"You are also a runner, Mr. Wu?"
They were coming out of Beihai Park, with its white dome and holiday throngs of colorfully clothed school kids scampering about like escaped flowers. Mude had been mentioning the park's renowned reputation for centuries of quiet beauty; Bling had been filling in with notes of more recent interest that Mr. Mude had neglected to mention. Until two years ago, Bling had told them, the park had been closed completely to the general public, the lovely quiet of the lake undisturbed by rented rowboats, the massive gates barred and guarded. No one was allowed in except Mao's wife and her personal guests.
Bling had been explaining what a turn-on it had been, after years of jogging past the prohibited paradise, to one day, out of the blue, have the doors swung wide and be allowed to jog inside -- when Mr. Mude interrupted with that question about running.
"Damn straight I'm a runner," Bling answered. "One of your hometown heroes. Three years varsity, Beijing U. Come to a meet sometime, Mude; be my guest."
"A runner of distance?"
"I've done fives and tens. I hold the school record in the 1,500."
"Then you must be entered in tomorrow's heroic event?"
"Sorry. Tomorrow's heroes will have to run without Bee Wing Lou's company."
"Surely you must have applied? A running enthusiast residing in Beijing as you do?"
"It's an invitational, Mr. Mude… remember?"
"Ah, true," Mude recalled. "I had forgotten. Too bad for you, Mr. Wu."
Bling pulled down his blue shades to study Mude's face; it was impossible to tell if the mind behind that guarded smile were conniving, condescending, or what.
"Talk them into a 1,500 around the Tien An Men – like the Fifth Avenue mile in New York – then you'll see me out there busting my little yellow balls."
"That would be very enjoyable."
To get Bling off the hook, the editor asked if it might be possible to take a drive out to the Beijing campus to look over the sports scene, maybe catch a track practice. This time it was Bling who was reluctant and Mude who was suddenly permissive. True, he admitted, he did have preparations to make for the banquet, but saw no reason why they could not drop him off and continue on with Mr. Wu to his track practice. Everyone was left stunned by the sudden turnabout, and a trifle uneasy. When they dropped Mude off at the stark brick building he had directed the driver to, Bling became downright unnerved.
"That was the Bureau of Immigration Records!"
"Wonder whose name he's looking up?" the photographer wondered.
"I couldn't say for certain, but I'll bet you all a buck," Bling said unhappily, "it turns out to be Mud."
Nobody would cover the bet. The bus ride the rest of the way to the campus was somber and quiet.
In spite of the bright bustle of students, the campus was as grim as the pot-lid sky sitting heavy over it. One expects lawns on a campus, but most of the grounds were the same packed dirt that surrounded the rest of the city's dwellings, only not as well swept. The rows of gray-green gum trees made the walks and ways dim, like light undersea. The sullen looks of the workers did not help. Bling told them that there had been a lot of strife between students and laborers, who also lived on the sprawling campus. Bicycle tires slashed. Rapes. Gang fights between workers who considered the students arrogant and lazy and students who saw the workers as the same, only less educated. Without police protection the students would have been in sorry straits. "Out of a live-in population of about forty thousand, less than eight thousand are students."
"Sounds like the clods have the scholars unfairly outnumbered."
"In China," Bling moped, "t'was ever thus."
There was no track practice because of tomorrow's race, but three Chinese runners and the Australian girl were prowling the bleak cement gymnasium looking for someone with a key so they could get into the track room. Bling told them how to jimmy the lock and said he thought he'd skip the workout. The editor asked if they might take a look anyway, get some pictures. Reluctantly Bling led them down a dim concrete stairwell to a cracked wooden door in the cellar. The girl was gouging at the keyhole with a chopstick. Bling took over and finally dragged the door open and turned on a light. The room was a windowless cement box with a cot and a tiny desk. An iron rod stuck in the door frame was draped with a dozen tattered sweatsuits.
"Our locker room," Bling said. "Ritzy digs, right? And here" – he pulled a cardboard box from beneath the cot – "our equipment room."
The box was piled with shabby mismatched spike shoes, four bamboo batons, a shot, and a discus.
"The javelin is that thing stabbed yonder, airing them sweet-smellin' sweatsuits," the girl told the journalists.
Back outside, Bling put his blue glasses on and started walking back the way they had come.
"Gives you some idea why China doesn't have such great track times, doesn't it?"
When they got back to the campus gate their familiar bus was gone. In its place was one of the huge black Russian-made limos called Red Flags. It looked like a cross between a Packard and a Panzer. The driver stepped out and bowed and handed them a note and four embossed invitations.
"It's from Mude. He says the bus was required for other tasks, that this diplomatic limousine will take us back to the hotel to dress, then bring us to the banquet at the Great Hall. The fourth invitation is for Mr. Wu, and Mude suggests we advise Mr. Wu that a place has been reserved for him."
"Oh, shit," said Bling. "Oh, shit."
It might be the most beautiful dining hall in the world, certainly the biggest. A Canadian football game could be played comfortably in one of its rooms, with space left a-plenty on all sides for bleachers and bathrooms.
During the day there is always a small crowd outside, gaping at the Great Hall's grandiosity. Tonight, a very large crowd was gathered because two monumental events were occurring: the banquet for the Beijing Marathon, and the State Formal Dinner for President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togoland. In a land without M.A.S.H. reruns or video games this was big potatoes.
The crowd waited on tiptoes behind the line, hoping to catch a glimpse of something exotic – a famous athlete; perhaps the glint of an African potentate's eye. All the limos. Certainly they had to be disappointed by the first passenger exiting from the big black sedan they had allowed through – a spiny-headed Chinese in plain brown sports jacket was all. The next passenger was better, a big occidental stranger with beard, and the next was yet better and bigger. The last apparition rising out of the upholstered depths of the Russian limo – why, he was enough to stretch even the most curious rubberneck to its limits of awe. The man was beyond size or measure, and he carried an optical arsenal of the most convincing proportions crisscrossed across his girth, like bandoliers on one of the bandit giants of old. Many of the onlookers went home immediately after, sufficed.
The foursome was late. The feast had begun. The roar of it could be heard down the marble corridors, drawing them on like the seductive roar of a waterfall. When they at last reached the two ten-foot urns at the door and were passed by the armed guard, they were as dazzled as had been the crowd on the walk outside. A room big as a blimp hangar, with thousands of people at hundreds of round tables, each table manned by dozens of bustling attendants refilling glasses, removing platters, producing new dishes seemingly from the very air.