***
As the term entered its final month the participants in our program became more animated; the weather was consistently good, with rarely a raincloud in sight, and many of them were keenly aware that soon they would be seeing their families again, some for the first time in almost a year. Their three American teachers were invited to the homes of those who lived in Peking and six or eight students would act as a communal host at one person’s house, spending the whole morning cooking an enormous meal (each student supplied the ingredients for a different part of the meal so that no one family or person would have to use up all their ration coupons on such an extravagance) that was eaten during the course of an entire afternoon. As housing was in short supply in the city, in spite of the constant construction, most people in their twenties and thirties, whether married or not, still lived in the same small house or apartment as their parents and grandparents. When one of our students would invite us for a meal it was not unusual for the three of us and Talya and eight students and a set of parents and one or two grandparents and even a young child or two to be packed into two or three very small rooms as we sat and talked and ate our way through a long sunny June afternoon. It was always a loud and invigorating experience, the food was plentiful and usually delicious, and as guests we invariably came away with some small gift that we knew our students could barely afford. The invitations kept coming, but after a while we made polite excuses and stopped accepting them because it became clear that the family at whose house one of these events took place would almost certainly have to do without something on their table – even given the communal host arrangements – for the rest of that month.
Those afternoons were wonderful times, times when I felt as if I were beginning to understand a little of what modern China was really like and I think all of us regretted their passing, but the economic and social realities of the situation were inexorable. Our students and their families would have been shamed by an offer to help pay for such a meal and there was no way that they could afford such generosity, extended over a period of time, on their own.
When I spoke to Ma about these things he would usually encourage me to accept as many invitations as possible, to get to see what living conditions were like for many of our participants.
“It is a matter of history. For us the offering of a banquet and the giving of gifts is both a means of making someone welcome and a way of building guan-xi, of establishing a feeling of mutual dependence among people. To a Western mind it may seem to be self-serving and even hypocritical, but to us it is part of a long and very practical tradition. In a land of so many people, living for so many centuries with a bureaucracy that is so complex that it is almost an unworkable puzzle to the average person, the use of guan-xi makes it possible for you to feel as if you have some control over your daily life. Your students, I believe, genuinely care for you and they get pleasure by having you accept their hospitality, but they also feel that they can now depend on you to be interested in their welfare in the future. It does not mean that you must now reciprocate by giving them a higher mark, but it does mean that they hope that they will no longer be an anonymous part of the crowd, that you will recognize them and be concerned about them now that you have shared something with them.
“I know that some people in your country would see this as favoritism or even corruption, and sometimes that is exactly what it becomes in my country as well, but for most people here it is a way of making our presence felt in a society that does not make many allowances for individual needs.”
I don’t know whether it was my conversations with Ma or a series of heavy late-night meals or just a combination of various things I had been thinking about lately, but it was about this time that I began waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, trying to piece together the recurrent dream that disturbed my sleep several nights in a row. A very shy girl in one of my classes would raise her hand timidly to answer a question and the rest of the blue-jacketed students around her would pounce on her and hit her with their fists, breaking her glasses and making blood run from her eyes. I tried to get to her to help her, pushing against the crowd, but a man in a dark pin-striped suit who looked familiar – though not specifically like anyone I knew – was holding me back, one hand on my right arm and in the other a machete raised high, about to descend on my head. Just before I’d wake up I’d realize that the man being held was Ma and not me and the man in the dark suit was faceless except for a set of disembodied and flawless false teeth that snapped loudly as the machete came down, its highly polished blade glinting brightly in the dazzling sunlight.
Talya woke up once just as I opened my eyes – she said I’d yelled in my sleep – and I told her what I could remember about the nightmare. We talked for a few minutes, trying to figure out what it might mean but getting nowhere, and then we both went back to sleep. That particular dream never returned, at least not so I could remember any of it.
