The tears ran hot and salty down Margaret’s cheeks as she turned to see that Steve had closed his eyes, dried lips moving, almost as if he were miming the words. She moved back to his bedside and took out the little pewter frame. ‘I brought Danni,’ she said.
His eyes opened again and she saw that they, too, were filled with tears. He looked at the photograph in her hand and reached out to take it from her. For a long time he looked at the little girl smiling at him. Then he looked at Margaret. ‘I wish I could have known her,’ he said.
‘You will,’ Margaret said softly, urgently, and with more conviction than she felt. ‘Be strong, Steve. You can make it through this.’
Steve clutched her hand again. ‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘Even through the glass. They’ve got the address and phone number out there. Martha’s still down as my next of kin.’ And he was racked by another fit of coughing. And when he caught his breath again, he said, ‘Call her, Margaret. Please.’
IV
Li watched the traffic out on Connecticut Avenue drift past in the colourless sodium light and felt the deep rumble of the Washington metro through the floor of Charlie Chiang’s restaurant as a train pulled into the Van Ness metro station somewhere deep below them in the bowels of the city. His normal appetite for Charlie’s excellent cuisine was on hold, and he picked at the shredded beef and noodles in the rice bowl before him. Sitting opposite, in some deep, dark world of her own, Xiao Ling ate in small, almost frenetic, bursts. Plain boiled rice. She seemed to have only the most tenuous grasp of why her diet was being restricted, but did not seem to mind that she faced a lifetime of dull and simple food. It had never been a priority.
Li had asked her several times about the ma zhai, and in small, teasing fragments, she had confirmed what Margaret had told him. Yes, she thought she recognised them. No, she didn’t know their names. She was not sure if they worked at the Golden Mountain Club or not. Perhaps she had seen them at the massage parlour. She couldn’t remember. Li was certain that her memory lapses were selective and inspired by fear. Whatever else they had done, the ma zhai had been successful in scaring her into silence.
Finally, he reached across the table, removing her chopsticks from between her fingers and taking one of her hands in both of his. ‘Xiao Ling, we are in Washington now,’ he said with as much reassurance as he could muster. ‘You are safe here. Tell me about the Golden Mountain Club.’
She pulled her hand away and shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She took a long draught of Coke, one of a handful of soft drinks that had been identified as ‘safe’. She met his eye. ‘And if I told you, you wouldn’t want to hear it. Believe me.’
He knew that her recent past was like an open wound. It would take time to heal, time before he could touch her again and she could revisit that place without pain. He did not want to force the issue, particularly since she was going to have to face yet more trauma in the next hour. He had not yet had the courage to tell her. Some instinct told him that if she knew, nothing would persuade her to come home with him. To come face to face with the daughter she had abandoned.
He felt sick. It was not only Xiao Ling who faced the trauma of reunion. He had no idea how little Xinxin would react to seeing her mother again after two years. At first he had told her that her mother was ill. That she had been taken off to a hospital for treatment and then to a rest home in the country to recuperate. Initially, she had asked daily when her mother would be coming home. When would she be well again? Why couldn’t she go and see her? It had broken Li’s heart to lie to the child. It was such a breach of trust, and trust between child and adult was almost as important as love. Margaret’s presence had been an invaluable diversion, a substitute mother-figure, a loving presence to fill the black hole left by the disappearance of her real mother.
Gradually, Xinxin had asked after her less and less, and in time not at all. There was a knowingness about her whenever the subject came up, as if somehow she had guessed. And she had become adept at side-stepping the issue when she was asked by children at school or by their parents or her teachers. She had never once asked after her father, and Li had been taken aback once, when collecting her from kindergarten, to discover that she had told her teachers that she lived with her uncle and that both her parents were dead.
Li paid the check and told Xiao Ling it was time to go. He asked Charlie to call them a cab, and the driver took them south on Connecticut, crossing Rock Creek at the Taft Bridge, guarded on either side by impressive carved stone lions couchant, and then turning right past the seven-storey hotel that was now home to the Chinese Embassy. From their cab, the only identifiably Chinese feature was the red and gold emblem of the People’s Republic above blanked-out glass doors. Xiao Ling did not even notice it. Li craned to see if there was anyone he knew coming or going. But the tree-lined street was empty, dark and deserted in the quiet mid-evening of a Washington fall.
They crossed Rock Creek again, just past Sheridan Circle, and found themselves passing into the precincts of Georgetown. The driver made his way down through quiet shady streets onto O and turned west, passing a towering red-brick church that dominated the east end of the street. When Li had paid the driver and they were left standing on the sidewalk, Xiao Ling looked around her in amazement. Painted townhouses with lacquered doors and Georgian windows, fresh-painted wrought-iron gates and chintzy shutters, crooked stairways and narrow alleys overhung by red-leafed ivy. Alarm systems everywhere, prominent on walls and in gardens. Expensive cars lining both sides of the street. She turned to Li. ‘You live here?’ All she had seen of America were filthy cellars, overcrowded apartments, night clubs and massage parlours in Chinatown. ‘All on your own in a house this size?’
‘Not on my own,’ Li corrected her.
Xiao Ling frowned ‘What do you mean?’ Like Margaret before her, she was jumping to the wrong conclusion.
He took her by the arm and led her gently up the path to the front door. Through glass panels they could see that there was a light on in the downstairs hall. He unlocked the door, almost certain that she would be able to hear the banging of his heart against his ribs. ‘I have someone living in,’ he said. ‘A nanny.’ He closed the door behind them. ‘I needed someone to look after Xinxin.’
Almost before she could react, Xinxin appeared from the kitchen calling his name. She was barefoot in her nightie, dressed for bed. Her hair, released from its bunches, was hanging in untidy clumps. She stopped abruptly, the smile frozen on her face. Mother and daughter faced each other for the first time in nearly a third of her life.
Li tried to react normally. ‘Hi, little one,’ he said. ‘Guess who’s here to see you?’
Xinxin took a couple of hesitant steps toward them, the expression on her face unreadable. Then she burst into a run, past Li’s bike leaning against the bannister, and up the stairs stuffing her fist in her mouth to stop herself crying. They heard her footsteps on the polished floorboards, followed by the slamming of her bedroom door and a howl that was almost feral. Li felt as if someone had just driven six inches of cold steel into his chest. Then his face stung and burned white hot as Xiao Ling struck him with her open palm, a blow of such force that he stumbled and almost fell. Their eyes met for only a moment, and he felt their hatred sear his soul. A deep sob broke in her chest, and she ran down the hall, through the first door that she could find, passing a bewildered-looking Meiping. Meiping looked at Li, alarmed. ‘Is everything all right, Mr. Li?’