Director Wei’s wife spins the moving plate in the middle of the table, bringing close the golden-fried corn. Plucking a single kernel with her chopsticks, she tucks it into her mouth and frowns. “The corn here is a specialty,” she says as an aside. She is one of those people whose approval you would do a lot to win. And given her position—a party member herself and married to a man with no small amount of influence—she can reasonably expect to have people try to please her in most situations.
“To be honest, the English teachers at Heng’an Middle School are not very excellent,” she declares as Juanlan watches the spinning plate take the corn dish away from their side of the table. “Wei Ke’s teacher last year came from the countryside, and I doubt she’s even seen a foreigner, much less had a conversation with one. Studying in Chengdu, you must have had many opportunities to improve your conversational English.”
Juanlan tells her about the lectures she attended at the US consulate, and Teacher Cao leans forward as if they’re sharing a secret. “They’re given by expats? What are they about?”
“They’re supposed to introduce American culture in order to ‘foster the friendship between the American and Chinese peoples.’” Juanlan smiles wryly at her use of the tired phrase. “I went to one called ‘The Shopping Mall and Suburban Youth.’ Another was about the history of American missionaries in China.”
Teacher Cao raises an eyebrow. “I’d rather hear the one about the shopping malls.”
Juanlan laughs, but in fact she remembers very little of that talk; the lecture about the missionaries is clearer in her mind. The speaker spent most of his time talking about the Boxer Rebellion, showing old sepia photographs of the missionaries who’d been killed in the uprising up north. Juanlan remembers the strange, serious faces staring out at her from the projections on the wall, their eyes like glass marbles, both cloudy and clear.
“Your brother told us that you speak very well,” Teacher Cao remarks. “We didn’t realize that you were a cultural expert, too.”
Studying English is not like studying engineering. Du Xian could become an expert on motorcycle engines, but Juanlan has no hope of becoming an expert on foreigners. If she were wealthy and could travel, maybe she would have the opportunity to learn what the books can’t teach. As it is, true proficiency is a state she can only pretend to have achieved. But she doesn’t need to lie to Teacher Cao, in any case. She is doing them a favor, and they will have to be satisfied with what she is able to offer. “I’m not an expert,” she says. “Not at all.”
“You’re too humble.” Teacher Cao deposits a piece of beef tongue in Juanlan’s bowl and then sits back in her chair. “We are very pleased that you’ve agreed to tutor our son.”
The next morning, Zhuo Ge drives Juanlan on his motorbike along the river to Director Wei’s and Teacher Cao’s home. The river is high, though not as high as up north, where they’ve seen flooding since June. On the news each night, the images are of submerged houses and speedboats skimming past. “Here we are!” Zhuo Ge says, stopping in front of a tall building with bigger windows than those surrounding it. The building is new, erected sometime during the four years that have passed since Juanlan left Heng’an. Though what was in its place before, she can’t remember.
They ring downstairs and are quickly buzzed up. On the second floor Director Wei stands at the entrance to the flat, holding open the door in welcome. Shoes line a rack in the hallway, and though he insists that Zhuo Ge keep his on, since he is only staying for a few minutes, he relents when Juanlan asks to remove hers. “You have very small feet,” he observes as she steps into the pair of plastic house slippers. “Those are my wife’s, and look: your feet are swimming in them.”
Zhuo Ge laughs. “You should have seen her when she was young. I used to tease her for having feet as big as mine. Then they stopped growing.”
Director Wei squints at her. “Is that true?”
“More or less,” she says, uneasy under his gaze.
Inside, the floor is immaculate, freshly mopped. The son, Wei Ke, stands beside the piano with the fingers of one hand resting gingerly on one corner. He looks as if he is merely waiting for the signal to sit down and play. His mother comes out from the kitchen, carrying a tray with tall glasses and a bag of loose tea. She greets Juanlan and Zhuo Ge warmly and asks her son if he’s said hello. Wei Ke mumbles his greetings. Then he quickly removes himself to another room.