Larry came back to the compound one night after eating at a nearby masses restaurant and had one beer with a group of us at the rooftop bar in building Number One and then went off to bed, complaining of some slight stomach pains. The next day he had a high fever, he could hold down neither solid food nor liquids, and the pains had become severe. Noah and I contacted the clinic, located next door to our own building, and two Chinese doctors were in Larry’s room in less than fifteen minutes. The one who spoke English asked him about not only his actions and diet of the last few days, but also about his long-term habits of exercise, his diet before coming to China, his family’s medical history, how he felt about his work these days at Beida, how he was getting along on his own (he had mentioned his ex-wife and daughter in California), whether or not he was looking forward to returning to America when his appointment here was completed, and what he thought of traditional Chinese as opposed to Western medicine. She stood by Larry’s side and listened carefully to his answers while her colleague, also in a white lab coat, stood on the other side of the bed and gently probed Larry’s abdomen, touched his thighs and lower legs, and put a stethoscope to his cheek in no fewer than a dozen places. Neither the woman who was physically touching him nor the woman who was asking him the detailed questions made any attempt to remove either the top or bottom of his pajamas during the initial examination. After a considerable amount of time, during which Larry seemed to relax and certainly appeared to be in much less discomfort, the two doctors stepped away from the bed and conversed quietly in Chinese for a few minutes. The taller one came back to the bed and spoke to Larry as she pressed gently but firmly on his abdomen much as the other doctor had done.
“We will give you an antibiotic in case your fever is the result of a serious infection. We can not tell what is causing your stomach pains at this time. Do you have any objection to being treated by traditional Chinese methods as well as with Western antibiotics?”
“No, no objections, but what will it involve?”
“Dr. An and I agree that you should swallow a glass of special tea every three or four hours until you temperature returns to normal. It is a small package of thick brown granules that you should pour into a glass of boiled hot water from your thermos by the bed here. After you have stirred the medicine in the glass you should drink all of it before it cools.”
She smiled at Larry, attempting to reassure him.
“Some of your countrymen say the special tea has a very unpleasant taste, but you will make up your own mind. I can assure you, however, that the medicine will not make you any worse.
“We also agree that your symptoms and your medical and personal history suggest that your intestinal problems may be alleviated by our using some acupuncture. Do you have any objection to such treatment?”
Larry looked at Noah and then at me before answering.
“Will it be very painful?”
“It is no more painful than a series of routine injections you might get in your own country, only now
the acupuncture needles will be left in place for a period of time; instead of placing them in your arm they will be placed in another part of your body.”
“Which part?” Larry’s smile looked a little forced.
The two women said a few words to each other in Chinese and then the taller one leaned over and touched the side of Larry’s nose, about an inch below his left eye, and then his right ear.
“We agree that these two places will probably give us the best results. It should not be necessary to use very many needles and they will not remain in place for very long. If you have no objections, we can begin at once.”
“Won’t you have to move him to the clinic to perform this operation?” Noah asked.
“Not at all.” She smiled at Dr. An as if they were used to dealing with such silly questions from the Youyi’s foreign guests. “It is not an operation in your Western sense and Dr. An has all the necessary equipment with her. Shall I begin?” she asked, looking down at Larry.
“Why not? I’m willing to try most things once.” He looked a little dubious but he was grinning as he spoke.
“Does that mean you have no objections, Professor Maguire?”
“Yes, it means I have no objections, doctor. Please do what you think is necessary.”
“It is most important that you think it is necessary as well.”
Larry looked up at her and slowly nodded his approval.
“I do, doctor, I do. Anything to get rid of these pains.”
Dr. An took a flat wooden box from one of the deep pockets of her lab coat and opened it on top of the nightstand next to the bed. Laid out in indented slats on two wooden trays covered with green felt were about two dozen very thin steel needles ranging in length from two to four inches each. The light above the bed was adjusted by Dr. An and then both women brought over straight-backed chairs and placed them on either side of the bed, close to Larry’s head, and sat down facing him. The English-speaking woman had taken a very large gauze pad from her medical bag and she put it on the pillow next to Larry’s left cheek and then instructed him to remain still and to keep his arms at his sides. She talked very quietly to him, explaining exactly what was being done and what he should expect to feel at each stage of the procedure, as her colleague swabbed Larry’s nose and left cheek and right ear with a cloth soaked in what smelled like denatured alcohol and then selected and inserted each needle with such care and delicacy that I was reminded of a bomb disposal expert I had once seen who had spent an hour dismantling a complicated explosive device; Dr. An was as steady and precise as she inserted the acupuncture needles as he had been when doing his job. In less than an hour, with Larry watching all the time and responding every so often to the other doctor’s quiet voice, Dr. An had placed twelve needles in Larry’s flesh, eight alongside his nose and four in the upper part of his right ear. Noah and I had stood at the front of the bed and watched and I hadn’t seen the patient flinch even once with the slightest pain when the needles had been placed. They only went into the skin a few centimeters, or so it seemed, and the longest portion of each needle stood straight out, giving Larry the look of a porcupine with stainless steel quills, but he had appeared relaxed throughout the whole procedure and now he looked almost euphoric.
