Chinese Whispers

III

Margaret watched as a mother lifted her child into the shiny brass seat of the rickshaw. The little girl was perhaps three years old, drowned by a quilted red jacket, a sparkling red band keeping her long, black hair out of her face. Thousands of backsides had polished the seat to a brilliant shining gold. The rest of the life-sized statue was tarnished and dull, including the rickshaw man with his shaved pate and his long pigtail. A camera flashed in the afternoon sunshine. A few yards away a middle-aged man swept his hair self-consciously to one side as he posed for his wife’s camera with a couple of brass musicians. A man with a suit and an umbrella stood beside a brass barber shaving the head of an eternally acquiescent client. A half-empty open-sided blue tourist bus crawled past, the tour guide barking the history of Wangfujing Street through a speaker system that filled the air. The name Wangfujing derives from a fifteenth century well … No one was listening.

Beijing’s best-known shopping street had changed almost beyond recognition since Margaret had first kept an appointment there with Li Yan outside the Foreign Language Bookstore more than five years before. Vast new shopping complexes in pink marble had risen from the rubble of the old. Giant TV screens played episodes of a popular soap opera. Crowds of affluent Chinese, the new bourgeoisie, roamed the pedestrian precincts viewing luxury goods behind plate-glass windows, anxious to spend their new-found wealth. On the corner of Wangfujing and Donganmen, outside the bookshop, an old man wearing a cloth cap and dark blue cotton jacket pedalled up on his tricycle with a steaming urn to warm the young security men on traffic duty with mugs of hot green tea. They gathered around him like children, with their red armbands, laughing and giggling and poking each other while traffic at the junction ground to a halt.

Margaret smiled. While so much about China had changed in just five years, the character of the Chinese had not. There was something irresistibly likeable about them — unless you happened to be trying to renew your visa. The thought clouded her afternoon with memories of that morning’s debacle. She tipped Li Jon’s buggy on to its back wheels and bumped it up the two steps to the open doors of the bookstore, brushing aside the heavy strips of clear plastic that kept in the heat. An overhead heater blasted them with hot air, and Margaret turned off to their right where she knew they kept the stands of English language fiction and non-fiction books. Rows of shelving between grey marble pillars delivered books on every aspect of foreign language and culture to an increasingly literate population, hungry to feed a new-found appetite for learning about the world beyond the Middle Kingdom. People spoke here in hushed and reverent tones, in direct contrast with the cacophony in the street outside.

Margaret found what she was looking for on the middle shelf of the back wall. There were two English-language originals of Thomas Dowman’s The Murders of Jack the Ripper sitting side by side. She lifted one and found an assistant who wrote her out a slip in exchange for the book. She spotted a manned cash desk on the far side of the shop and took her slip there to pay for the book, before returning with her receipt to collect it from the assistant. It was tiresome, but it was the Chinese way, and you just got used to it. And it was also, she supposed, one way of keeping the unemployment figures down.

Outside, the blue bus was making its return trip, the tour guide’s nasal hollering still an assault on the ears. Before the liberation in 1949, Wangfujing was known as Morrison Street … And still no one was listening. A fresh bunch of people was posing with the brass statues. Margaret pushed Li Jon’s buggy to the junction, where the security men had returned to traffic duty, and flagged a taxi, fumbling in her pocket for the address Chi Lyang had written down for her after lunch.

* * *

The Jade Fingers Blind Massage Club was on the twenty-fifth floor of a new shopping mall in Chaoyang District, off the east Third Ring Road, just south of the Lufthansa Centre. Lyang was waiting for her in the reception room. ‘It’s all fixed,’ she said and nodded to one of two Chinese girls behind the desk who came to relieve Margaret of Li Jon and the buggy. Margaret looked anxiously as the girl wheeled her son away through swing doors. ‘Relax,’ Lyang said. ‘Let go. That’s what this place is for. Some time out from life. Enjoy it.’