“Sit, sit,” Teacher Cao insists, setting the tray down on the table in front of the sofa. She produces a paring knife from one of the drawers. “Eat some fruit,” she says, and pushes a basket of loquats toward them.
Zhuo Ge begs off, saying he has to get to work. “At least stay for a smoke,” Director Wei says, pulling two cigarettes from a box of Prides.
“Don’t tempt me, unless you’re trying to get me a bad work report.”
“Okay, okay.” Director Wei relents. “I know you’ve already had too many of those.” He tucks the cigarette into Zhuo Ge’s jacket pocket for later, and opens the door. “I won’t walk you out then,” he says, shaking hands. “Go safely.”
“Go safely,” Teacher Cao echoes, following Zhuo Ge out into the hall to watch him descend the steps. “We won’t walk you out. Go safely!” she repeats.
A silence swells in the room for a moment. Director Wei, standing by the door, gives Juanlan a baffled look. “Eat some loquats,” he urges, and she obediently takes the knife and begins peeling one. When Teacher Cao returns from the hall, she scolds her husband for not pouring tea. “And where is our son?”
Director Wei and Juanlan sit on the sofa and Teacher Cao and Wei Ke on short plastic stools, and the next ten minutes are slowly filled with strained conversation as they sip their tea. Without Zhuo Ge, they are all ill at ease. Even Director Wei and his wife seem awkward with each other.
After a few minutes, Teacher Cao turns to her son and asks if he’s finished learning the Schubert piece.
“I’ve gotten to the end, but I’m not good yet,” he says and frowns at his hands.
“Then play something you’re comfortable with. Play one of the Beethoven concertos.” With one hand, she touches the fabric of her skirt, an ankle-length print whose pattern appears to be modeled on the tiny petals of a chrysanthemum. Rather than the subdued browns and grays that most women her age favor, it is a vibrant green. Somehow this irks Juanlan: the freedom it suggests, the refusal to give up what others get to enjoy.
“I don’t know any Beethoven concertos. I only have a book of his sonatas.”
Teacher Cao blinks at her son. “Ke’er, don’t you know I don’t care what you pick? Our guest would just like to hear you play. Wouldn’t you?”
“I would love to hear you play,” Juanlan says automatically. “It doesn’t matter what—I’m not very knowledgeable about Western music.”
“He should play some Chinese music, then.” Director Wei leans forward to tap his cigarette in the small trash can beside the table. “What do you want? ‘Jasmine Flower’? ‘Flying Kites’? ‘Under the Silver Moonlight’?”
“Anything is fine,” Juanlan says, her skin prickling at the sudden attention. “‘Jasmine Flower’ is one of my favorites.” Wei Ke goes to the piano and, without opening any books, sits down and begins playing an ornamental version of the song, full of runs and trills, his hands chasing each other up and down the keyboard. His father sits listening with what seems only half his attention, his eyes roving around to the window, where across the river a construction crane can be seen bending slowly to a half-built wall. Teacher Cao unconsciously echoes the motion, bobbing her head with the tiny motion of a pecking bird.
After the first verse, Director Wei finishes his cigarette and stands abruptly. He has to go to work, he says. To his son, still seated at the piano with his hands paused over the keyboard, he speaks curtly: “Don’t waste our guest’s time. You’re lucky to have such a talented tutor.” He shakes Juanlan’s hand, and a moment later the door closes and his footsteps echo down the stairs.
“You may find it best to study in Wei Ke’s bedroom,” Teacher Cao says. “There are fewer distractions.”
Wei Ke starts down the hall, and Juanlan rises to follow him. Passing the bathroom, she spots a Western-style toilet and wonders if they bought it in Chengdu. It is a symbol of the family’s status, just as much as the large television and the piano in the other room. But unlike her uncle and aunt, Director Wei and Teacher Cao don’t point out their luxuries, and it is this comfort with the objects of their own wealth that strikes in Juanlan a mixture of admiration and unease.
“What a big space,” she says to Wei Ke in his room. “You must spend a lot of time here.”
“I guess.”