“How do you feel now, Professor Maguire?”
“A little foolish with these things sticking out of my face, but otherwise I feel fine. It’s amazing -- not the slightest hint of a stomach pain! When it started to go away I couldn’t believe it – like pushing a switch and turning off an electric light. How long do these things have to stay in? Will the pains come back when they’re removed?”
“We agree that you should remain in bed, as you are now, at least for the rest of today. You should stay as quiet as possible. If you must get up for any reason then you should make every effort not to move your head too quickly. You do not want the needles to come out. We will come back to see you in a few hours and if your fever has gone down we might agree to remove the needles sometime later this evening. Whether you will still have some pains after they are removed we can not say. That depends very much on the individual. It would be best if you rested on your own now until we come back.”
Dr. An had closed her wooden box and the two women stood at the bedroom door with their medical bags in hand, obviously waiting for Noah and me to leave but much too polite to say so to us directly. There was no talk of payment and as Noah followed me out and said goodbye, Larry spoke from the bed.
“Thank you, doctor, and please thank Dr. An most warmly for me. If I feel as good as this tomorrow, Noah, let’s play some tennis, okay?”
He was out of bed in two days and during the next two weeks he had several more acupuncture treatments. The stomach pains returned occasionally, but he told us they were never as severe as before and that they never lasted for very long.
Mr. Wu, Fred Berenson’s Chinese assistant, telephoned me at Beida one morning to tell me that the reporter was in Kunming but that he would be flying back to the capital early that evening and he wanted to meet me for dinner at the Japanese restaurant in the Peking Hotel if I was available. Mr. Wu said that he had been told to tell me that Mr. Berenson had acquired some information that might be of interest to me and that the reporter would be happy to pay for the meal as long as I paid for the sake. I told Mr. Wu that I would be happy to have dinner with Mr. Berenson and that I would be at the restaurant at the suggested time. He sounded pleased and wished me a pleasant meal before he hung up.
When I walked in at seven Fred was already there. We ordered and as we waited for the food to arrive I asked him about his trip to Kunming.
“A fascinating place. I went down there to get some material for a piece I’m doing on how much of old China is being lost as the older districts in some of the cities are being torn down to make way for the new apartment buildings. There’s a group of planners down in Kunming who are trying to save and restore some of the hutongs and courtyards and old single-story buildings. They have to be careful when they argue for keeping anything these days. Can’t afford to be seen as doing anything that might hinder progress toward achieving any of the Four Modernizations, yet they want to make sure the rush to build new housing doesn’t completely wipe out the traditional structures. I spent a few days talking to them and to the city’s building committees and to some of the people who will be affected by whatever decisions are eventually made.It’s an interesting town. Beautiful climate and wonderful gardens and lots of things going on. If it wasn’t for all the movers and shakers being concentrated up here in Beijing, I think I’d rather live in Kunming than anywhere else in China these days.”
“Even better than Shanghai?”
“Definitely. Shanghai can be exciting, but I can’t take the noise and the crowds as a steady diet. Nice place to visit, and all that. As in the late 1940’s, just before the communists began their long march north, Kunming seems to be alive with energy and intrigue, plots and counter-plots, yet its surface is calm and aesthetically very pleasant. As a matter of fact, I picked up some rather unsavory information about Gareth Llewellyn in one of Kunming’s most peaceful parks. I thought you might be interested.”
He waited for the waitress to pour our heated rice wine and move off to another table before continuing.
