Avenue of Eternal Peace (24 page)

The spy decided to leave it for the present, and made notes in his file.

Dulcia was in a flap. Her cat was off colour. She couldn't get her aerobics routine to work. She'd poured herself a drink and, when Jumbo came in, she glided into his arms and led him a dance.

But he was a heavy weight.

‘What's up?'

He had come from the Public Security Bureau, Passport Section. On previous visits he had been fobbed off. He'd been told to wait. This time he went early in the morning and waited all day. Each time he demanded to see a higher official. At last he reached the wall, an official who told him point blank that his application for a passport to America had been refused and the decision was final. Jumbo stayed his ground. He knew that if he did not demand an explanation for the decision he could never again apply for a passport. It was essential to find out the reason. He was told to wait, for hours, and at last he was brought to the office of the highest official of those who manned the barricades to protect the entirely inaccessible, real decision-makers. The rosy-cheeked young man, a football fan who accepted a foreign cigarette from Jumbo, put it clearly. Jumbo had been placed in the Fifth Category, consisting of those people who might bring the motherland into disrepute if they were allowed out. It was a category reserved for counter-revolutionaries, doubters—and especially young artists whose work was insufficiently ‘patriotic'. The ruling could not be overturned. Never. There was no point reapplying. He would never be given a passport. Smoking Jumbo's cigarette in the most appreciative fashion, the young Public Security officer said in a spirit of friendly advice that Jumbo should have thought more carefully beforehand.

When Dulcia heard the news, she started to shout. She ranted. She hurled cushions at the sick cat and laughed weirdly. She could not register the fact; she had no training for a reality that failed to square with her wishes. From Jumbo's contained anger, his determination to maintain good-humoured decent behaviour in the face of evil fate, she recognised that for him this was the bedrock. They were utterly powerless. Nothing could be done.

They did not make love as they had most other days. The whole contour of Jumbo's relationship with Dulcia was changed by this fact. Not that he had been using her, but he had been swimming with her in a current that flowed towards a future; and even their complicated lovemaking was a training in that direction. For Dulcia their relationship was a thing of romance and salvation; in some future world it might dive into tragedy, but that would be their own doing, an expression of the logic of two individual personalities. It would never be imposed by the State.

‘Why? Why? Why?' she shouted. ‘Just because they don't understand your paintings? Just because you have a foreign lover?'

‘There's more,' he said. ‘I never told you. I couldn't. Now what does it matter? They came to me, months ago, after we first started seeing each other.'

‘They?'

‘They. They knew about you. Your friends—the journalists— the diplomats. They wanted information. What you did. What you thought. Who you knew.'

‘What were they trying to find out?'

‘They just want to understand.'

‘There's nothing to understand.'

‘That makes them suspicious. I told them I had no information to give. They were unhappy. Then they contacted my mother in Xian. She's an old woman, a simple woman who cares about my father and my sister and doesn't think outside the family. Once she was different, but her experiences taught her to be simple, unthinking. They came to her and told her that her son must help them, help China, for the good of the family. How could she refuse? She begged me. I could not say no. So I went to them. I gave some information. Very little. I reported some conversations. About art and culture. Nothing important. Nothing they would even understand. They were unhappy with me. They could make no sense of my information. They accused me of lying and concealing. Of course I did conceal, but they could not have understood anyway. They were unhappy with me. They finished with me. That was when Central TV decided they could not sponsor my study in the States. If I went, I would have to pay for myself. That was their doing. And now this is their final revenge. The Fifth Category. There is no way out.'

Dulcia beat him on the chest. ‘Why didn't you tell me before?' She felt betrayed.

‘I wanted less trouble. I thought I could handle it.'

‘No one can do that.' She moaned, ‘Oh Jumbo. The bastards! The blackmailing rats! Your poor mother! All because of me, because I was nobody and they'd blown their cover for the sake of nothing. What can we do?'

‘Nothing.'

‘That's impossible. Are you safe?'

‘While you're still here.'

