But Ke had been gone for only two days. They shouldn’t worry. And Joan was coming out tomorrow. Couple of days and she would be in Beijing with Joan, shopping for the old friends at home: Rose, Andy, Ben. She should not feel low, or sad, now.
She could see the primitive tools in the store room, the flail, the mattock, the saws, the rumpled and empty fertilizer bags. She could smell the fresh manure in the air.
God, you’re getting to like the stink!
She walked through the black village, hearing a pig snuffling, a hen flapping a wing once before settling back to sleep. A dog growled at her, sniffed the air and turned away in boredom. She had become accepted.
How long have you been here? It’s nearly the end of May, six weeks from that funny kid with the paste pot at Guangzhou, six weeks from the neurotic kid that feared her mother was going to throw some sort of spell to make her Chinese. Oh horrors! Now you can control geese by the way you fling out the rice, get the rhythm of the flail as it clicks over your head; you can walk the yoke without slopping the buckets – better than Ke. How can you tell that to Rose or Ben? How can you tell that to the student in Guangzhou? No, you’re not Chinese, but you’re not not Chinese either. It doesn’t matter any more.
A distant truck was quietly approaching.
But Joan will move into the village tomorrow and maybe she will sneer at the ancient, the repaired things that farmhand Leah has learnt to understand and work with. No she won’t: that’s not her at all. That was the little monster you had created in your mind. Maybe you’re low because you’re leaving China now and you’re just discovering Joan …
Not just a truck. A truck and a motor bike.
And you don’t want to leave China without seeing Ke.
Maybe, even with Joan unfolding, you’re still just a little bit lonely.
Oh, fine, very good, why don’t you stick your head in a bucket?
Heng’s bike.
All right, all right. But do you think he has a girlfriend? Just curious, that’s all, after all you have a boyfriend back home. Good old Ben, the cycle carrier.
Come on, that wasn’t what you were getting at. Ben is a mate, like Rose and Andy. This is different. Leave it alone.
Heng’s bike. Driven so slowly, so quietly, you had to concentrate to hear it.
But maybe you should have kissed him goodbye.
He kissed you.
On the cheek.
Oh …
He would have dropped his glasses and run all the way to Chengdu in terror. Everyone would have stared and you’d have died. Forget it.
Heng must be almost walking his bike. Why?
Leah peered along the road, toward the bamboo.
Because he didn’t want to wake anyone in the village. Considerate. Considerate, Heng?
Leah stepped off the road.
Heng crept past the closed café with the motor just ticking enough to move the bike and without lights. The small truck creaked behind him, again without lights. It was carrying several bags.
Leah frowned as the truck passed her, then the smell of the bags reached her. She knew the hard, biting chemical smell.
Heng turned toward his home and his colour television.
The bags in the store room! The empty fertilizer bags. Everyone in the village was making manure because there was no fertilizer, and here was Heng creeping home with about ten bags! Something ought to be done.
Leah ran home and caught Tong saying goodnight to Li-Nan. She told them quickly what she had seen.
‘Are you sure?’ Tong said wearily.
‘I think so. I smelt it.’
‘Of course Leah smelt fertilizer,’ Li-Nan said angrily. ‘Why else would Heng be sneaking about in the middle of the night?’
Tong sighed. ‘At least he’s back to normal.’
‘Locust!’
But they were still just standing there. ‘Aren’t you going to do something?’ said Leah.
Li-Nan shrugged. ‘What can we do? He’s the cadre, the official. He has the power. He would laugh in our faces.’
Tong pressed his spectacles higher on his nose. ‘Perhaps not. Let’s get some people up. Quietly.’
It was done very quickly. Leah went one way, roused the karate kid, and five other houses, Li-Nan launched a whispering campaign in the centre of the village and Tong hauled people out of bed near the bamboo.
Heng was getting under his third bag when a flicker of light caught his eye. He looked up and saw Tong, Li-Nan and twenty of his neighbours watching him. The bag fell from the truck and his eyes darted about. The truck driver stayed motionless in Heng’s store room.
But Tong smiled at Heng.