Margaret said, ‘I haven’t had time out from life since I don’t know when.’

‘Then you’re long overdue.’

The other girl from Reception led them down a long, narrow corridor. Openings without doors led off into massage rooms every few metres. There was thick, soft carpet underfoot, and a hush suffused the place, broken only by the odd murmur of distant voices. Some of the rooms were empty. In others women swaddled in towels lay on massage tables, groaning while girls in white overalls worked strong fingers into soft flesh.

‘Don’t worry, it’s women-only,’ Lyang said, catching Margaret’s expression.

Margaret said, ‘Why is it called the blind massage club?’

‘Because all the masseuses are blind,’ Lyang said.

Margaret laughed. ‘Ask a silly question.’

Lyang said, ‘It’s a good job for a blind person, based solely on touch. Something I’m more than happy to support. And imagine, a blind masseuse has nothing to distract her. Her entire focus is on you, and the whole landscape of your body beneath her fingers.’

‘I thought we were having a foot massage.’

‘Today, yes. But some other time you must try the whole body massage. It leaves you feeling fantastic for the rest of the day.’

They turned into a room with two reclining armchairs, a footstool in front of each and a low table between them. The girl from Reception invited them to sit, and they arranged themselves comfortably in the chairs and removed their shoes and socks. A few moments later both receptionists returned with small wooden barrels lined with plastic and filled with hot, aromatic water. Scented herbs floated on the surface, their fragrance rising with the steam. A barrel was placed in front of each chair and Lyang and Margaret slipped their feet into the water. It was so hot Margaret almost had to withdraw her feet immediately, but the burning quickly subsided and she started to relax.

Lyang said, ‘They’ll leave us now to steep for about twenty minutes.’

Another girl brought in cups of jasmine tea and Margaret took a sip and allowed herself to unwind. A wave of fatigue washed over her and she closed her eyes, remembering the cry of the baby which had wakened her at five that morning. For the next hour and a half her over-sensitised inner alarm system could take a break. Without opening her eyes she said, ‘So what was it about Bill Hart that made him worth giving up your job for?’

‘Oh, I didn’t give it up for him. I gave it up for me.’

A slight frown creased Margaret’s brow. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I fell in love,’ Lyang said simply. ‘What’s a girl gonna do? It was him or my job.’

‘And you didn’t resent that?’

‘Well, sure. But it wasn’t Bill I resented. It was the goddamned stupid rule we have about cops not marrying foreigners. And, anyway, I didn’t do anything he didn’t. He gave up a well-paid job in the States to come and work in China for about a tenth of the money. That makes me feel good. It means he must love me, too.’

‘Didn’t you want to go and live in the States?’

‘Not really. This is my home. And besides, Bill wanted to come and live here. He still can’t get over the idea of a civilisation that’s five thousand years old.’

‘Well, of course, he comes from a country where the most exciting thing we’ve produced in two hundred years is the burger.’

Lyang laughed. ‘You sound just like him. His favourite gag just now is, what happens if you leave an American and a cup of yoghurt alone in a room for a week?’ She paused waiting for a response.

Margaret obliged. ‘And that would be?’

‘The yoghurt develops its own culture.’ Which brought a smile to Margaret’s lips. And Lyang added, almost apologetically, ‘I only tell it because he does.’

Margaret grinned, opening her eyes and tilting her head to look at her. ‘As long as you don’t tell it to Li Yan. I like giving him a hard time about China, and I hate giving him ammunition for return fire.’ She paused. ‘So what do you do all day every day?’

‘I still work.’

Margaret was taken aback. ‘Doing what?’

‘At the Academy. It’s just part time, but I work mornings as Bill’s assistant. I know you don’t think very much of the polygraph …’

Margaret broke in, ‘I’d be lying if I told you otherwise.’

