The Far Side of the Night

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  Da Lin saw the slight smile on his mother’s face and the cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth as she took the cue in her hands. He heard his father laugh. He did not mind losing.

  He heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the distance.

  He thought about Grandpa. If only he had stayed with him on the farm. Even if the police had arrested him and beaten him to death that would have been better than to be sent away by his own mother.

  Or was that woman not his mother at all? She smelled totally different. She looked totally different. She definitely couldn’t play billiards. His mother would never have worn such a short skirt. And that tight T-shirt. His mother would have been glad to see him and would have embraced him. She would have made room for him and shared her bed with him.

  His mother was dead. He would never see her again. She was dead. She had been run over by a car and no one dared to tell him the truth. Who was that strange woman? Why had they taken him to her?

  He did not want to go with this man, even though Paul said he was his best friend. He was old and sick. He would die soon. Anyone could see that. And then what?

  He didn’t want to go back to the ghost town either. And he couldn’t go back to his village. Nor could he go to Hong Kong with them.

  China was so big. There were so many people. Why was there no-one he could stay with?

  Paul spoke to him in an insistent voice. Da Lin could not understand anything he was saying. He heard the sounds and tones as if through a wall, but could not make out a single word.

  Christine wept. No one had ever cried for his sake before.

  David held his hand and pressed it.

  He wished he could vanish without a trace. Become invisible. Dissolve into nothing. Burn out like the sparks of a flame.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  He still had something to do.

  XI

  Christine did not know how to say goodbye to Da Lin. She had tried to take his hand in the van, but he had pulled it away immediately. He only allowed David to touch him.

  She did not want to leave him behind but she knew that she had no choice. Maybe there would be a chance to bring him over to Hong Kong later, she thought.

  She tried to hug him but he shrank back.

  She did not have the strength to stay silent. “We’ll see each other again soon. I promise.”

  “Promises mustn’t be broken,” David said.

  Zhang had already walked a few paces ahead and was calling for him. Da Lin lingered a moment longer with them. He did not have to say anything. The expression in his childish face was enough of a plea. Christine could stand it no longer so she looked down at the ground. Da Lin continued standing there. Zhang called his name once more. Slowly, he turned and followed him, without looking back even once.

  Christine sat still for a while. Then she gestured to the waiter to come over and asked him for a knife. He gave her a puzzled look.

  “A knife and fork,” she added. “For the cake.”

  He brought her a dessert fork and a useless little knife with a blunt edge. She needed a sharp knife with a long blade. Whatever happened in the next few hours, she did not want to be unarmed. She wanted to be able to defend herself.

  She asked for another knife with a sharp edge. She said she had to undo a seam.

  The waiter returned with a kitchen knife. He was unsettled by her. She could see that in his eyes. When he had gone she wrapped the knife in a paper napkin and put it in her bag.

  Christine looked at the clock. Gao Gao had left the hotel more than an hour ago. Ever since saying goodbye to Zhang and Da Lin, Paul had been sitting motionless on the sofa. She found the sight of him alarming. He looked old. And exhausted. No more help could be expected from him.

  David sat next to his father, drawing.

  Christine could not stand waiting any longer. She got up and walked up and down in the café. She looked into the foyer, came back and walked back to it again. The women at the reception desk looked at her suspiciously. She ought to sit down so that her restlessness did not attract even more attention. But after a few seconds she got up again.

  The concierge came up to her. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Back in the café her eyes went to Paul. He was standing up looking for David.

  XII

  Everything was horribly familiar to him. Waiting. Feeling faint. Feeling that he had lost all control over his own life. In the hospital he had met people who had reacted to this with rage and aggression. They shouted at the doctors and nurses and at each other. Others became very restless and manically overactive. They had constantly to be doing something because they could not deal with the loss of control.

  Christine was one of those people. What did she need a long knife for? Why couldn’t she just sit down by his side? She probably felt contemptuous of his passive behavior. But she was deluded. It was crazy to think that she could still change anything.

  He did not have the power to fight any longer. They had been on the run from their persecutors for two weeks.

  Now they had to give themselves up to fate. And endure it. With integrity and honor. He had retained those qualities after Justin’s death and they would not be taken from him now.

  The most important reason for him to be strong was his son. He must not see his father crumbling. He had to be an example to him.

  David wanted to play tag.

  “No, I’m too tired.”

  “Hide-and-seek, then.” He told Paul to close his eyes and count to ten.

  He put both hands over his eyes and peeked through a crack in his fingers. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  “No peeking,” David cried and disappeared behind a thick curtain.

  “Ten.” Paul got up and pretended to look for him under a bench. And behind the cake counter.

  Christine came back from the foyer. “Where’s David?” Her voice was almost a shriek.

  “We’re playing hide-and-seek,” Paul whispered. “He’s behind . . .”

  “Paul,” she screamed. “How can you let him . . .” She was about to give him a tongue-lashing.

