BIG PAPA WU STOOD in the foyer of his spacious shop, letting his weight drop at the halfway point between his two feet. He stared at Mei with empty eyes. He was not a big man, but he was every inch tough. He was clean-shaven and crew-cut, and Mei made him out to be in his forties, though it was difficult to say whether early or late. He didn’t ask who had sent her or why. He just stood there looking down at her with an icy stare.
She had told him that she worked for a wealthy collector and wanted to talk to him about one of his recent acquisitions. Then she showed him the same picture she had shown the other dealers.
Big Papa Wu had thrown a quick glance at the picture and gone dead on her. The friendly anticipation of yet another customer had vanished into the dark void behind his eyes.
Mei watched as he walked up to a young man behind a pair of blue Ming vase reproductions. Heads together, they looked at her as they spoke. A few minutes later, the two men went off in different directions. Big Papa Wu disappeared into the back. The young man came straight at Mei. The corners of her mouth curled up. She knew there wasn’t much he could do to make her leave. After all, she was a woman, well dressed and soft-shouldered. But she also knew there was nothing here for her anymore. So she left.
Across the street was a bazaar that sold small items, things like stone seals and antique jewelry, in trays. The stalls were organized in the shape of an enclosed rectangle, inside which sat dealers on high stools or folding chairs.
Mei took off her coat and untied her hair. She pretended to be interested in buying rubbings while, all the time, keeping an eye on the entrance to Big Papa Wu’s.
His was a two-story mansion with a raised entrance flanked by long windows and a balcony on the first floor. The windows and the balcony railings were constructed of thin strips of wood worked into delicate square patterns resembling Chinese characters.
Twenty minutes later, Mei saw Big Papa Wu coming out, dressed in a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. He stopped at the top of the steps and lit a cigarette with slow, measured movements. Puffing, he eyed the street in both directions, then walked down the steps, checked the street again, spat between his feet, and turned right.
Mei seized her chance, joining the stream of shoppers drifting toward South Xinhua Street, her eyes firmly on Big Papa Wu.
A red taxi did a U-turn and stopped at the entrance to the pedestrian zone. Its light went off, and a Chinese woman and a white man emerged. Big Papa Wu waved the cigarette that was sandwiched between his fingers, signaling the driver to bring the taxi around. When it pulled up, Big Papa Wu threw his cigarette on the ground with a jerk of his wrist and got in. The taxi’s light lit up. With a cough of black smoke, it drove off toward Peace Gate.
Mei rushed to her car.
Shoppers and shopping bags had taken over the steps leading up to the entrance of the Lufthansa Center. Everywhere was confusion. Friends looked for friends. Families argued about how to get home. A man zigzagged through the crowd peddling watches from inside his coat. Every now and then, a luxury car pulled up in front of the shopping center to spill out a pretty girl and her Dakuan—her big money man.
Big Papa Wu alighted from the taxi and walked slowly up the steps, looking around. He seemed to be searching for someone or something.
Mei drove into the parking lot and switched off the engine. At the top of the steps, Big Papa Wu stopped. He lit another cigarette.
From a newspaper hut, a loudspeaker was blasting advertisements for the latest edition of the TV guide. Taxi drivers struggled for passengers. Private cars struggled for parking spaces.
Mei sat inside her car, hiding behind a magazine that she pretended to read and watching Big Papa Wu.
Before long, Big Papa Wu made his move. Crushing the cigarette under his heel, he strode down to greet a large black car that had just pulled up. The car door opened. A tall man in a sleek sport jacket stepped out, followed by a leggy young woman of the same height.
The two men shook hands and chatted. The girl was introduced. People turned their heads to stare at the beautiful couple. The chauffeur pointed to a space near the entrance and said something to the man, probably indicating that he would be waiting there. As the car moved off, Mei noticed that it was an Audi and that it had a Beijing license plate.
Big Papa Wu and the beautiful couple entered the shopping center.
Mei got out of her car to follow them.