Lyang said, ‘And we’d know if you were.’ They both laughed. Then she said, ‘The truth is, Bill’s more of a scientist than a practitioner. The Academy is employing him to develop something based on the polygraph which is more suited to the Chinese. He was responsible for persuading Lynn Pan to come to China to work on the Chinese version of MERMER.’ She hesitated and glanced over at Margaret. ‘You don’t work at all?’

‘I give the occasional lecture at the Public Security University.’

‘But no pathology?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘The Ministry is not particularly keen on Americans conducting autopsies on Chinese crime victims. I think they think it reflects badly on their own pathologists.’

‘But Bill said you’d done autopsy work for us before.’

‘Special circumstances,’ Margaret said. ‘And, then, when the baby came, things changed.’

‘How?’

‘Well, Li Yan and I are not married, for a start.’

‘Obviously.’

‘But we do live together.’

Lyang sat up, interested. ‘Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.’

Margaret waggled a finger at her. ‘That’s just it, you don’t ask. At least, that’s the position the Ministry takes. They don’t ask, we don’t tell, they don’t know. Officially. That way we get away with it — as long as we don’t marry.’

Lyang whistled softly. ‘And Li Yan wouldn’t think about giving up his job?’

‘I wouldn’t ask him,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s a part of him. It would be like asking him to cut off a leg.’ She sighed. ‘The upshot of it all, though, is that it’s no longer politic for him to request permission to use me for autopsies on special cases.’ She qualified herself. ‘On any cases.’

‘So you’re leading a life of leisure and pleasure as a mother and wife … well, almost wife?’

Margaret laughed. ‘No, I think the word I think you’re looking for is vegetating.’

‘So what do you do all day?’

‘Oh, I stay home and look after our son. Do a bit of housework, a bit of cooking. I never know when Li Yan’ll be coming home or when he’ll be called out. I don’t have any friends in Beijing, so I never go anywhere …’ She shook her head in something close to despair. ‘You know, the kind of domestic bliss every American woman aspires to.’ She sat up and turned towards Lyang. It felt good to talk, to get some of this stuff off her chest. It had been a long time since there had been anyone other than Li to whom she could unburden herself. ‘It’s like I’ve stopped living, Lyang. Like my whole life’s been sucked into my baby, and my only future is to live it vicariously through him.’

‘Jesus, Margaret …’ Lyang had clearly picked up her husband’s slang. ‘You sound like you need a few bodies to cut up.’

Margaret laughed out loud. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That would probably be good therapy. You’ve no idea how much I miss the smell of an open intestine, or that slurping sound the brain makes when it plops out of the skull.’

‘Hmmm,’ Lyang said. ‘I can see how you’d miss that.’

The receptionists looked curiously at the two women lying back laughing on their reclining seats when they came in to take away the soak barrels. They returned a few moments later to dry off the two pairs of feet and place them on towels on each of the footrests. Margaret watched curiously as the two blind masseuses were led in to squat on stools at the end of each footrest. Lyang’s girl was very young, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. Her eyes were bizarrely pale, almost grey, and seemed fixed beneath beautifully slanted lids. Margaret’s masseuse was older, about thirty, and her dark eyes seemed to be constantly on the move, squinting to one side and then back again. Both were slightly built, wearing white cotton overalls, and when Margaret’s girl lathered her tiny hands with soft-scented cream and began working on Margaret’s feet, Margaret was astonished at the strength in them.

‘Of course, you know why Western men like Asian women,’ Lyang said, and Margaret could hear the mischief in her voice.

‘Why?’ she asked, without opening her eyes.

‘Because they have such small hands.’

Margaret smiled and frowned at the same time. ‘And that’s attractive because …?’

‘It makes their dicks seem bigger.’

They laughed again, and saw the incomprehension on the faces of their masseuses. A foot massage was supposed to be relaxing, therapeutic, not funny. But Margaret was finding the whole experience therapeutic in other ways. ‘I guess that must be why I fell for Li Yan,’ she said.

