The Middle Kingdom

by Andrea Barrett

  There in my hotel room in China I dreamed I’d done what I’d wished: that I’d rescued Zillah and healed her so we could fly away. But actually I’d done no such thing. The morning my own illness left I lost Zillah, and with her any brief understanding I’d had of her world. I was left with the knowledge that I’d been lucky and she had not, but I was nine and couldn’t make the next connection: I lost the glimpse I’d had of the idea that good luck was an accident of birth. Two of us had gotten sick and one of us had died, and I thought what had spared me had only been blind chance. That the doctor, the proper medicine, the food and care and shelter I was given had nothing to do with my recovery; that whatever had stricken Zillah might strike me. In the absence of Zillah’s voice our lives seemed equivalent once more, which I took to mean that her luck would be mine if I didn’t take drastic steps. And so I laid on the padding that would insulate me from the world, and later on I ran away from everyone and every situation that made me think my life was like Zillah’s. I ran toward safety. I stockpiled stuff, as if I’d stay lucky if I owned enough. And yet in my dream, Zillah and I flew naked and unburdened. While she lived, what we had sought was always light.

  I woke when Walter came to bed, and when he slipped beneath the sheets I crept from my bed to his and then clung to him as I hadn’t done in months. ‘I want,’ I meant to say. ‘I know,’ he was meant to answer. Almost a year since we’d made love. I pressed my skin to his as though I could dissolve the membrane between us. I ran my hands along his thighs and felt them firm and lean and strong; I licked his neck and tasted familiar salt. ‘Make love to me,’ I murmured, but he was still and cold against me. He wrapped his arms about me obediently, he threw his leg over mine, but there was no pressure, no warmth, he never grew hard. When I took him in my mouth he felt cool, smooth, small, dead, his penis just a piece of flesh like any other, soft as the skin on the inside of my arm. He pulled away from me. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired.’ He rolled over and fell asleep, his ribcage expanding with each breath and then falling silently, the air moving gently in and out of his mouth. I watched him sleep and I thought about Zillah, who had known that my life was blessed with all I’d ever need, and whose voice had returned with the news that I’d thrown it all away, that I’d squandered near everything.

  I rose from the bed an hour later and dressed quietly. This time I didn’t make the mistake of leaving through the lobby; I crept down the stairs and along the back hall to the door that led out to the gardens. The air was cool and fragrant and a fountain splashed. I walked along the gravel paths, past flowering bushes and trees someone had pruned into artful shapes, and I watched the clouds move over the surface of the moon. If I’d been at home, or in any other place, I would have found a phone and called Rocky. I would have taken a bus or a cab to his place, borrowed a car, sent a telegram, but none of that was possible here and there was no way for me to reach him. I sat down heavily on a rough stone bench and wept for Zillah and Rocky and Walter; for my own frustration; for my inability to understand the smallest part of the world. My mother-in-law kept a shoebox in her closet, in which were all the letters her husband had sent her from France, during the war. Mumu kept a clumsy doll her husband had carved from a lobster buoy. Even my mother, unsentimental and sour, had dried roses from her wedding bouquet in a small glass box. Walter and I had a house full of his things and a storage room full of mine; a textbook full of his words and a few of my drawings; a handful of papers from our early days together. That was all.

  When I looked up, I saw a man across the pond at my feet. His size and shape were enough like Rocky’s that I almost called out before I caught myself. He gave no sign that he’d seen me, although the moon was nearing full and lit the garden palely. He bent over the water and set down two long pieces of bark on which he’d placed some petals and twigs. As I watched, he took two scraps of paper from his shirt pocket and laid one on each piece of bark, and then he said a few soft words and struck a match and set the rafts on fire. He crouched down lower and blew the flaming rafts away from the shore and toward the center of the pool. The rafts flared, burned brightly for a minute, and then disappeared. When they did, the man stood up and brushed his hands on his pants and looked directly at me. He didn’t look like Rocky at all.

