by Sally Rippin
12
On Monday, Anna arrived at the college to find it deserted. Annoyed at not being informed of whatever public holiday it was, she was about to leave when she saw the director’s secretary walking from the canteen to the main college building. Anna rode up behind her. The secretary turned but, when she saw who it was, her face clouded with a look of irritation.
‘Miss Anna!’
‘Where is everyone?’
‘No school,’ the secretary snapped. ‘How you say?... Study from nature. All students travelling for two weeks, leaving tomorrow. What you want to do? You want me organise you private teacher teach you at home?’
‘Well, I’d like to have gone with my class!’ Anna grumbled. ‘After all, I am a student here, too, aren’t I?’
The secretary took a deep breath. ‘Come with me.’
Anna chained her bike to the empty rack and followed her to the director’s office.
The director was even less pleased to see his foreign student. Anna could imagine him wondering if the special high fees her father was paying were worth the trouble she was causing.
His secretary explained the situation and they argued back and forth for a while, jabbing at maps and calendars. At one stage Anna recognised Chenxi’s name and even though she was sorry for pulling him into her problems again she was relieved that he might be looking after her. She couldn’t bear the idea of two weeks in Shanghai without him.
The director picked up the telephone and asked for Chenxi. He waited a long time, tapping his pen impatiently, but when Chenxi came on the line the conversation was brief.
The director hung up and leaned back in his chair. The secretary took Anna’s hand in both of hers and said, ‘Chenxi coming.’
Anna relaxed. A class excursion with Chenxi! The three of them sat in silence, not looking at each other, until Chenxi arrived ten minutes later.
‘Hi,’ Anna offered meekly.
Chenxi gave her a thin smile, but wouldn’t meet her eye. The director barked out a few commands and Chenxi nodded.
‘You go with Chenxi,’ the secretary said. She and the director stood up and waited for Anna and Chenxi to leave.
Outside, astride her bike, Anna tried to start a conversation with Chenxi. He was unlocking his bicycle from the rack and still wouldn’t look at her. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked sweetly.
Chenxi slid his leg over the seat of his old brown bike and pushed down on the pedal. Anna followed him out of the college grounds on her lolly pink bike.
‘I not know,’ he grumbled.
‘What do you mean?’ Anna asked. ‘Aren’t we going on an excursion with our class?’
He shook his head. ‘Not for foreigners.’
‘What?’
‘Tomorrow my class travel south visit minority group for drawing them. This region is not allowed for foreigners. We must go to different place.’
‘No foreigners?’
He nodded. ‘Closed to foreigners.’
‘But that’s crazy!’ Anna objected. She had heard of Chinese people not being allowed into certain places where foreigners could go, but she had never known that there were places that foreigners couldn’t access. It shouldn’t be allowed! ‘But, why?’
Chenxi shrugged. ‘There are some places Chinese government do not like foreigners see. Chinese government only like foreigners see pretty places where there no troubles. Then foreigners go home to their country and tell everyone what lovely peaceful country is China.’
Chenxi sped up to pass a slowing bus. Anna fell behind and was accosted by a young man with thick glasses who rode alongside her shouting, ‘Hello! Hello!’ She pushed harder on her pedals to catch up with Chenxi.
Anna reached him, out of breath. It annoyed her that Chenxi always rode so fast. ‘Look, I’m sorry! I didn’t know,’ she panted. She had caused problems for Chenxi again. ‘I’ll just stay home for two weeks. That’s OK. You can’t miss out on this trip with your class. You go. I’ll just stay at home. The secretary said she could organise a teacher for me at the apartment. Don’t worry about me.’
Still not turning even to glance at her, Chenxi shook his head. ‘The director say I look after you.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell him. He won’t find out. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, hey?’
‘Oh they know, they know. They find out. You must come with me. I already think where we can go. We can visit my sister. She live in Shendong, near Xian. She has two boy. I do not see them very long time.’
Anna realised they were riding towards her apartment.
‘Sorry,’ she said again, chewing the inside of her lip.
Chenxi didn’t reply.
They rode side by side down Huai Hai Lu, the road that had become almost as familiar to Anna as her street back in Melbourne. She recognised all the stores now. The fashion shops with their window displays of dusty blouses, the grocery stores, and the medicine shops full of curious dried herbs and animal parts. She had been in Shanghai a week. Sometimes it felt like she had arrived only yesterday, but most of the time it felt much longer.
At times she couldn’t imagine her life before Chenxi, he was always on her mind. Melbourne, and the life she had left behind, seemed like a distant planet. The couple of times she had spoken to her friends or her sisters on the phone, they were caught up in the same trivial problems as when she had left and she found it hard to reconnect with them. She felt changed. Different. Chenxi was her delicious secret. She didn’t think they would understand her obsession with him. She could barely understand it herself.
Apart from that one enlightening moment in the classroom when they had discussed the painting, Anna still felt no closer to Chenxi. It seemed the more time she spent with him the less she knew him. The more distant and aloof he was with her, the more desperately she wanted to understand him. Just to know that she might be special for him. She couldn’t bear to think that he might not feel anything for her. Perhaps seeing him with his family would give her the chance she needed.