They sit and find themselves staring at the blank wall above the desk. “Do you have textbooks? Grammar or vocabulary books, or anything like that?”
“Tons.” Wei Ke pushes back his chair and crosses to an alcove filled with books. “All this shelf is English texts,” he says, running his fingers over the spines.
“Do you use any of them?”
“I hate English. I’m terrible at it, and I hate it.” Suddenly his face is dark with anger. “Why should I waste my time learning to say dumb things? ‘This is schoolyard. I like play basketball at schoolyard.’” He makes his voice high and whiny for the English.
Juanlan borrows the tone of a patient teacher: “Until you master the basics, you won’t be able to say anything more interesting.”
“I don’t care. If I have something interesting to say, I can say it in Chinese.”
She blinks at him, wondering at his anger. “How do you know you’ll never need to know English? It’s possible that in ten years, we will—”
“We should be building up our own country, not trying to whore ourselves out to the West.” He narrows his eyes as he speaks, trying out these phrases to see their effect.
Juanlan waits to see if he has more to say. When he stays quiet, she replies, “Patriotism doesn’t require isolation.” Then she smiles at the earnestness of the conversation, as if they were two panelists on Shihua shishuo, debating China’s place in the world at the cusp of the twenty-first century.
Wei Ke opens his mouth and closes it again. He doesn’t return her smile. Instead, his face shuts down, all the anger gone, sullenness left in its place. He seems capable of only a short spurt of argument before submitting to the will of his parents.
They spend the next two hours going through the conversations in one of the books, reading them line by line, twice through, then switching roles. By the time Teacher Cao knocks on the door to ask Juanlan if she can stay for lunch, they are both exhausted and glad to abandon their work.
At the hotel she finds her father seated on a stool beside the front door. This is his regular spot, or was, before the stroke. Since she’s been home, he has spent most of his time in their flat across the alley, resting or doing stretches. Or else he’s been seated at the desk in the lobby with a book on space flight, one of his favorite obsessions. She’s glad to see him back at his old post. From his perch on the stool, he can talk to Mr. Wu, who shows up every morning to set up his repair stand on the closest corner, and who comes over often during the day to chat.
“You’re back,” Juanlan’s father says as she pushes her bike up to the entrance. The words come out in a slow march, but they are clear. “Have you eaten?”
“I had lunch at Teacher Cao’s.” She leans her bike against the outside wall of the hotel, and her father rises to greet her. “Sit down, Ba. Don’t tire yourself.”
Ignoring her suggestion, he beckons for her arm to help him down the three steps to the sidewalk. The tiles of the sidewalk are broken and uneven, but he shakes off her arm once he’s down the stairs and makes his way over to a birdcage hanging on a wire between two trees. Her father has always brought his bird out in the mornings for exercise. Up at five o’clock, he takes the cage outside and walks down to the river to meet his friends, most of whom are retired and much older than him. They all hang their cages on the branches of the trees, and the birds sing to one another while their owners chat or do their morning exercises. “I’ve never seen you take Duo Duo out in the afternoon before.”
“He needed air.”
And in an instant, she understands: the walk down to the river is too much for him now.
Her father pokes a finger through the bamboo rods of the cage, and the bird tilts its head to the side, considering him from its perch. Bright, black eyes, an intelligence flickering. “He likes it okay,” he says. Tapping the cage to make it swing, he asks how the tutoring went.
“Wei Ke—Director Wei’s son—is a good student, I think, but he’s not excited to be studying English.” She describes the boy’s outburst, his rant against the trend for studying the language.
“It used to be Russian,” her father observes, “but the world is changing.” He coughs and turns back to the bird.
“He’s very passionate about the importance of our country standing alone. Lots of ideas for a boy still in middle school.” She hears herself talking from a position of supposed wisdom, shaking her head at the young, and understands that she’s trying out this voice for her father.
He pushes the cage so it starts swinging again. “Is he a member of the Youth League?”
She considers the matter: he is the child of two government workers in good positions, both party members. It would be unusual if he weren’t a member of the party’s youth branch. “I guess he probably is,” she says, watching the cage swing. The little thrush stays still within, clutching its tiny feet around the rod.