Heng breathed heavily.
Tong stepped forward and shook his hand. ‘Thank you, Heng Jiehua.’
Heng blinked.
‘I don’t know how you gathered all this fertilizer for our village. No, no, I know that these things must remain secrets. But it is a proud effort to take such a risk for us all.’
‘Ah, well …’
‘We are humbled by your generosity. Deng should know that this is what a good village cadre should be doing, eh?’
And the twenty men began to clap.
Heng dipped his head and tried to force a smile. ‘I wanted – ’ Groping. ‘Wanted to make it a surprise …’
‘And you have. A truly wonderful surprise. Let us help you unload and distribute the bags.
Heng watched the men empty the truck and walk away with the bags on their shoulders. They smiled and nodded as they moved into the darkness, but Heng’s farewell wave was very weak.
Round the corner a youth began to laugh, and the laughter rolled round the men, until the birds and animals in the village shrieked in sudden fright and some of the bags had to be dropped.
‘All right,’ said Tong, clapping his hand on Leah’s shoulder. ‘How do you like my foreign sister, eh?’
They all shook hands and slapped her back so she was still aching when she finally went to sleep.
Joan limped out of the hospital next day and spent most of the day sitting in the sun in Li-Nan’s courtyard, watching the geese. She was astonished to learn that her daughter had suddenly become a hero. Li-Nan talked of preparing a banquet to celebrate both Joan’s recovery and her daughter’s triumph. But Joan looked at the strain in Li-Nan’s face.
‘I think we’ll skip the banquet Li-Nan. I’m a little delicate still. You save the celebration for when your son comes back.’
Li-Nan protested, but only feebly. The two women spent two sunny afternoons sitting under the tree in the courtyard talking, or Li-Nan reading poetry to Joan, but they were both waiting.
On Thursday, June 1, a taxi came to the village to take Joan and Leah to Chengdu airport.
Li-Nan embraced Joan and almost broke down as she released Leah. ‘Take care. Stay in touch.’
‘We’ll come back,’ Leah said with a quiver. ‘Won’t we, Mum?’
Joan nodded.
‘And I’ll see Ke, soon, Li-Nan.’
Li-Nan looked up.
‘Tomorrow. I’ll find him tomorrow, Li-Nan.’
Tong smiled. ‘After the fertilizer you have to believe her, Li-Nan. Leah, you tell Ke how we handle things in Turtle Land. Give them a clue …’
But as the taxi pulled away Tong stepped back and Leah saw Government Official Heng Jeihua. That black and angry face haunted her all the way to Beijing.
27 Beijing
The plane from Chengdu landed at Beijing airport in the late afternoon, with Joan talking about stamping about the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, even the Great Wall as soon as they got settled. But she seemed to be a little nervous. As two air hostesses helped her from the plane she kept looking around and when she faced Leah she pulled on a painted smile.
Great, thought Leah, she’s looking for trouble again. Beijing is like Shanghai, is like Penang.
But the taxi swept them along a tree-shaded road, then a broad highway lined by tall blocks of flats. The tr
affic was slow and light. By the time the taxi arrived at the quiet mock-imperial hotel Joan’s fright mice had been put to sleep.
‘Now, this is civilization,’ she said, and proved it by organizing a small banquet for Leah and herself.
‘Wish Li-Nan was here,’ she said, attacking a fish smothered in rich sauces.
‘Wish Ke was here,’ Leah said.
Joan did not reply.
The next day, Friday, Joan tackled Leah over breakfast. ‘You want to see Ke.’
Leah sat back warily. ‘I told Li-Nan …’
‘You want to go to Tiananmen Square.’
‘That’s where he is.’
‘The city seems very quiet, normal. Quieter than Sydney,’ Joan seemed to be talking to herself. ‘Maybe it’s all over.’
‘Oh, it’s quiet.’ Leah was watching her words. ‘Quieter than Shanghai on a Sunday.’
Joan flicked the shadow of a smile. ‘Well, I can’t hobble all over Beijing with this leg. Going to look after myself. Can you look after yourself?’
Leah held herself down. ‘Easy.’