“A Chinese friend who is usually very reliable told me that Llewellyn is in a bit of hot water with his bosses in London. Seems he’s been doing odd jobs for some anti-Deng people based in the south who are acting under orders from one of Deng’s oldest and most influential enemies up in Beijing. The word is that Deng would like to get rid of this old guy but that the man was one of Mao’s closest friends from the early days and he still has powerful allies in the army. Anyway, my reliable friend says that Llewellyn has been getting some pretty good money from this group in the south to embarrass the present government by creating a few nasty scenes here and there and then making it seem as if the
Americans, Deng’s favorite Western people at the moment, are responsible for the resulting mess. My friend thinks Llewellyn was responsible for the death of a woman in Shanghai a while back who was working for the Americans out of Hong Kong. Llewellyn used to do the odd job for the Americans, too, but it appears that he’s not much in their favor these days.
“Doesn’t look as if I’ll be able to use much of the stuff I find out about him, either. He’s got too many past associations with our own intelligence community and the current relationship between the U.S. and China is just too sensitive for any paper to fool around with an item like this just now. Guess I’ll stay with it, though, and save whatever turns up for future reference.”
When our food came we talked about other things, including my recent experiences at the home of some of my students and his interviews with some high-level officials in preparation for an up-coming National People’s Congress at which, it was rumored, Deng might attempt to consolidate some of his power. As we finished our dessert and the last of the sake, however, and were in the process of paying the bill, Fred mentioned the Englishman again.
“From what my Chinese friend tells me and from what I’ve been able to put together from my other sources, this Llewellyn seems like a bad piece of business. If you run into him again you might want to be extra careful.”
“I doubt that I’ll ever see him again, but if I do I think that’s good advice. And as long as he’s active in this part of the world and playing so many ends against the middle, I’d be very circumspect in what I wrote about him, if I wrote anything at all. Now that I think of it, he struck me as a man who might do a considerable amount of reading.”
A week later Talya and I and Noah and Larry received invitations from Lynn Boaz to an embassy reception in honor of the head of the university. Ma and several senior Chinese professors and all the important administrators from Beida were also invited and Ma explained to us that it was the first such invitation for most of the Chinese so each of them would probably make a special effort to attend even though it would be an afternoon affair right at the beginning of the week of final examinations.
The Monday of the reception began with an unseasonable rain squall in the morning, but by noon the sky had cleared and by mid-afternoon I found myself seeking protection from the sun under a large shade tree in the embassy garden. I’d shaken the requisite hands upon entering and, after a tour or two of the grounds with my sweating can of Budweiser in hand, I spent the rest of the time talking to Ma and an ancient professor of medicine, Lao Wan, who had climbed each of China’s sacred mountains three times. He and Ma left the reception together and I was about to look for Talya and ask her if she was ready to leave when Boaz joined me.
“I noticed you were talking to Ma Shi-yi for a long time. You two are very friendly, aren’t you? He’s one of the most effective people I know at that university. We’re lucky he agreed to be the liaison for your program.”
“He’s a fine person. We climbed Huang Shan together once.”
“Yes, I know. He’s an exceptional person in many ways. A dedicated Party member, of course, but very outspoken about his belief that China should keep its door open to the West. We’ve been very fortunate to have him as a friend. He has, on occasion, given us some very valuable assistance.”
He had a can of beer in his hand, but up close it smelled as if he’d had a scotch or two as well. His eyes were clear and he gave no indication of having had too much to drink; he just seemed more relaxed than usual.
“Do you mean he works for you?”
He laughed and waved his beer can from side to side. “Not at all. He’s Chinese, first, last, and, I suspect, always, and he’s too principled to play a doubles game. No, he has simply given us unexpected assistance a few times and he’s never asked for anything in return. I think he is what might be called a superior human being. Superior, at any rate, to the likes of me.”
He smiled thinly and waved his beer can in an off-hand gesture as he walked away.
