The Interior Page 28

  Two hours later, as they reached the end of yet another row, Suchee stepped out of the field to where she’d left a basket. She set down her hoe, squatted down on her haunches, and motioned for Hulan to join her. Suchee reached into the basket and pulled out a thermos. She poured hot tea into the tin cup that served as the thermos top and handed it to Hulan. The bitter green liquid cut through the dust that coated her throat. She gave the cup back to Suchee, who noisily sipped the last of the liquid, then refilled the cup.

  Hulan looked at her hands. On Thursday morning her hands had been those of a Red Princess and an investigator at the Ministry of Public Security—smooth, pale, with tapered fingernails. After three days in the countryside her hands were scratched, her nails cracked and ragged, and her palms a mass of broken and unbroken blisters. The bandage that covered the deep gouge was caked with dirt but still protected the wound, which hadn’t stopped throbbing. Hulan longed for the cool shower she knew awaited her at the hotel, at the same time realizing that Suchee would never waste water on such a frivolous luxury. Hulan remembered back years ago to the Red Soil Farm and how in the morning people would wash their faces and brush their teeth in the communal water trough, then return at night to wash their hands, faces, feet, and teeth in the same water, which was changed only every three or four days.

  “You have questions about Miaoshan,” Suchee said at last, “but your manners keep you from asking them. You should know that the customs regarding visitors and etiquette no longer matter to me now that my daughter is dead.”

  “I’ve heard things about Miaoshan that trouble me,” Hulan said. “You say she was to be married, and yet I hear of other men.”

  “There were no other men. Miaoshan loved Tsai Bing.”

  No mother wanted to hear what Hulan was going to say, but she relied on the fact that Suchee had insisted that she wanted the truth at whatever the cost. “I have met a man, Guy Lin, who says he is the father of Miaoshan’s baby. I believe him. Did she ever mention him to you?”

  Suchee turned her head away to face into the green of the field as though she had not heard.

  “There is also a girl at the factory who says that Miaoshan was meeting with a foreigner.” Hulan had used a euphemism, but the meaning was clear. “I believe this girl, especially when I add it to what I found among Miaoshan’s belongings. You said that Miaoshan dressed like a foreigner. I hadn’t thought this that important. So many of our young women—no, so many women in all of China—now dress to copy Westerners. But I was thinking of the clothes that we make here to look like clothes from the West, not the real thing. Even in Beijing I would have trouble finding the type of nu zai ku—’cow boy pants’—that Miaoshan had.”

  Suchee opened her mouth to speak, but Hulan held up a hand to stop her.

  “There is more. In the box in your house I found perfume, panties, and a bra. These are not from our country. These are foreign. You might even say corrupt. There can only be one explanation: The foreigner gave these things to Miaoshan. I have a guess about who this was. Did Miaoshan ever talk to you about Aaron Rodgers?”

  Suchee shook her head, but still kept her eyes averted. Her fingers began to fret the hem of a pant leg.

  “What about Manager Red Face?” Hulan asked.

  Again Suchee shook her head.

  “Another name has also come up,” Hulan continued. “It is that of your neighbor Tang Dan.”

  Suchee slowly rotated her face to Hulan. Her eyes were filled with pain and anger. “That is a lie.”

  “Tell me,” Hulan said.

  “Tang Dan is my neighbor. I was a friend of his wife’s. She helped me when Miaoshan was born.”

  “But Tang Dan is a widower now.”

  “Yes,” Suchee acknowledged, “and perhaps for that reason he is looking for a new wife.”

  “Miaoshan?”

  Suchee chortled. “Tang Dan is old enough to be Miaoshan’s father.”

  “Which would only show his strength and virility in the village.”

  “And that is why he has asked me to marry him?”

  Hulan was not surprised by the news. “How many times have you said no?”

  “He asked me for the first time five years ago, just as Miaoshan finished middle school. I considered it. Tang Dan is a wealthy man in our county. Our lands would have been consolidated. I thought this would give Miaoshan a better opportunity to continue her education. You always said that an education was important for women. Remember how you taught me my first characters? Then, after the Cultural Revolution, people came to our village with a new campaign. It wasn’t the usual political campaign that we had all grown so accustomed to. No, this time it was a campaign to educate women. Shaoyi encouraged me and I was one of the first women from our county to join. We began with Chinese, but very soon they introduced us to English ABCs. The government said it was important for us to learn the foreigner’s language as well as our own. I thought, if this is so, our country must truly be changing. And if it is changing, then Miaoshan must be a new kind of girl for our new country.”

  All this seemed very far off the track, but Hulan let Suchee continue for now.

  “Very few children in this area go on to high school, because they’re needed on the land,” Suchee said “But Miaoshan was never much for physical work, and my place is so small that I really didn’t need her help every day. Of course, I could have used her hands for watering, but she complained so that I thought she was just like her father. She was born to be a scholar, not a peasant. For her ninth-grade year she was one of only two children from our village accepted to high school. She accomplished that on her own. We didn’t need Tang Dan for help, but this didn’t stop him from asking if we needed it. Four years later, when Miaoshan graduated, I once again considered accepting Tang Dan’s proposal. I don’t know if you can understand this, Hulan. When I say he is wealthy, it may not seem so to you by your counting, but he is the first man in our county to become a millionaire.”