‘All right, have a look. Just have a look. If there is anything wrong, any soldier, any movement, anything at all, you get yourself back here. Okay?’
‘Oh yes, straight away, sure.’
‘And if you do see that Teenage Terrorist, get him to write a letter to Li-Nan. Immediately.’
Leah did not slow down until she was a safe two blocks from the hotel. She studied a map of the city over a half-pint of yoghurt at a pavement stall and found she was less than three kilometres from Tiananmen. She could get there by taxi, by underground railway, by bus, but why not just walk? She sucked up the last lump of yoghurt with her straw and set off.
There was little room for walking on the footpath. She shuffled through thirty metres of parked black bicycles, past a carpenter at work on a table, past a man selling kitchen and cycle oddments, around labourers pulling a wall down. She became part of a gentle stream of pavement walkers, sometimes overflowing onto the road, sharing it with trucks, buses and a constant flood of bicycles. But never a trace of temper, only the mild ringing of cycle bells, rhythmic dancing round other walkers, a smile given, a smile returned.
No signs of tension anywhere, no sign of thousands of people facing down an army. No trace of the army Ke had been talking about until Leah reached the tall Drum Tower. Five hundred years old and normally a tourist target, but now locked, with an army bunk cot on the other side.
A woman grinned at her. ‘To protect it from the students.’
Leah found the back of the Forbidden City and walked toward the front, down a shady road lined on both sides by high red walls. She was peering at the roofs behind the walls of the Forbidden City when she wandered across an entrance guarded by two soldiers who were about to fall asleep.
The Zhongnanhai, thought Leah in surprise. Where the Politburo leaders live, where students were beaten at the beginning of the Tiananmen stand. Tiananmen must be so close …
She crossed the road and walked through an arch in the Forbidden City walls. Walls everywhere, red buildings behind massive closed doors. A few soldiers idling about, making sure the massive doors stayed closed. Behind those doors were palaces from which emperors had ruled China for five hundred years. It had been called Forbidden City and it still was. To keep the students out again?
But Leah wasn’t interested. To her right a road ran through two arches and beyond the second arch flags were waving.
Tiananmen.
She walked quickly past the great wooden doors in the arches of Tiananmen Gate, crossed a stone bridge and stared at Tiananmen Square. A huge white woman held a torch above brown tents, tents with striped walls, big multi-coloured umbrellas and flags. Yellow flags, blue flags, white flags, striped flags and above all, red flags. And people. Maybe not a million now, but far more than the two thousand students Ke reported just before he left.
But as Leah kept looking at Tiananmen the image of the fair began to fade. The brightness and bustle remained, but there were other things. Like the banners: End the Corruption, Down with Deng Xiaoping, and – in English – Give Me Democracy Or Give Me Death. A parked ambulance, flags half-way up tall poles, police standing in the middle of the road, watching the crowd around the white statue. And a faint stink wafting across the road.
How are you ever going to find him? Leah wondered. Hey, how are you going to get there?
Between Leah and Tiananmen there was the broad and busy Changan Avenue, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, and this was set up like a hurdle race. To cross Changan she would have to get over a low rail barrier, a flood of cyclists going right, a bigger barrier, a busy highway, another barrier manned by the police, a flood of cyclists going left and another barrier.
Leah saw a subway and began walking toward the steps down. Then she saw the policeman, leaning against the subway wall, and hesitated. A lean young American stumbled at her heel.
‘Sorry,’ she said in English.
‘My fault.’ He smiled. ‘Clumsy me. Hey, you want to go over?’
She nodded.
‘It’s easy. Come on, talk to me, just don’t stop.’ The American sauntered towards the subway. ‘Where you from? I’m from Indiana, student here to get my Chinese right. I’m terrible but the professor tolerates me.’ A smile at the policeman in passing. ‘But you’re not a student, too young, family here? See, it’s easy. They don’t like tourists running about, that’s all.’
They padded down the last steps and along a wide tunnel.
‘Thanks.’ Leah was panting a little.
‘Ah, you helped me too. You have someone in Tiananmen?’