‘I'll stay, I'll stay,' she declared. But she knew she had not enough love for Jumbo in her heart to stay in China with him for the rest of her life. Not enough love, not enough constancy. Right now, however, she had passion. She looked at him and said: ‘I'm not gonna take this lying down. You've heard of pulling strings? Well, I'm gonna yank the fucking ropes!'

‘There's no way,' said Jumbo with quiet firmness, and he picked up the wine glass and bowed his nose to it like a child.

4

Celery and shallots spilled out on the table. Wally chopped while Jin Juan kneaded the dough, laughing at his clumsiness. She had come to him as soon as she returned to Beijing. She knew the place, she reminded him, from her visit as Azalea.

‘Now why did you do that?' he asked.

‘Did you enjoy it?'

He shrugged. ‘Certainly.'

‘It was no more than a practical joke. I suppose I was testing you, and protecting myself.'

‘It could have backfired.'

‘It almost did.' She laughed again, not revealing her true motive, that had to do with Zhang. Coming to the foreigner had been a trial by ordeal. How could he understand her coldly irrational behaviour? She had been abandoned and had forced herself to act the whore. She had also come for revenge.

It was chilly outside and the plain warm flat offered Wally and Jin Juan the luxury of a private, peaceful space. She rolled the dumplings with nimble fingers, pinching them tight, and made him copy. But his fell open in the boiling water. The dumplings steamed in a large dish between them, and they had a saucer each of vinegar and a glass of cognac to sip. They played question and answer about China, Wally's sense of the positive things encircling Jin Juan's negatives as in a game of Go. Wally had already made backdoor inquiries about her possible job transfer to the Medical College.

Those days were happy. Her alliance with the Doctor was noted by the College authorities and protected her. He was drawing her into the circle of privilege. She could come and go as she pleased, and, although she wasn't indiscreet, she stayed with him when he wanted her. He had arrived somewhere at the end of his haphazard quest, and threw himself into work with his colleagues, his satisfaction made headier by the approach of departure. What he had arrived at was Jin Juan, the feel of her intelligence, her body, her attentiveness, her Sui dynasty aloofness, head arched away. He saw a future.

They were replete with dumplings. The curtains were drawn and dusk closing in. As they sprawled dishevelled on the bed he began talking, as he had several times, of the practical problems of taking her to Australia with him. He wanted to plan the strategy move by move. Implicit in the plan was his proposal of marriage, the firmness of which Jin Juan recognised. The future for him was now a logical line. For her such a line, like the ruler at school, spoke of coercion, a willed dream. But not interrupting she curled against him like a cat, her face golden in the dim light, her sharp chin tilted upwards, her curving eyes glittering.

She had tested him and he had proved steadfast, to her and her grandfather. And there was their joy together. Director Kang, to safeguard himself against discovery, had for years now kept her out of the Medical College. Kang feared Hsu Chien Lung's granddaughter. Knowing her involvement with young Zhang, Kang could also do his part to prevent her alliance with so powerful a family by keeping her out of a respectable job. Kang knew from discussions with Zhang's father, his patient, that the family would look down on a middle-school teacher with no connections. So Kang's motives had been several in blocking Jin Juan's way; and in a similar way, Jin Juan recognised, her motives in coming to the foreigner were mixed.

On this winter's day she left Wally before the gates closed, took the bus, and walked the last stretch of slippery track that led to her dormitory. The duck's-down hood was tight around her glowing cheeks. A car was parked outside. Zhang was waiting for her.

‘When did you get back? You haven't been in touch.' He tried to look concerned, but his irritation showed.

‘Come in,' she said energetically. ‘I've been busy since I came back. There is some business to do with my grandfather.'

‘Is that all?' He examined her suspiciously.

‘I'm planning to change my job to become an interpreter at the Medical College.'

‘You don't look much different. There are no problems, I trust.'

She weighed him up in return as they went into the dormitory. As he had grown older and more successful, he had become more bound, an agent of Party attitudes, or feudal attitudes. His self-interest no longer chafed against orthodoxy. What was right, what maintained the system of power, was right for him. So he had come to her like an investigator.

