few years he can decide for himself if he wants to be a monk or to do something else. What do you think?”
“Hmm.”
Zhang did not think Paul had been listening to him. He saw the tension in his friend’s face, and wished he could do something for him. But they had come to the end of the road they had been travelling together. Now they could only wait and hope that Gao Gao would not be turned away and that a diplomat would take the letter seriously.
“What do you think?” he asked again.
Paul leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. “I don’t want you to go,” he said quietly.
Zhang took hold of his hand. He had never done that before in their friendship of over thirty years. Apart from his ex-wife and his son, no one else was closer to him than Paul was. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, he now had to look after the boy. Out of all of them he was in the greatest danger, and he had no one else.
“I don’t want to either. But . . .”
Paul interrupted him. “I know. How will I find you?”
“You won’t. I’ll contact you. But it will take some time. At least a few months. Probably more.”
“Will we see each other again?”
“Probably.”
X
There was no room for him.
And he didn’t even need very much. He could sleep on a blanket on the floor. Even without a blanket if he had to. He would have left her in peace while she cut people’s hair, and wouldn’t have bothered her. He didn’t eat much and didn’t say much. So why couldn’t he have stayed with his mother?
She had probably found a new husband long ago. And had another child. A new family, in which there was no room for him.
Da Lin thought about his father. That hurt.
Once the three of them had played billiards together. Mama, Papa, and him. Grandpa had looked on. It had been a warm summer’s day, Da Lin suddenly remembered very clearly. Papa had wanted to show them a few tricks but it had been Mama who had won the games. One after another.
The Far Side of the Night Page 21