ELEVEN
LONELINESS IS WHAT FOLLOWS US to the end, thought Ling Bai as her body hit the floor. She heard the sound of china breaking, first a loud bang, then a gentle tinkle. Tofu flower soup was now all over the floor, white jellylike chunks wobbling on top of thick brown broth. Two steamed buns rolled down toward the bookshelf. The room suddenly filled with the smell of food.
Ling Bai stretched out her hand, trying to grab the leg of the table in order to pull her body closer to the red telephone, covered by a handkerchief on the small table in the entrance hall. She could already feel the pain subsiding from the left side of her body and knew that in a matter of minutes, she would not be able to move at all. Her heart was thumping. She gasped, and gasped again, but could not breathe. She reached out like a drowning woman calling for help.
She lay with her head on the cold floor. She remembered the spring coming through her kitchen window, a square-meter opening in a six-story matchbox. She thought of the unfinished painting in her studio. It was a traditional subject: a cat playing with a ball in a rock garden. She had stood in front of it, contemplating the composition, while her meat buns were steaming on the stove.
Sunshine had leaked into the living room. The day was now transparent and lightweight. Ling Bai felt her body floating up into the brightness and peace beyond. She closed her eyes and stopped struggling.
Yet the pain, earthly and heavy, began to pull her back down, to remind her of the darkness of death. Ling Bai twitched involuntarily and groaned. She didn’t mind dying. But she didn’t want to leave before she was forgiven.
TWELVE
AS SHE REACHED THE TOP of the stairs, Mei’s cell phone rang, startling her. Instead of answering it, she pushed open the glass door, stepping into a white cosmetics hall. Gorgeous Shiseido and Dior posters faced her. Salesladies in perfect makeup were murmuring about creams and lipsticks. There was no sign of Big Papa Wu and his friends. Mei looked around in annoyance, wondering how they could have disappeared so quickly and where she should start looking. Her cell phone rang again.
This time she answered it, trying to keep her voice to a whisper. “Who is it?”
It was Gupin, shouting. His accent was heavier than usual.
“Calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Quickly, Mei! Something has happened to your mother.”
Twenty minutes later, Mei was racing down the busy streets of Chaoyang in her red Mitsubishi. At the entrance to the ring road, she halted, blocked by a traffic jam as taxis and private cars fought to get onto the freeway. Mei honked, long and loud.
The ring road opened like a knife gleaming under the blue sky. On the way to her mother’s apartment, Mei passed the Bridge of Three Elements and other places she remembered well.
Years ago, when she was a senior at university, she did a bike tour of the east coast. She had answered an advertisement on a campus bulletin board that said: “Three male political science graduate students seek three female students to join them for a bicycle trip to attend the anniversary of Tangshan earthquake. Must be fun and adventurous.”
Two hundred thousand people had died in that earthquake in 1976. “Fun” and “adventure” were not exactly the words that came to mind. Yaping was going home for the summer holiday. He didn’t like the idea because it was not something anyone had done before. He also suspected the intentions of the three graduate students. But Mei was never afraid of anything; nor would she let others dictate what she could or could not do. She answered the ad.
They had a fantastic time. The trip took
the six of them beyond Tangshan. After three weeks and eight hundred kilometers, two of their bikes were beyond repair. The girls were exhausted. They flagged down a truck to carry them on the last leg of their journey and arrived at the Bridge of Three Elements in Beijing covered in mosquito bites and minor bruises. Mei still had a photo of the six of them smiling triumphantly on top of the bridge, their bicycles piled behind them on the pavement like scrap metal.
It used to be the road leading home for Mei. Back then it was the symbol of Beijing’s newfound prosperity. There were still green fields to the north of the road. Where is home now? Mei wondered. She and Lu had moved out of her mother’s apartment a long time ago. As more high-rises were built, the landscape along the road had changed into new and unrecognizable shapes. So had their lives.
Mei couldn’t find out what exactly had happened to Mama. The maid who had called Mei’s office was hysterical. Mei had immediately telephoned for an ambulance to go to her mother’s apartment, then dialed Auntie Zhao’s number. Auntie and Uncle Zhao had been their neighbors for almost twenty years.