  Hulan told Suchee that Siang had said her father wasn’t a millionaire.

  “Tang Dan isn’t going to discuss his business affairs with his daughter,” Suchee insisted.

  “But he would with you.”

  Suchee grunted. “I have been alone here for many years. I have relied on no one. I have raised and slaughtered animals. I have bought my own seed and tilled my soil. I have hired people to help me during harvest, but I have sold all of my produce myself. Tang Dan and I understood each other.”

  “So you discussed his money?” Hulan asked skeptically.

  “Liu Hulan, look around you. There is nothing here but hard work. Oh, people can go to the village and watch television in the café. Some people, like Tang Dan, even have their own television sets. But what do half-naked American girls bouncing their big breasts in their bi ji nis have to do with me?” Hulan understood that Suchee was talking about Baywatch, a show very popular in China for its bikini-clad actresses. “For young people like Miaoshan, Tsai Bing, and Siang, they see a paradise that they want to be a part of. For old people like me, I think it only makes people dream of things they can never have.”

  “You’re not old.”

  Suchee frowned and said, “We are the same age, yes, but look at you. You are just starting your life. I am ending mine.”

  Hulan could have denied all this; instead she asked, “What about Tang Dan?”

  “For many years—since his wife’s death and Shaoyi’s death—we have met. It has only been talk, and most of that has been about our regrets. Tang Dan and I grew up in the same area, but our lives were almost as different as yours and mine. Even though we had both been born after Liberation, our families had held on to old ways and customs, as was the case in the countryside. As a boy he was well fed and spoiled. As a girl I was seen as merely a visitor to our family home. My father treated me very badly. I wasn’t given food or a place to sleep in the house. My mother could do nothing about it, because she had been sold to my father by her father for only a few
yuan during a famine. When the Cultural Revolution came, everything changed.”

  Having heard Siang’s version of these events, Hulan listened carefully for any discrepancies, but the story was still the same. Tang Dan’s family had been destroyed, and he’d spent years in a labor camp.

  “But for me those early years of the Cultural Revolution were glorious,” Suchee continued. “I couldn’t imagine being so happy. I was sent to the Red Soil Farm to teach people like you. I was away from the suffocation of the village. I was fed. I remember how the city kids complained about the food, but that was the first time in my life that I’d had three meals in a day, and that happened every day, week after week, month after month. Then everything changed again. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, I was married to someone with a bad record and Tang Dan had his own black mark. So for the first time Tang Dan and I had something very much in common.”

  Suchee described their lives. The birth of children. The cycling of the seasons. The famines and droughts. The deaths of their spouses. And the never-ending drudgery of eking a living from the soil. But unlike Suchee’s farm, Tang Dan’s land had flourished beneath his hard work. “I try to keep up with my land,” she explained. “The soil is good, but it’s hard for me to do the watering alone. Since he got rich, Tang Dan has been able to hire many men to help him with his watering and caring.”

  All this hadn’t stopped the villagers from gossiping about the Tangs. “They said the Tang family hid its gold and only dug it up again when they knew it was safe. What nonsense!” Suchee sniffed indignantly. “I saw him work. The Tsai family saw him work. His wealth comes from his own efforts, but it is something that he doesn’t discuss, not even with his own daughter.” Suchee hesitated, then added, “Especially with his own daughter.”

  “Why?”

  “For two reasons. First, like so many young people in our village, she has become greedy for the outside world. Tang Dan doesn’t want to pay for such foolishness! And second, he has been negotiating with a family for almost two years now over a bride price and dowry. He doesn’t want to pay more than he has to.”

  So many of these customs were outdated, even forbidden, but that didn’t stop them from persisting in the countryside far from the watchful eyes of the central government.

  “You would have married Tang Dan for love or because he was rich?” Hulan asked.

  “Love? I have great respect for Tang Dan and I would have done my woman duty, but the only reason I would have married him was because I thought he would send Miaoshan to English teacher’s school or maybe to Beijing University.”

  Taken aback by this revelation, Hulan asked, “Could she have qualified?”

  Suchee went back to fretting the hem of her pants. “She didn’t apply. She said she would do it on her own with no help, which was a good thing, because as soon as Miaoshan graduated, Tang Dan no longer asked me to marry him and I couldn’t very well ask him.”

  “But he has asked you again.”

  Suchee nodded. “Since Miaoshan’s death he has asked me several times. He says I shouldn’t be alone. He says that once Siang is married away to another village, he will be completely alone too. But I have said no. He says it’s okay if we don’t have sex. He understands that I grieve for my daughter. But I still said no. Last night when you were here, he said that he would buy my land. That way I could leave this place of unhappy memories. He said he would pay me enough that I could move to Taiyuan City and be comfortable for the rest of my life. I thanked him for his friendship, but I had to say no to that as well. I’m an end-of-the-liner now. All I have left are my memories. The good ones and the bad ones are here, not in Taiyuan City. To leave this place would be to say good-bye to my life.”