They turned into her street. To her surprise, when Anna asked him up to the apartment to discuss their trip, Chenxi accepted.
The gatekeeper peered out of his box suspiciously as Chenxi pedalled past.
‘Can I get you some tea? Sit down,’ Anna said. Chenxi was standing by the sitting room window that overlooked the front gate.
He turned, startled. ‘Yes. OK. Tea. Green tea?’
‘No, just English Breakfast,’ Anna said. ‘Sorry.’
She bustled around in the kitchen putting sugary biscuits on a plate. ‘What did you do on the weekend?’ she called out, desperate to make conversation. Was that the type of thing Chinese people asked?
‘I go to college for paint,’ Chenxi replied.
‘Really?’ Anna walked into the sitting room and put the biscuits on the coffee table. Chenxi took three. ‘You paint on weekends?’
‘Every weekend,’ mumbled Chenxi with his mouth full. He picked up another biscuit and turned it over to inspect it. ‘It has good taste.’
‘Have another,’ Anna said, pushing the plate towards him. ‘What are you painting? Are you still working on the same piece?’
Chenxi brushed the sugar off his hands and sat down on the couch. He took a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his top pocket. ‘No. That painting finished.’ He glanced across at Anna and smiled. ‘I dark the front bit like you say. It much better now. Thank you.’ He took a cigarette out of the packet and tapped it a few times on the box.
Anna walked across the room to open the window. ‘It’s always easier to talk about other people’s work than your own.’
‘Yes. But no person talk about my work before. No one here understand my work.’
‘Really?’ Anna said, shocked. She came to sit by Chenxi. ‘I would have thought it spoke for itself. To me it’s very clear.’
‘Yes. But you see already what we must paint in class. That is type of painting accepted in China. What I paint is too different. You think p
eople understand my painting in Australia?’
‘Of course! It’s fantastic! I know a few galleries that would exhibit your work straight off!’ Anna boasted. ‘One at least, for sure. The owner is a friend of the family. I’ve had an exhibition there already. Well, I had a piece in an exhibition.’
‘Really?’ Anna had Chenxi’s full attention now. ‘You sell it?’
‘I didn’t show it to sell. But you could sell yours.’
‘Really? How much?’
‘Oh, I don’t know…A thousand dollars or more for the big one…I’ve no idea.’
‘American dollars? One thousand American dollars?’
‘I’m not sure, Chenxi. I’m just taking a wild guess.’ Anna shifted uncomfortably. The kettle whistled and she stood, relieved that she could unfasten herself from this unexpected attention. Chenxi leaned back into the couch and lit his cigarette.
In the kitchen Anna poured the boiling water in the pot. She was feeling anxious. The questions Chenxi asked were perfectly valid, but she had hoped he wouldn’t be interested in money the way everybody else was. For her, discussing art and money was sacrilegious. But was she being unrealistic? Perhaps she could only afford the luxury of not being interested in money because she had never had to worry about it?
Anna carried the tea-tray out to the sitting room. ‘I’ve got a map of China in my bag,’ she said to change the subject. ‘Can you show me where we’re going?’
Chenxi was lounging back with his feet on the coffee table, meditating on the blue smoke drifting above his head.
‘Chenxi?’ Anna said. ‘Can you show me where your family lives?’ She spread her map out on the coffee table. Chenxi swung his feet to the floor and peered at the Chinese characters.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘See, this where my family live. Shen-dong. Near Xian.’
‘Is that where your parents are from?’
‘My mother only,’ Chenxi said. ‘She move to Shanghai when she finish school.’
‘And what about your father?’ Anna asked. ‘What does he do? Is he an artist like you?’
‘I have no father,’ Chenxi said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Is he dead?’ Anna said, embarrassed, but curious.
‘I have no father like you have no mother.’
‘Oh, I have a mother. She is in Melbourne with my sisters. My parents don’t live together. They’re separated. Is that what happened to your parents? Are they divorced?’
‘Divorce is what foreigners do,’ Chenxi said. ‘Not Chinese.’ He stood up and walked over to the window to signal that it was the end of the conversation.
Anna poured herself another cup of tea. She tried to think of something she could say to him that would open him up again. She always seemed to say the wrong thing. Asked too many questions. She would have to learn to be more careful.
13
On China Airlines to Xian the cabin crew hung around the front of the plane chatting and threw boxes of fruit juice to any passengers who dared complain. Everything was so makeshift, it felt to Anna as if the plane were sticky-taped together. When she put her hand up to the scratched plastic window, she could feel the air that whistled through the seals.
By twisting the facts Anna had managed to convince her father to let her go on the trip. She hadn’t told him she would be travelling alone with Chenxi. He was led to believe she was going on a college art excursion. Mr White had agreed to let her go, on the condition that she flew rather than took the train. If she took the twenty-seven hour train trip, he was sure she would arrive ill. What with all the inedible food and the state of the railway toilets, she would be much better off to let her class settle in the first week and to join them on the weekend. A week would be plenty of time away, he assured her. So Chenxi left on the Tuesday by train and Anna flew to join him on Saturday.