  “But I’m here, Mama,” David said in a disappointed voice, coming out from behind the curtain.

  Paul crept under a table. He heard David counting.

  Suddenly he found himself looking at a pair of smart black leather shoes right in front of him.

  “Mr. Leibovitz?”

  Paul came out from his hiding place.

  “Samuel Adams, attaché at the US embassy. Are these your wife and son?”

  Paul nodded.

  XIII

  Da Lin waited patiently until Zhang had nodded off. He went over to the couch to make sure that Paul’s friend was fast asleep. Then he crept out of the house and closed the door.

  On the street it took him a while to find someone he could ask for the way. There weren’t many people walking about. Most of them had white cloths tied over their mouths and simply hurried on when he approached them. He had never seen so many people in such a hurry. An older woman stopped for him. He was lucky. The nearest police station was not far away.

  Ten minutes later, he was standing in front of a new gray building. Wide steps that looked very dirty led up to the entrance. There were two sacks of cement on them. Workers were making a balustrade.

  Da Lin hesitated. He had lain awake in the van last night and come up with a plan. He had gone through every detail. But now he was frightened. What would the policemen do with him? Beat him the way they had beaten Papa? Lock him up in jail? Was there a jail just for children? Or would he have to be with the grown-ups?

  Paul and Zhang had thought he was asleep but he had heard every word they had said in the van. The policeman was dead. They were wanted for murder. It was unlikely that the embassy – or wherever they were heading for, Da Lin had not quite understood – would help them under these circumstances. Until the case was solved they would be stuck there.
The worst-case scenario was that they might be handed over to the Chinese authorities.

  All because of him. He was a burden that endangered all of them.

  Da Lin did not want David to have to go to a children’s home. He did not want Christine to go to jail. Or Paul.

  There was a way to prevent all that.

  Two policemen came out of the building. Da Lin turned his back to them. They did not take any notice of him.

  His heart was pounding, just like it had yesterday when they were standing in front of the salon and asking for Mama.

  His father had not been afraid of the police.

  Neither had his grandpa. He had known what they would do to him and yet he had not run away.

  Da Lin walked slowly up the steps.

  It took all his strength to open the heavy door.

  He stepped into a room where several policemen were on duty at their desks.

  He felt sick. His stomach lurched.

  A policeman looked at him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

  Da Lin was afraid he would not be able to get the words out. That he would never again be able to leave the world of silence. Since Papa had died he had been in that world so often. But now he wanted to speak.

  Just three sentences.

  Three sentences that he had given careful thought to.

  Even if they were the last ones he would ever speak in this life.

  He thought about Christine. What she had done for him. He heard her voice and knew that he was not alone.

  We’ll see each other again soon. I promise. She had said that when they parted.

  Promises mustn’t be broken, David had said in a determined voice, taking Da Lin’s hand. He could still feel the little fingers between his.

  “What do you want?” The policeman got up and walked over to him. How tall he was. He had big hands and short, thick thumbs. Like little sausages.

  Da Lin wanted to say something. He took a deep breath. Opened his mouth.

  Nothing.

  His lips were refusing to form the sounds. His tongue lay like a lifeless piece of flesh in his mouth. He was afraid that words had failed him forever.

  “Open your mouth, brat, or get lost.” The man and his deep threatening voice were making everything worse.

  Da Lin summoned all his remaining strength and tried to concentrate.

  Just three sentences.

  He had practiced them that morning when he was on his own. He had managed to say them quietly but clearly. He took another deep breath.

  “M-m-m-my n-n-ame is D-D-D- Da Lin.”

  “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Speak up!” The sausage fingers grabbed him by the collar and lifted him effortlessly.

  The next sentence was the difficult one. He had to speak more slowly in order not to stammer. Word for word. Da Lin worked himself up to it.

  “I. Killed. A. Policeman.”

  The sausage fingers let him go. “What did you do?”

  “I. Didn’t. Mean. To.”

  Hong Kong

  I

  Christine lay in her bed and gazed at the play of the bamboo shadows on the ceiling. Next to her, Paul was tossing and turning. He was breathing unevenly but he did not wake up. She got up and went into David’s room to check that everything was all right.

  For the third time that night.

  He was sleeping peacefully in his bed.

  It was warm. She opened a window and cooler morning air streamed in. The clock with the penguins on it showed that it was nearly six o’clock. The first birds were starting to sing.

  Christine sat on the floor and watched her sleeping son. He had cast off his blanket, cushioned his head on his small hands and drawn his knees up to his chest.

  She could not get enough of looking at him. His black curls and his soft limbs, that seemed even more delicate to her than before. He was a small child. Even at birth he had been small. Paul did not like to hear that.

  She wished she could spend all night by his bed looking at him. And all day. Stroking him, cuddling him, burying her nose in his hair, and inhaling the smell of him. He made it quite clear to her that she was too clingy and it sometimes got on his nerves. He would slip out of her grasp then, and keep his distance, or go away and play in his room. But she couldn’t help herself.

