Yang had hoped to borrow one of the newly allowed classics of Confucius. He'd heard that their library had received the very first shipment to honor at last the birthplace of the great philosopher. But the books were all already on loan. Yang instead had to choose a more familiar work, Wang Shih-fu's Romance of the Western Chamber. It was a novel his father had continued to teach even during the harshest criticism of the "slave-ridden classics."
The last loan date on Western Chamber was almost five years ago. The last borrower was his father.
Without slackening his stride, Yang pushed the book into his trouser tops and buttoned his jacket over it. Not that his uncle would not know a book was there, of course. He almost certainly would. Therefore it was not that he was concealing it, Yang told himself. He carried it in his belt to have both hands free, for his balance.
For his sprint.
Fists clenched, he pumped hard against the descending gloom, trusting his feet to avoid the rocks and ruts in the dark path. He could have run it blindfolded, navigating by sound and smell – Gao Jian's machine, sewing there to the left; Xiong-and-son's excrement wagons parked in reeking rows, ready for the next day's collections; half-wit Wi snoring with his sows. He ran harder.
He was small for his nineteen years, with narrow shoulders and thin ankles. But his thighs were thick and his upper arms very strong from the weight work of wrestling. Beneath the book his belly was like carved oak. He was in good shape. He had been running home from school every night for almost four years.
With a final burst of speed he ducked beneath the curtain of acacia and into the yard of his uncle's shop. He nearly stumbled in wonderment. Everything was lit, the whole house! Even the bulb above the false teeth – still lit. Something had happened to his mother! Or one of his sisters!
He didn't go to the gate but hurdled the mud hedge and rattled across the brickpile. He charged through the door and the empty front room to the curtain across the kitchen and stopped. Shaking, he pulled aside the dingy batik and peered inside. Everyone was still at the dinner table, the bone chopsticks waiting beside the best plates, the vegetables and rice still steaming in the platters. Every head was already turned to him, smiling.
His uncle stood, a tiny glass of clear liquid in each hand. He handed one to Yang and lifted the other in toast.
"To our little Yang," his uncle declared, the big mouth beaming porcelain. "Ganbei!"
"To Yang!" The aunt and sisters and cousins all stood, lifting their glasses. "Ganbei!"
Everyone tossed the swallow of liquid into their mouths except Yang. He could only blink and pant. His mother came around the table, her eyes shining.
"Yang, son, forgive us. We have opened your letter."
She handed him an elaborately inscribed paper. He saw the official seal of the People's Republic embossed at the bottom.
"You have been invited to go to Beijing and race. Against runners from all over the world!"
Before Yang could look at his letter, his uncle was touching the rim of his refilled glass to Yang's.
"It is going to be televised all over the world. Ganbei, Yang. Drink."
Yang started to drink, then asked, "What kind of race?"
"The greatest kind. The longest kind -"
That must be a marathon, Yang realized. Now he swallowed the mao tai in a gulp. He felt the strong rice liquor blaze its way to his stomach. A marathon? He had never run a marathon, not even half a marathon. Why had they picked him? Yang didn't understand.
"We are all so proud," his mother said.
"All over the world," his uncle was saying. "It will be seen by millions. Millions!"
"Your father would have also been proud," his mother added.
Then Yang understood. The provincial chairman of sports had been a friend and colleague of his father: an old friend, and a man of honor and loyalty, if not too much courage. It was surely he who had recommended young Yang. A grand gesture of cleaning up. For things that had happened.
"He would have gone to the square and played his violin and sung, son. He would have been that proud."
Yang didn't say so, but he thought that it would take more than a grand gesture or a televised footrace to clean up that much.
The American journalists sipped their free drinks in the deep divans of the Pan American Clipper Club room, an exclusive lounge located above the lesser travelers of the San Francisco International Airport terminal.
Exclusive indeed. Not only did one need to know of its esteemed existence and whereabouts, one needed as well to produce evidence of acceptable prestige before gaining entry. While the journalists were not exactly first class, they were in the company of those who were. This was enough to get them to the secret door, past the doorman, and into the free booze.
"How do you visualize," a fellow club sipper insisted on knowing, "hanging this gig on a hook?
The sipper was a ranking executive in the business that owned the magazine paying for this journalistic jaunt to China, so everyone acknowledged his right to be a trifle insistent.
"The hook I have in mind," answered the first of the journalists, a big bearded boy who was the editor of said mag as well as originator of the jaunt, "is sport as détente. Remember it wasn't really Nixon or Kissinger that initially broke through the bamboo curtain; it was the Ping-Pong ball. This race is the first international sporting event in China since before World War Two. To me, that has meaning."
Meaning he really had no idea at all what to hang it on. The second journalist, bald, unbearded, bigger and older than the first, muscled his brow in a Brandoesque attitude of heavy consideration.
"Let me think on that a minute," he begged. He turned to the third journalist, absolutely enormous, with big blue eyes and a monstrous camera hanging over his belly. "What about you, Brian? What do you plan to aim at?"
"I can't take any point pictures until my writer comes up with something to make a point with, can I?" was the way the third journalist avoided the question.
The eyes turned back to the second journalist; his knotted brow indicated he nearly had his answer tied down.
"One of the main characteristics," he began, "about a bamboo curtain… is it's so damn thick. The only thing it lets show through is politics. For years no idiosyncrasies, no quirks, no personality has been allowed to show through."
"Until now?" asked the editor, proud of the way his man had wiggled off this hook business.
"Right. Until now. Now they are sponsoring this big marathon with top runners from all over the globe, even though the best Chinese marathoner is slower than the mediocre from the rest of the racing world. This may be the crack in the curtain for us to go angling through."
"Gotcha!" the ranking exec said. "Like ice fishing back in Minnesota: hafta hook something before the hole freezes back." He raised his martini to the trio. "Well, fishermen: here's to a successful trip. Bring us back a biggie -"