‘A cousin from Chengdu. Don’t know how to find him, though.’
‘That’s a little bit harder. Hang around the Goddess, though. Everyone goes past. Cheers.’ He jogged away.
‘Goddess?’
‘Goddess of Democracy. The Statue.’ He ran up the steps into the sun.
Leah climbed into Tiananmen.
28 Tiananmen
For a moment there was nobody in front of Leah. She could look down at the stone slabs that made up Tiananmen, the grey, slightly-worn squares, some marked with numbers. She could follow the lines between the slabs with her eyes, and see them sliding together in the distance. How many stone slabs in Tiananmen Square? Ten thousand, a million?
Leah walked carefully into the crowds. Some people were laughing at a youth trying to do a Cossack dance and failing, others eating steamed rice and little else, a team of drummers practising their own private rhythm while a few girls sang seriously as if the drums were not there. A boy was reading poetry to a girl while she repaired a torn banner. A middle-aged man walking through the crowd, looking up in wonder.
She stopped before the statue and felt a prickling on the back of her neck. Now it was a giant, an impassive woman ten metres tall, knee deep in coloured flags and holding that torch to the sky. Celebrating, but celebrating what?
But there’s no sign of Ke here.
Leah moved toward the students swirling around the massive obelisk of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. The obelisk was surrounded by stone terraces and the students had turned the terraces into a command centre with tents, loudspeakers, tape recorders, flags. Some students were adjusting a large white banner near a tent on the top terrace, but they were largely ignored by the crowd.
Students were climbing onto the terraces without any opposition, so Leah nervously followed two girls. After all, she could only be told to go away and Ke might be up there. She climbed unchallenged to the top terrace, noticing four people lying inside the tent with the white banner, but no Ke.
She was now above all the other tents, the crowd and most of the flags, but she was still looking up at the statue …
The giant woman was not pointing her torch at the sky. She was holding it over her students, a mottled mass spreading until a group was a fly speck on a distant corner of the square. She was looking across the tents, the speckle
of umbrellas, the lance of the national flagpole, past the crawling centipede of Changan Avenue, to the rust-red ribbon of the Forbidden City wall. And the stamp-sized portrait of Mao Zedong.
She seemed to be saying: ‘Now is my time.’
But Leah swept her eyes around and sensed some of the immense age and power that surrounded the statue and the ragtag students. Tiananmen was anchored by four stone fortresses: a vast museum block containing five thousand years of Chinese history; the dynastic power and wealth of the Forbidden City; the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, once the most powerful man in the world; and the Great Hall of the People, where the Politburo of China were still wondering what to do with the students on their doorstep.
Suddenly the Goddess of Democracy seemed very small.
‘Hey, what are you doing up there, kid!’
Leah hunched, looked about and found Ke, grinning at her. She clambered down and grabbed him.
‘Well, hallo,’ he said. ‘Glad to see you too.’
Leah started to smile. The smile became a grin, cracked into a laugh and she shook him.
‘What I do?’
Leah patted herself down. ‘Have you written to Li-Nan?’
‘She’s sent you, hasn’t she? All the way! Well I have. Posted it and everything. The moment I got here. Go back and tell her.’
‘Better write again.’
‘How d’you like our goddess?’
‘Great statue.’
‘Yeah, isn’t it? Made it out of Styrofoam covered in plaster. I helped.’ He laughed weakly. ‘A little. They let me, mainly because I told them my father was a poet. It was built in the Central Institute of Fine Arts and we got it here in three sections on cargo cycles. More than a hundred thousand people came to watch us put it up on May 30. That was Tuesday. How long has that been?’
‘This is Friday. Hey, how are you?’ Leah had suddenly noticed the weariness in Ke’s eyes, the grime in his clothes.
‘I’m all right.’ He dipped his head. ‘Maybe the Goddess is our last gasp …’
Two youths walked past wearing surgical masks.
Ke took Leah by the hand. ‘Let’s go for a walk. The masks? You can take your pick: you wear them for your health, or you are waiting for the tear gas, or because you don’t want to be on a spy’s camera.’
The China Coin Page 14