Few words were exchanged when Auntie Zhao called back to tell Mei that the ambulance had come and that she was going with it to the hospital.
“I’ll see you there,” Mei said, and hung up.
Mei left the ring road at West Garden and was quickly caught up in the slow, narrow streets of Haidian District. There were shops and vending booths on both sides of the road. Hundreds of bicycles pressed along the middle, sometimes completely filling the gaps between buses and cars. Horse carts moved slowly, despite the peasants cracking their whips and shouting, “Ja, ja.”
After the Summer Palace, the West Mountains appeared. The Grand Canal, lined with white aspen trees, flowed unassumingly at the bottom of the mountain. No more mad constructions and crowded shops. No more city uniformity. The air was fresher and colder.
On that quiet riverbank, deep in the shade of aspen, Mei remembered a little girl, about ten years old, engrossed in a search for white mushrooms that had sprung up after a warm rain.
“Mama, are these the right ones?” She had run up to her mother, some meters ahead, shaking her pigtails with excitement, eyes wide.
“They are just the kind we are looking for,” her mother had said, taking in the mushrooms with a deep breath. Daughter and mother bore an astonishing resemblance: the way they curled the corners of their mouth when they spoke and the straightness of their nose—a little too sharp, some said.
Oh, how her mother had smiled at her! How young she had been; how young they both had been! Mei’s breath became shorter, her heartbeat faster. She could hardly hold the steering wheel. She felt that her insides were going to burst out of her body. Tears poured down her face. Those happy days blurred before her mind’s eye.
Number 309 Hospital was one of the four military hospitals in Beijing. An angry-looking receptionist rolled her eyes crossly when Mei asked her where the emergency room was. “First floor,” she answered brusquely. Mei made her way up the stairs without waiting for the elevator. There were four darkened hallways. Tired relatives lay on benches, squatted or sat on the floor. Some were eating.
Mei followed the sign for the emergency room onto a sky-walk bridging two buildings. A thundering noise rolled toward her, and she jumped to one side. A trolley was speeding down the ramp, boiling water spilling from the spouts of kettles. Wrapped in a cloud of steam, a worker was running beside the trolley, trying to balance it. Another worker at the back pulled the handle-bar as hard as he could to slow it down.
Auntie Zhao was outside the emergency room. Seeing Mei, she staggered over on her cane. Mei reached out to help her but instead found herself pulled forward to Auntie Zhao’s chest. Mei was surprised by the strength of the tiny woman.
“You poor girl!” said Auntie Zhao as she embraced her.
In the arms of this thin-limbed lady whom she had known for twenty years, Mei felt as if she had come to the end of a journey. The ocean behind her had ceased roaring, and like a battered boat at harbor, she broke down.
“She’s been inside for a while now. The doctors and nurses are all there.” Tears were welling inside Auntie Zhao’s eyes also. To conceal them, she turned her head to one side for a moment and asked Mei whether Lu was coming.
Lu! In the rush to get to the hospital, Mei hadn’t even thought to call her sister.
Lu’s assistant answered her phone. He told Mei that her sister was in the studio recording her show. “I will let her know as soon as she comes out,” his trained, impersonal voice assured her.
Mei sat down with Auntie Zhao.
“When I got there, I saw her lying on the living room floor, breakfast spilled everywhere,” said Auntie Zhao. “There was white foam on her lips. She was twitching. I tried to talk to her. I thought she wanted to say something, but nothing came out. I told her not to worry and that you’d called the ambulance. The maid was crying and saying that she wanted to go home. I told her to shut up and start cleaning up the place. Then the ambulance came.”
“Thank you for helping. Especially for coming to the hospital.”
“Of course. Don’t even mention it.”
The emergency room door swung open. Noises, a bed, and three nurses came out. One of them was pushing the bed, one was holding a drip, and one was carrying oxygen. A couple of doctors followed behind.