  ‘Nice night,’ he called across the water. ‘Isn’t it.’

  His face was Chinese, but his voice was absolutely American. He walked around the edge of the water, apparently unembarrassed by the scene I’d just witnessed, and when he reached my bench he asked if he could join me.

  ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ he said.

  ‘So why did you come over?’ His face was lean, high-cheekboned, clever. He wore a short-sleeved shirt that left his smooth forearms bare.

  ‘Needed the company,’ he said, and then he smiled and extended a hand toward me. ‘James Li,’ he said. ‘You must be here with the conference.’

  ‘Just a wife,’ I said. ‘Just one of the scientist’s wives, tagging along.’

  He smiled as if I’d said something funny. ‘Just-a-wife,’ he said. ‘What brings a wife out here by herself in the small hours of the morning?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Me either.’ He gestured toward the pond, where his rafts had sunk without a trace. ‘As you can see.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  He shrugged and looked over the water. ‘A little love charm,’ he said. ‘Something my mother taught me. You know how it is – love makes us stupid.’

  Perhaps because it was dark and late and we were strangers, we talked easily after that. I told him his rafts reminded me of things Zillah and I had made as children. He told me his parents were Cantonese but that he’d been born in New Jersey and taught at Yale. ‘My father’s an epidemiologist,’ he said. ‘Very westernized. But my mother still keeps to the old ways. She was a midwife here, but she can’t practice in the States. Her English is still terrible. And she’s very superstitious.’ He paused and then laughed. ‘Not like me,’ he said. ‘Not much.’

  His voice was low and peaceful, but despite that he seemed to burn next to me, as if he had a fever. ‘You were visiting?’ I asked.

  ‘These last two months,’ he said. ‘Giving some lectures in Fujian – my first time over here. I went to see my grandparents in Canton last week. All these places I’d only heard about from my mother. All these relatives. Everyone thought I was rich and all of them wanted something. I had to get out of there after a week, so I came up here.’

  ‘What’s here?’

  ‘Good question.’ He threw a pebble into the pond and we watched the rings spread from the center to the shore. ‘What’s here,’ he said, ‘is an old college love of mine I haven’t seen in years. Working this conference. I came to give a couple of lectures at one of the universities, and when I registered here I saw the conference program with Tinnie’s name on it. Who I haven’t been able to track down at all – and tomorrow I have to give two more lectures, but I heard there’s some big banquet tomorrow night and I got myself invited to that. Maybe I can hook up with Tinnie there.’

  ‘Pretty long shot,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Hence the rafts. I’m as nervous as a girl.’

  His feet sat square on the ground, his legs were completely still. ‘You don’t look like the nervous type,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone is – sooner or later.’ He plucked a few strands of grass from the ground and rolled them between his fingers. ‘So why were you crying?’ he said.

  He seemed so kind, so gentle, so open, that I told him, or at least I tried. In broken sentences, digressions, allusions, confusions, I tried to describe how I’d met Dr Yu and her husband and Rocky and what had happened between us. ‘And then I got sick,’ I finished. ‘And now everything’s so complicated.’ I never mentioned Walter or the troubles we were having, but despite that James’s face darkened and grew thoughtful as we talked.

  ‘How did you get so involved with this family?’ he asked. ‘So fast?�
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  ‘I don’t know. It just happened.’

  ‘What do you think they want from you?’

  ‘Do they have to want something?’

  ‘Of course they do,’ he said gently. ‘Your friend, this Dr Yu – why do you suppose she’s gone to all this trouble?’

  I thought back to our first meeting. ‘She wanted to meet my husband,’ I said. ‘He’s sort of a big wheel here. And she was too shy to talk to him, so she tried me instead. But that was just at first.’

  ‘And after that?’

  I shrugged. ‘We like each other.’