“Then he must be practicing speeches.” Her father crooks a finger, beckoning her over. They’re finished discussing Wei Ke, it seems. She wonders what Zhuo Ge told him about it, whether he suspects that the favor she’s performing is in service to her mother and him.
Close to the birdcage now, she leans in to admire the bird. It has a sleek brown coat and its eyes gleam like oil. Her father feeds it a mixture of crushed eggshell, fruit, and seeds; the eggshell, he claims, keeps the feathers glossy. “Whistle at him,” he instructs, and she gives a two-note call. The bird twitters excitedly, stepping back and forth on its perch. She tries again, and this time it performs a short song in response. “He likes your voice,” her father says approvingly. “You must keep him trained, or he’ll forget how to sing.”
It is too much: her father’s hopefulness, Duo Duo’s instinctual reply to a meaningless call. She has nothing to offer the bird but familiar sounds. And yet, if she were to open the door of the cage, Juanlan is certain the creature would remain inside, dubious of what the world has to offer, or fearful of it.
The next day, and the next day, and the day after that, Juanlan rides her bike alone to the flat overlooking the river. She wakes early to help prepare breakfast and do some of the cleaning, and then leaves after her father’s exercises are done. She and Wei Ke plod through Conversational English for Every Day and portions of a grammar text. Even to Juanlan, seated at the desk in his bedroom, the blank wall feels like a punishment. Sometimes she considers stopping the practice and telling him to play something on the erhu instead. However, there is a sense of watchfulness in the flat, as if there might be cameras embedded in the furniture. And so they continue straight through the two hours with only a short break in the middle, when Juanlan replenishes her tea and Wei Ke pages moodily through a magazine. “Why don’t you get up and move around?” she always asks. The response is a shrug.
While they study, the other rooms in the flat remain open and empty, only wind blowing in through the open windows. One morning, after it’s been pouring rain for a solid hour, Wei Ke suddenly jumps up and races out of the room. Juanlan finds him rescuing the clothes hanging on the line outside the window. The shirts and skirts and pants are swaying on hangers, so wet they’re dripping. “I was supposed to take them in if it rained,” he says miserably, using a hook to pull down the hangers one by one.
“Why don’t we squeeze o
ut the wet things?” Juanlan says. “I’ll help you.”
He retrieves a plastic tub from the bathroom, and they spend the next several minutes wringing out the long sleeves and pant legs, the water dripping loudly into the tub. “It doesn’t matter,” he says as Juanlan squeezes out one of his mother’s dresses. He seems embarrassed by his horror a moment ago, by letting her see it.
She twists the fabric, and the vibrant pattern disappears into creases. “Will your mother be angry?”
“Probably not. She’s not very strict with me.”
She rehangs the dress on a hanger and takes a pair of gray pants, obviously Director Wei’s. It’s strange to be handling his laundry when he’s never said much more to her than good morning and thank you. She’s felt his eyes lingering on her as she entered the flat, an upward tilt of the chin with him looking down on her appraisingly. Something hungry there. Something selfish. “Your father will be angry, though,” she suggests.
Wei Ke chews on his bottom lip as he shakes out a T-shirt with the mascot of an American basketball team on the front. “You like Michael Jordan?” he asks suddenly, dancing the shirt in front of her. “You like the Bulls?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a basketball fan.”
“But Michael Jordan is the best player who ever lived. All the best basketball players are black people. They’re taller and bigger than white people.” He crumples up the shirt again and pretends to shoot it like a basketball. “Can you imagine if dark-skinned Chinese were the best athletes? Sichuan would be one of the top recruiting provinces.”
“Is it patriotic to care so much about an American sport?” she asks jokingly, but Wei Ke takes it as a serious question. “Sports are universal,” he replies, shaking out the shirt and hanging it again.
“You have a lot of rules. Learning English is off-limits, but playing basketball is okay? That sounds strange to me.”
“Sports are universal because they don’t involve language. They’re like math. Or music.”
Rebellion Page 10