As the plane descended into Xian Airport, the passengers were already standing, pushing and shoving by the doors before the aircraft had landed. The cabin crew called out in Chinese then English: All passengers to return to their seats. Only one or two obeyed.
When the doors were unbolted, the crew flattened themselves against the walls in the surge of people rushing to be first off. Thinking there must be a reason for the panic, Anna dived into the crowd and let herself be swept along. When she surfaced again she found herself in a dusty tin shed. In the centre was an enormous pile of suitcases. Passengers were clambering over it to find their possessions and Anna was thankful she’d carried everything in her backpack as hand luggage.
She looked for an exit and saw that the far wall of the shed was constructed with chicken wire, behind which another crowd was scrambling, searching for their loved ones. Anna was thankful to see Chenxi. He called her over and laughed when he saw her worried face. ‘Come on,’ he said, swinging her bag over his shoulder. ‘We must get bus. Two bus.’
Chenxi seemed pleased to see her. Anna jogged to keep up with him as they headed out of the car park away from the crowds and haggling taxi drivers. Their steps made balloons of dust.
During the long walk down the airport driveway, no one passed them. It was weirdly quiet and sunny after the pollution of Shanghai. She could hear the chirruping of birds. It was peaceful trotting along behind Chenxi and she had the urge to take his arm in hers. But she contented herself with his closeness.
A cyclist approached, wobbling under a bulky load, as if drunk. As he came closer, his dirt-streaked brow furrowed in concentration, Anna saw that he had slung the carcass of an enormous pig over the back of his bike. The head of the pig gazed glassily from his basket on the front. The cyclist gawked at Anna. His bike leaned dangerously and the hoofs of the pig scratched little trails in the dust. Anna giggled, and skipped to catch up with Chenxi.
They arrived at the stop just as the bus pulled to a halt. Chenxi pushed Anna up the steps, swinging in behind her. She squeezed into a seat and held on as the bus bumped and churned along.
Grey buildings like cement shoe-boxes clustered closer together, and more and more cyclists appeared as they drew into the centre of Xian.
The city was shabbier and dustier than Shanghai, but its streets weren’t as crowded. Anna held tight to the tail of Chenxi’s shirt for fear of losing him as he jostled through the people who stopped in mid-stride to stare at them both. Every few minutes, Chenxi turned to see what was keeping Anna, and she bumped into him. But most of the time she kept her head down and tried to avoid getting caught in the grasp of the beggar children clutching at her.
‘Xian have many robbers,’ Chenxi whispered as they boarded the next bus. ‘Be careful your money! They see foreigner—Watch out!’
This time they had no room to sit, so Anna held onto a leather strap suspended from the ceiling. By her side stood a young peasant man with hair slicked across his forehead and strappy plastic sandals. His hands were rough and nicotine-stained and, as Anna watched him, he slipped one of them into her jacket pocket.
‘Can you take your hand out of my pocket, please?’ she said politely, as she stared at him in shock.
He looked up at her, then continued to rustle around among the dirty tissues. Anna tried to think of the words in Chinese, but all she managed was, ‘No! No good!’
Undeterred, the man took his hand out of her left pocket and slipped his arm around her waist to try his luck in the other one. Anna almost laughed. She didn’t really want to get him in trouble, but she wondered if he was going to work his way down her trousers to where her money was really stashed. So she hissed to Chenxi, who was a little way down the bus, ‘Hey, Chenxi, how do you say in Chinese, Stop thief!’
He looked at her puzzled.
‘There’s a man who keeps putting his hand in my pockets!’
Chenxi shouted something in Chinese and suddenly there was an uproar. The bus screeched to a halt in the middle of the road and a pack of squealing housewives threw the young thief off the bus, clucking in disapproval and shaking their heads as the doors closed again. The bus started up and as Anna wat
ched him slink off down the footpath, she felt sorry for the simple young man.
The crowd on the bus thinned out and Anna slipped into a seat by the window. She was hot and sticky, but she kept her jacket on for fear of losing it to another pair of nifty hands.
Out the window she watched as a larger bus, even more dilapidated than theirs, rumbled by with dozens of squawking and flapping chickens strapped to the roof. A peasant squatted in the shade of his doorway, which was hung with bright cobs of drying corn. Women trotted by, balancing heavy baskets hung on springy bamboo poles over their shoulders. Everyone who noticed Anna’s fair face peering from the bus window stopped and stared.
Chenxi slid in next to Anna and said, ‘It is very far place.’
Anna watched the flat patchwork countryside spinning by outside the open window. Within minutes she had dozed off, her head on Chenxi’s shoulder.
Chenxi didn’t move for the remainder of the forty minute ride.
A tall woman was waiting at the only bus stop in Shendong, with a skinny young boy in thongs twisting around her legs. She smiled when Anna stepped off the bus and took both her hands in her own. She had Chenxi’s smile, but her eyes smiled too, wrinkling at the edges. Anna suspected she was older than she looked.
It was impossible to read the age of Chinese people: an old man had once approached Anna in the street and asked her in perfect English to guess his age. Anna said fifty, guessing sixty, and was astounded to discover he was eighty-seven! He had ridden off, chortling in satisfaction.
‘Your sister?’ Anna asked.