  What was brutally obvious to Hulan seemed invisible to Suchee. During the period that Miaoshan had come home, Tang Dan had probably turned his full attention to her. For whatever reason, she’d rejected him. Now that Miaoshan was gone—and the thought that Tang Dan might have killed Miaoshan for refusing him weighed heavily on Hulan’s mind—he once again zeroed in on Suchee. Miaoshan was beautiful and young, and, as Hulan had already said to Suchee, that was reason enough for any man of a certain age. But what was his interest in Suchee? The saying went: A family without a woman is like a man without a soul. But Tang Dan, as a millionaire, could have any woman he wanted. He could even buy a young girl from a neighboring province to prove his virility to the village. Why then would he chose a prematurely aged peasant who didn’t have many years left in her? The only answer, it seemed to Hulan, was that Tang Dan wanted something from the Ling family. Hulan decided to tuck this line of inquiry away for now, as she had other, more important questions she needed to ask about Miaoshan.

  “Your daughter was trying to organize the women in the factory,” Hulan pressed on. “Did you know about that?”

  Cicadas whirred about them. The air hung thick as porridge.

  “She wanted the women to strike for better conditions,” Suchee acknowledged at last. “That—and not some man—is the reason she stayed at the factory on weekends.”

  “You knew this, but you didn’t tell me?”

  “I thought if you knew my daughter was a troublemaker, you wouldn’t come. It is your job to punish troublemakers, not help them.”

  Hulan didn’t know how to respond to the truth of her friend’s statement. Instead she said, “I need to know exactly what Miaoshan was doing.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know. Miaoshan was smart, smart like you. But she didn’t have your opportunities. I was proud of her, but that was never enough. ‘A mother is supposed to be proud,’ she used to say. ‘What does it matter if you are proud of me?’ Do you know the old proverb, ‘He who has a mind to beat his dog will easily find a stick’?”

  Hulan hadn’t heard it, but she understood the meaning. Miaoshan had been an angry person who had wanted to strike out. But as a poor but intelligent peasant girl, she had little opportunity either to use her brains or to strike out. Knight International gave her the chance.

  “She would come home and say things. ‘Fight selfishness! Puncture the arrogance of imperialism! Repudiate revisionism! It is right to rebel!’ Oh, the slogans I heard! They cut into my heart like shards of glass.”

  “But those are slogans from the Cultural Revolution. Did you teach them to her?”

  “Me? Never! I wanted to forget those days.”

  “Then where did she learn them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The factory? At school? From your neighbors? From Tang Dan?”

  “Maybe from one, maybe from all. I don’t know. But I can say this, those words frightened me, not just because of their content but because she was willing to change the meaning to suit her own purposes.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “‘A tree may wish to stand still, but the world will not subside,’” Suchee quoted.

  “I remember that one. Mao meant that class struggle was unavoidable. She must have been thinking of the American owners.”

  “Exactly, but what scared me was that she saw herself as the wind, a wind that was so strong she would be able to blow the others along with her.” Suchee repacked the thermos, stood, and picked up her hoe. “My torment is that I always viewed Miaoshan with mother eyes. Since I saw her hanging before me, I have cursed myself for refusing to see her as she truly was. My blindness prevented me from guiding her away from danger. In the end I failed as a mother, because I couldn’t protect my child.” With that, Suchee disappeared into the wall of green, leaving behind her a wake of rustling stalks.

  Hulan didn’t move. Her mind wrestled with this contradictory girl. By all accounts and on the evidence of her own belongings, Miaoshan had become increasingly Westernized. But what Suchee had just told her made Miaoshan sound like a fervent Communist of the old school. Had one of these personifications been an act? If so, which one was the real Miaoshan? In a way it didn’t matter, because even with these contradictions the character of
Miaoshan was emerging. In fact, Hulan understood the dead girl intimately, because at one time in her life she had been like Miaoshan. Years ago Hulan had been consumed with political fervor, with grievous consequences. Miaoshan too had been filled with a Communist zeal that could also be dangerous in the new China. She had gone to the factory and immediately understood that she could profit from it. Today Hulan could see from the wisdom and pain of time that those windows of opportunity were rare and dangerous. Like Hulan, Miaoshan had been smart and beautiful. But Miaoshan had an extra attribute: the ability to make herself beautiful for a wide variety of men with whom she could be quite persuasive. Now the question was, which of Miaoshan’s amorous or political manipulations had gotten her killed?

  The persistent honking of a car horn snapped Hulan back to the present. She looked at her watch, realized how late it was, then ran through the fields until she reached Suchee’s little compound, where David and Investigator Lo were waiting for her.

  “Where’ve you been?” David asked. “We’ve got to get to the airport.”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  David and Lo exchanged looks that said otherwise. “You’re, ah, dirty?” David said, giving up any pretext of diplomacy.

  Hurriedly Hulan drew water from the well, dipped her arms in the bucket, rubbed them as clean as she could, and splashed water on her face. She threw the filthy water out on the ground and drew up another bucket of water. “Investigator Lo,” she called out as she tipped her head over, “get my bag out of the trunk and put it in the car.” She poured the rest of the water over her hair, shook it out, then smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”