‘I hear you've been hanging round with the foreigner. What's that all about?'

‘Does it matter?'

Her colour rose, not from shame but anger.

‘What's your relationship with him?'

‘Actually I think he wants to marry me.'

Zhang snorted. ‘They're always looking for our women.'

‘He's quite serious.'

‘Well, maybe it's a good opportunity, but you couldn't come at that, could you?' He was so cool Jin Juan could have scratched him. He took her hand. ‘Even if there wasn't our situation. Are you all right? How's the little problem?'

She pulled her hand away. ‘It's never been your problem.'

Across his smooth, smug face passed a quiver of perplexity.

‘I got rid of it,' she said.

‘What!'

‘It might not have been your problem,' she repeated.

At once he saw her meaning, in a grotesque vision of violation, alien blood mixing with his seed in a witch's crucible, producing a monster. He slapped her viciously and she fell back on the bed, covering her head. ‘Go!' she ordered.

He stood, legs apart, and put his nose in the air. ‘I don't want your stinking cunt. Marry the foreigner, get your passport and leave.'

She sat straight up. Her head was aching and her cheeks smarted. She rose to her feet, shaking as she faced him, and said, ‘I don't have to listen to you any more.'

5

Wally got a polite pressing invitation from Mother Lin explaining what had happened and urging him to visit. He had not seen Eagle since the summer and was embarrassed that his own affairs had come to preoccupy him so entirely. Eagle was one of the brightest, most uncomplicated people he had met in China. Wally was distressed to hear that things were as bad as the letter suggested. He had not known of the injury. As soon as he was free, he jumped on his bike and rode the short distance to the house near the station. As on previous visits Mother Lin spied him first from the tiny kitchen.

‘He's come! He's come!'

She led the Doctor inside. There was Eagle, who blinked and grinned in surprise. He was lying on his side under a quilt on the platform bed, in a crimson sporting shirt. But he had not been exercising. He was thin and sallow, his eyes sunken, his hair flat and lustreless. When he smiled to the visitor, he gave off that air of panicky impatient exhaustion that comes with sickness.

Mother Lin was babbling about her son's condition.

‘You tell me yourself,' said Wally to the boy. ‘What's the matter?'

‘I can't walk.' He was apologetic. ‘I had an accident playing basketball. The doctor said I should rest and it would heal. Now I can't walk at all.'

‘Let's have a look.'

Eagle wore several layers of loose pyjamas under the quilt. The pyjamas were damp with perspiration and the bedclothes were smelly. He had lain there many weeks.

The leg in question was swollen around the knee. It was years since Wally had carried out such a physical examination. Eagle winced when the Doctor pressed the knee, and couldn't oblige when he was asked to move it. The leg was unable to bend.

When Wally made him stand, Eagle's face screwed up in pain. He managed to laugh as he hopped about the room on his good leg. But the difficulty was too great when he tried to walk normally.

Mother Lin produced her usual excessive meal, fussing over Wally while Eagle picked without interest. He was thoroughly deflated. The Doctor's visit had lifted his spirits a little but for stretches he reverted to those hollow inward starings. He felt victimised. He had fought his difficulties courageously, taking an active, determined role, using self-discipline and a disgust for self-pity as means to his ends. He had regained his place on the team. He had re-established his understanding with Pearl, on track again in the task of getting a decent flat for his old and ailing mother. And now the misfortune of his injury was compounded by its incurability. He had rested, he had eaten the good food his mother slaved to prepare, he had taken the expensive medicines his brother had bought. But the situation was hopeless. The Sports Institute denied him its superior medical attention. Pearl had taken the accident as a well-timed omen. And now Eagle's strength was draining out of him. More than once he had discussed with his mother the idea of calling the Doctor, but he had always dismissed it as something not right, as if he should bear his fate alone. It was his mother who acted, since her duty was to use any connection that might help her beloved son. Wally was thankful she had done so. He would help if it lay in his power.