  The weeks in China had left their mark. Sometimes he woke in the night and cried out for them. He had never done that before. It was harder for him to concentrate now. Before, he had liked doing jigsaws and had shown unusual patience searching for the right piece. Now he swept everything off the table when he could not immediately find the pieces. She felt he was more moody and irritable, though Paul disagreed.

  She thought about the mug of hot chocolate that he had dropped yesterday. His favorite mug! David had been inconsolable. They had gathered up all the pieces and Paul had managed to painstakingly glue all the porcelain shards back together. The cracks were still clearly visible but there was not a piece missing and, amazingly, it did not leak.

  But David had continued howling bitterly while holding the mug in his hand. “It’s not the same,” he sobbed.

  She felt the same way. The whole family had been put back together from shards but it was no longer the same.

  It would just take some time, Paul said.

  She doubted that. The mug would not be the same anymore, no matter how long David continued using it.

  She heard the alarm go in her bedroom. Before the day began properly, Christine slipped back into bed and curled up to Paul’s back. She put one hand on his chest and felt his heart beating. He was awake; he turned around. They lay nose-to-nose and knee-to-knee. She stroked his face.

  He had shaved off his beard and his face had filled out again. From the outside he did not look very different from the Paul that she remembered. His smell, too, was more familiar to her once more.

  “Good morning,” she whispered.

  “Good morning.”

  Just like before, yet nothing was like it had been before. Since they had returned to Hong Kong they had not kissed properly once. Fleeting kisses of greeting, yes, but greater intimacy was out of the question. They crept around each other. Were considerate of each other’s moods and needs. Made efforts.

  To what end?

  Were they trying not to damage the other person any further? To get closer and achieve a tentative rapprochement? Or simply to achieve some peace, security and normality?

  Some days she looked in the mirror to reassure herself that she was still Christine Wu. She had put on a little weight and her body was beginning to regain the shape she was familiar with. Yet she often found that she still looked strange to herself.

  When she walked into the kitchen there was already a bowl of congee and a small pot of green tea on the table. Paul had made a habit of getting up at the same time as she did. While she had a shower he made some breakfast for her. She told him every morning that he didn’t need to do this. He could sleep in, because David often slept till eight or nine. But he insisted on doing it.

  Paul sat at the kitchen counter with an espresso, writing an email. He would have his breakfast with David later.

  Christine sat down next to him. “Have you heard anything from Beijing?”

  “No.”

  “From Zhang?”

  “No, not from him either.”

  Since they had returned six weeks ago they had tried to find out what had happened to Da Lin after his arrest. For the first few days, Paul had tried to contact Yin Yin, but her mobile phone number had been disconnected. He tracked down the number of the salon, but when he called and asked for her they hung up on him. They had asked the US embassy to find out from the Chinese authorities where Da Lin was. But all they were told was that the boy was in police custody.

  Christine had written to Gao Gao several times. She had made enquiries, but also made no headway.

  More than anything, she hoped that Zhang, through his contacts, might manage to find out something a
bout what had happened to Da Lin. But they had not heard anything from him since his hurried email from Beijing. Paul’s attempts to reach his friend had gone unanswered.

  Not a day passed in which she did not think of Da Lin and how much they owed him. David had named one of his toy pandas Da Lin, but had not talked about him now for some time.

  “Should we make enquiries at the embassy?”

  Paul shut his laptop. “We could. But I don’t think that would make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Da Lin is not American and we are not his relatives. Why should the Chinese authorities reply to yet another enquiry?”

  “Is there nothing else we can do?”

  He furrowed his brow in thought. “I’m afraid not. Not at the moment. We have to wait until Zhang gets in touch or until we can speak to Yin Yin.”

  “I find that very difficult.”

  “I know. I do too.”

  She ate her congee, deep in thought, and sipped her tea. Paul watched her.

  To be able to sit in silence with each other again without having the feeling that they were not talking about something was a first step, though Christine was not sure which direction it went in.

  In her first marriage, when she found out about her husband’s affair, she knew immediately that it was over. Right away and without a trace of doubt. She could not forgive him the years of betrayal, not under any circumstances. The trust between them had been irreparably damaged. It was the end. Over.

  With Paul it was different. He had not betrayed her, not lied to her. Perhaps she herself had been deceived in him but if that were the case, it was her own fault, not his. They did not have to be reconciled; there was nothing to forgive.

  They had been overwhelmed. Who would not have been? They had experienced an extreme situation they had not sought out, one in which there had been nowhere left to hide. They had been forced far beyond their limits, had looked into the abyss and, shocked, had flinched away from what they had each seen in the other.

  And in themselves.

  Neither of them had blamed the other. Yet deep wounds remained. Could they be healed? And if so, what was needed apart from time?