“Mama!” Mei stopped the moving bed.
But her mother did not respond. There were tubes attached to her nose, arms, and mouth. She looked like a broken machine being taped together again.
The younger of the two doctors came up to Mei. “She is still unconscious. Are you her daughter?”
“What happened to her?” asked Mei without taking her eyes off her mother, who looked dry and lifeless, as if she might fade away at any minute.
“She had a stroke. It was bad. Could I talk to you in my office?”
“Where are you taking her?” Mei held on to the bed.
“Room 206 in Building Number 3.”
“I will go with them.” Auntie Zhao hopped over on her cane.
The young doctor’s office was a windowless room at the end of the hall. Three men in white coats were watching a small TV fixed to the wall.
“Get out, get out,” the doctor said to them. “I need to talk to the relatives.”
The other white coats paid no attention to Mei at all. Slowly, they got up, teacups in hand, and left the room chatting.
The doctor looked to be in his mid-thirties. A pair of dark-framed glasses sat clumsily on his nose. “We’ve done everything we could, and now it is up to her. She may improve or not,” he said after they sat down.
“When will we know?” asked Mei.
“We should have a better idea in the next a few days—it’s hard to say when, exactly.”
“What are her chances?”
“Hard to say,” the doctor said again. “Wait and see, okay?” Then he cleared his throat, preparing to deliver a speech he had obviously made many times before. “Sorry to be bringing up the cost issue at this time. But you do understand, don’t you? If your mother’s condition worsens, she will need intensive care and treatment. Will you be able to pay the costs yourselves? If you are able to pay privately, we can use imported drugs straightaway.” The doctor looked up, but not quite at Mei. His glance was focused on something beyond, somewhere ambiguous.
“What about her medical insurance?” Mama had been an employee of the government all her life, a Party member. She must have benefits. She certainly should have.
“I’m afraid your mother’s ranking is not high enough,” said the doctor, now looking at Mei.
Mei felt the scrutiny of those shallow eyes. They seemed to imply that her mother was some sort of failure, her life unimportant.
“When do we need to decide?” Mei asked, trying to hold back her rage. She wanted the best treatment and care for her mother. But she did not have that kind of money. Medical bills, depending on how long her mother would ne
ed to be hospitalized, could really add up. She needed to speak to Lu.
“Anytime, really. When you are ready, just come to see me and sign the paper.”
On her way back to her mother, Mei tried Lu again. The assistant responded with a bit more warmth this time. “She is coming out of the studio right now.”
Mei updated her sister on what had happened. She could hear Lu crying on the other end. “Of course, I will pay whatever the cost. Mama will have the best treatment. I’ll sign anything. I’m coming as soon as I can.”
THIRTEEN
WHEN MEI REACHED ROOM 206 in Building Number 3, her mother was asleep. A beat-up yellowish aluminum mug stood on her nightstand. An aluminum spoon stood inside. A large red thermos had been left at the foot of the nightstand. It had a pink plum blossom painted on it and CRITICAL I written in black ink.
The patient in the next bed, an elderly woman, was about to have dinner. Her face was weathered from a lifetime of working in the fields. Her hair was short and yet still pinned back. It can’t have been easy to do up all those pins, Mei thought. A young girl who looked like the woman’s granddaughter had come with a bag of food. She took out an apple and tossed it over. Like an outfielder, the old woman caught the flying apple in midair. Mei wondered what kind of life-threatening illness had brought her here. Judging from their provincial accents, Mei guessed that they were relatives of some military people stationed in Beijing. They had probably used their connections to get the old woman in here; rooms for critically ill patients were better equipped than the wards and shared by only two people.
Aunti Zhao got up to leave. Mei walked her to the door and thanked her again. She then went back to her mother’s side and sat down on a plastic stool.
More people had come to see the old woman. Sweet buns, sausages, and pancakes started to fly across the room. Perhaps because of their loud talk and laughter, or maybe because the anesthetic had worn off, Ling Bai groaned and woke up.
The Eye of Jade Page 7