  He plucked at the grass again. ‘People here,’ he said, ‘believe very much in the importance of personal connections. Everything works through this network of favors and obligations. You do me a favor, I do you one – when I was at my grandparents, I accepted meals and hospitality from all kinds of people, and I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was getting ready to leave. And then everyone wanted something – letters of recommendation, help emigrating, foreign exchange certificates, help buying a television set from the Friendship Store. You name it. And no one thought it was unusual to ask. I owed. Dr Yu has done you a lot of favors, and now she may believe you owe her in return.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ I said. ‘What’s the harm?’

  ‘No harm,’ he said. ‘As long as you understand. But these connections aren’t casual, the way they can be in the States. My parents still get letters from people they knew thirty years ago, fourth cousins needing help, children of old friends needing a sponsor for a visa. And they’d never think of disregarding those obligations. All I’m saying is that you should be careful what you accept.’

  ‘It’s too late to be careful,’ I said.

  ‘Then be fair. Make sure you honor your debts.’

  He stood and straightened the crease in his pants. ‘This Rocky,’ he said. ‘Are you in love with him? We could make another set of rafts. My mother swears by them.’

  I thought about Rocky once more. ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘He’s lovely, and I’m glad we met, but I’m not in love with him.’

  ‘One thing you don’t have to worry about, then. No love charm?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I hope yours worked.’

  ‘Tomorrow will tell,’ he said. ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘Luck,’ I whispered. He vanished into the garden, following one of the paths that led to the top of a small hill with a view. Perhaps he meant to wait for the sunrise there. I sat alone for another few minutes, thinking about what he’d said and wondering if I could trust the advice of a man who called love to him with spells.

  Walter and I woke so uneasy with each other that I almost welcomed our continued lack of privacy. We’d be alone together soon enough, and I dreaded what would happen once we boarded the plane home and left all this behind. All the noise, all the people, all the sights. Ah the buzz and clamor Walter had been swimming in. He’d be miserable when we got home, I could see that coming. Whenever he returned from a conference he went through weeks of withdrawal, and this time he’d have more to miss than usual and less to welcome him. But meanwhile we had Katherine and Quentin to distract us from each other. Katherine and Quentin had breakfast with us; they also had lunch with us. And after lunch, when the afternoon began to weigh so heavily that I suggested to Walter that we visit the Summer Palace, Katherine and Quentin came along as easily as if they’d been invited.

  ‘What a good idea,’ Katherine said. ‘We were so busy working when we were here that we hardly saw Beijing.’

  I got stuck in the cab’s front seat while the other three nestled in back. ‘Ni hau,’ I said to the driver. The others seemed inclined to let me take charge of this expedition. ‘Ni jiang Yingyu ma?’ Do you speak English?

  The driver smiled – a nice smile, although his teeth were cracked and stained. ‘Wo shi Meiguo ren,’ I said.

  ‘You are, American,’ he said slowly. His smile widened. ‘My English, Yingyu, very poor. Hello.’

  ‘We want to go to the Summer Palace,’ I told him.

  He frowned and looked puzzled. I opened my guidebook and showed him a map of the palace grounds. ‘Yiheyuan,’ I said.

  ‘Sights-seeing!’ he replied. His face lit up and he nodded vigorously, and then he hurtled us through the hotel gates, thumping his horn at the horse-drawn carts in the road. We passed through fields and past a brick-making plant and the low barracks of a military school, heading for a distant hillside studded with tile-roofed buildings. I’d seen these each time I’d passed between the Fragrant Hills and the city, but always the driver had followed a road that swung in a wide loop around them. This time we took a different route, passing hamlets I’d never seen before. On the outskirts of one was a vast, shallow pond completely covered with white ducks.

  ‘Roast duck factory,’ Quentin said as we passed. ‘All that Peking Duck that gets served to tourists in the city …’

  ‘Remember our duck?’ Katherine said. ‘The one we had in Canton?’

  I pictured her and Quentin at a small table, rolling crisp duck skin and scallions into pancakes spread with sauce. But when I looked over my shoulder I saw that Walter, not Quentin, was smiling at Katherine in shared memory.