Lyang frowned, knowing there was a gag coming, but not seeing it. ‘Why?’

‘Because he makes my hands look so small.’

Their raucous laughter was inappropriate, and inordinately loud in the hushed atmosphere of the Jade Fingers Blind Massage Club. Margaret’s masseuse found a painful area on the sole of her foot and seemed to dig into it particularly hard with her thumb. Margaret gasped. But there was also an odd pleasure in the pain. She lay back then and succumbed to both the pain and the pleasure as her girl worked her way around her toes, down all the painful bumps in her arch, around the heel and back up the outside edge. She knew what all the muscles were, could picture them as the girl’s dextrous fingers sought them out, folded one over the other around the delicate bones of the foot. It was deliciously relaxing.

After a long period of silence, Lyang said to her, ‘What have you done about Li Jon?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘His nationality.’

‘Well, he’s both, of course. Chinese and American.’

‘You’ve registered him with the Embassy?’

‘Sure.’ It had been a complex procedure. Chinese and American laws were in conflict over the nationality of a child born to a Chinese-American couple. The Americans, the consul for American Citizen Services at the embassy had told Margaret, defined a child born to one American anywhere in the world as a US citizen at birth. The Chinese used the same legal premise for their citizens abroad, but allowed mixed citizenship couples, legally resident in China, to pick a citizenship for their kid after birth. Margaret had wanted to register Li Jon with the US embassy. Li was anxious for his son to remain Chinese. They had almost fallen out over it. In the end Margaret had persuaded Li that the Chinese were never going to deny his son nationality as long as they were there in China. But she wanted Li Jon properly registered as a US citizen so that there would never be a problem about them taking him to the US if they ever decided to go there. So she had gone to the embassy and had an interview with a sympathetic consul who set in motion a series of background checks on both Li and Margaret before finally issuing Li Jon with a Consular Report of Birth Abroad — which would effectively act as his passport for the first five years and make him officially a US citizen.

‘You got one of those Consular Report things?’ Lyang asked

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, Bill insisted we did that for Ling, too. So she’s a fully fledged stars and stripes citizen. It stuck in my craw a little to have to register her as a foreigner with the local police. It was expensive, too.’ A thought struck her. ‘Hey, how did you do that when you two aren’t … you know, married? Not even officially living together.’

‘We didn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘It was going to be too complicated. Officially, I still live in an apartment provided by the University of Public Security. That comes under the Western Beijing Police district. In reality, Li Yan and I share his police apartment in the Central Beijing Police district. We were just never going to be able to explain it.’

‘The endless complications of life in China,’ Lyang said. ‘You know, you and Li Yan should come over some night for a meal. We’ve got a lot in common, we four.’

‘I’d like that,’ Margaret said. ‘It would be nice to get out for a change. Where do you live?’

‘Ah,’ Lyang said. ‘That was Bill’s only stipulation — that if we were going to live in China, it wasn’t going to be in some dilapidated apartment where the Government controls the heating. His first wife died in a road accident, and he had been rattling around on his own in their big town house in Boston. So when we got married he sold it, and we bought one of those fabulous new modern apartments near the Central Business District. You know, the ones built for foreigners. We’re in a complex called Music Home International. It’s silly, really, but the two apartment blocks have got like huge grand piano lids on their roofs.’ She seemed a little embarrassed. ‘You can’t miss them. But there’s a health club with a pool and tennis courts, and there’s a beautifully landscaped private garden which is going to be just great for Ling in the summer.’

Margaret felt a twinge of jealousy. Not that any of these things amounted to a lifestyle she aspired to, but they sounded a great deal more appealing than Li’s spartan police apartment with its tiny rooms and irregular heating. And the thought returned her to a reality from which she had escaped all too briefly into a world of laughter and freedom from maternal responsibility. She had forgotten what it was like to have a life of your own, and she wasn’t sure that a friendship with Lyang would be a good thing. It could be very unsettling.