Giving and marking the examinations that week kept me busy, but we were also due to leave China soon after the term officially ended and there were complex travel arrangements to be made and last minute items to be bought and shipped back to the States. Talya managed to convince the manager of the Swissair office in Peking that he could pay his rent to the Chinese with all the yuan we wanted to give him; in exchange he gave us two tickets from Peking to New York with stopovers in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Penang, Sri Lanka, Bombay and Geneva and after he’d counted up the beautifully etched bank notes again – completely nonnegotiable except within the People’s Republic itself – he even threw in a night at the old Raffles Hotel in Singapore.
Larry decided to visit his ex-wife and daughter on the way home so he and Noah arranged to fly out together on a Pan Am flight direct to California. That Saturday the three of us hosted a farewell banquet for all the participants in the program at a large restaurant inside the Summer Palace grounds. Most of them would be leaving the next day to go back to their homes and families and there were many photographs taken and many emotional toasts made between courses. Ma seemed a bit preoccupied at first, but after a few emphatic gambeis and a few pijou-inspired speeches about Chinese-American friendship and mutual understanding he joined in the festivities enthusiastically, picking out the choicest pieces from each dish and placing them in Talya’s bowl and then, near the end of the meal, offering a brief toast to the American lecturers and to Talya that had the four of us almost in tears. Larry closed the banquet with a final large mao-tai raised to Ma and the participants themselves and then everyone stood (as best they could) and applauded everyone else.
Talya and I spent most of Sunday in bed recovering from the excesses of the night before and on Monday morning we saw Noah and Larry off at the airport and then went back to the Youyi to finish some last-minute packing of our own. A fu-yuen came to tell me that a man, another American, was waiting in the lobby to see me and when I walked down to the ground floor I found Lynn Boaz uncharacteristically disheveled, as if what little sleep he’d recently gotten had been in the clothes he had on.
“Can we walk outside? My car’s in front of the building and I have to go right back to the embassy.”
We stepped into the sunlight and I walked with him toward his waiting sedan.
“I wanted you to hear about this before you left. I thought it would be better in person than on the phone. They found Ma Shi-yi’s body about two o’clock this morning at the edge of the lake in the Purple Bamboo Park. They think he’d been dead about six hours.”
I focused straight ahead on the front left hubcap of the car. There was a small irregular dent in it. There was nothing to say, but I said something anyway.
“How did he die?”
We had reached the car and he had the rear door open, holding the top of the open door with both hands.
“Someone rammed two large acupuncture needles into his head, at the temples. When they found him the blunt ends of the needles were barely visible. He must have died instantly.”
He was inside, his head leaning toward the open window. I heard myself speaking again, as if from far away.
“Who killed him?”
He looked up at me, tapping the driver on the shoulder at the same time. The car started to move.
“We don’t know. I have to go back now – I’m very sorry.”
*Cambridge*
It was getting late and he knew it was time to get up and go home. It was smoky and quite noisy now and he anticipated with pleasure the cool night air and the quiet walk ahead. It would take him fifteen to twenty minutes, across part of Midsummer Common and then along Jesus Green to the footbridge over the Cam at Jesus Gate Lock, time enough to breathe deeply and think a little bit about the coming week’s work. He touched the paper in his pocket and thought again about change and its absence, about the life he now lived and the one he’d been offered, and he wondered if he’d ever rea
lly lost sight of the fact that looking for the truth beneath the surfaces of things could be an honorable profession, a worthwhile endeavor given the choices we have. He knew, too, that someone famous had once said that you can never know too much about the shadow line and the people who walk it, but he wasn’t convinced. He had already experienced moments when he wished he knew a great deal less.
Chris called to him over the crush of people at the bar.
“Telephone call for you. I think its Talya.”
He made his way to the rear of the pub where the phone hung on the wall. Her voice sounded husky, the way it always did when she was tired and ready to go to sleep.
“Hi. Just thought I’d call and see if you want me to come pick you up with the car.”
“No, thanks, I can use the fresh air.”
“Have a good time?”
“Yes, a very unusual evening, in fact. I received an offer of employment from some people I used to know a long time ago. Thought about it for a while, but finally decided not to accept it.”
“Sounds interesting. Tell me all about it when you get home.”
He hung up and made his way to the front door, waving goodnight to Chris and Debbie as he passed the bar. When he stepped outside he took a few deep breaths and then walked off toward the river.
The Shadow Knows Page 25