  The entrance to the palace grounds was packed with tour buses, bicycles, and cabs, and our driver muttered under his breath as he snaked the car into the lot. He honked his horn at a slow-moving cart. ‘These, these … nongye,’ he said indignantly. ‘These, from nongcun …’ Peasants, I finally understood. Farmers from the countryside.

  A wave of people pressed Katherine against the wall when we got out. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘Where did everyone come from?’

  ‘They’re tourists,’ Quentin said. ‘Just like us. They’re visiting the sights of their capital. Like people from North Dakota visit Washington.’

  Walter flushed; his hometown was always a sore spot with him. ‘Listen,’ he started. ‘You’d be surprised what people from Fargo do …’

  Quentin raised his hand and cut him off. ‘Just kidding,’ he said. ‘Really.’

  I asked the driver to wait for us and he slouched down in the seat and pulled his cap over his eyes, preparing for an afternoon nap. The sky was completely clear and still, blue with a slight brownish cast where the smog lay over the city. The air smelled, even out here, and the lake to our left was turbid and dark. We stepped into the stream of people heading through the east gate toward the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, where everyone seemed to be snapping pictures of everyone else. Gap-toothed fathers posed with their sons in front of the roped-off throne and peered at the labels, which I couldn’t read.

  I felt Uncle Owen’s presence everywhere. He’d come here often, I knew, with friends who had sat with him by the glittering lake, which was blue then, and completely clear. The buildings the Dowager Empress Cixi had planned had lapped at the low hills, wave after wave of brightly colored pagodas and pavilions and halls, and below them islands linked by ornate marble bridges had floated in the water. Uncle Owen and his friends had tempted each other with the food they’d carried in – yellow wine, chickens baked in lotus leaves, roasted suckling pigs and spicy sausages. The grounds had been almost empty then, except for a few visitors like themselves, and they’d recited old poems to each other and had made up new ones, praising the harmony of the landscape. They had told tales of the huhsien – the male fox-spirits who love to create mysteries and perpetrate stupid practical jokes – and of the much more dangerous huliching, the vampire-fox who often assumes the shape of a beautiful young woman and then sucks the life from young men. Once, a girl with a lute and a beautiful voice had sat in a rented boat with them and sung folksongs as they floated across the water.

  If there were spirits here now, I couldn’t find them; the crowds of people were overwhelming. We wandered aimlessly through the cool pavilions and then we split up, not as I would have expected – me and Walter, Katherine and Quentin – but just the opposite. Katherine glued herself to Wa
lter’s side and marched with him down the Long Corridor, leaving me to follow with Quentin.

  The covered walkway stretched before us, a mile and a half of tiled floor, painted pillars, wildly decorated canopies and open sides, which separated the lake from the hill. Each curve presented us with a new view, framed by the carefully placed pillars. I stood in the openings, trying to imagine what Uncle Owen had seen, but I was distracted by my feet; I had chosen a foolish pair of shoes and my toes were pinched. Katherine and Walter quickly left us behind.

  ‘Do you believe this?’ Quentin said. I thought he meant the palace, where the emperors had once come to hide from the epidemics and the heat, but he tilted his chin toward the couple vanishing before us.

  ‘It’s my feet,’ I said. ‘I wore stupid shoes.’ Katherine’s shoes were perfect, soft brown oxfords with crepe rubber soles, and I wished I’d worn a similar pair. ‘I don’t mean to hold you up,’ I told Quentin. ‘You go ahead, if you want.’ Beads of sweat had sprung out along his hairline, darkening the crest that sprung up from his forehead, and his nose was already starting to burn. ‘You should have worn a hat,’ I said. ‘You’re getting fried.’

  Ahead of us, Katherine and Walter strolled like the Dowager Empress and her chief advisor. A yellow butterfly flew past, followed an instant later by a little boy in hot pursuit. ‘I’m in no rush,’ Quentin said. ‘If you don’t care what’s going on, why should I?’