Kuan spread a blanket on the ground. We took out the boxes of food. Wei-Wen ate quickly and spilled his food. He was always in a hurry at mealtimes, thought food was boring, was picky, ate little, even though we always sat there waiting with our portions, ready to give him more if he should want it.
But when we opened the tin of plums, he calmed down, perhaps because both Kuan and I were quiet. We put it between us. The tin opener made a scraping sound against the metal as Kuan twisted it around. He tilted the lid to the side and we looked down at the yellow fruit. It smelled sweet. I carefully took a plum with a fork and put it on Wei-Wen’s plate.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A plum,” I said.
“I don’t like plums.”
“You don’t know that until you’ve tasted it.”
He leaned over the plate and stuck his tongue into it, tasting the flavor for a second. And smiled. Then he snapped it up like a hungry dog, the entire plum went in his mouth at once, the juice ran out of the corners of his mouth.
“Is there more?” he asked, still with his mouth full.
I showed him the tin. It was empty. One for each of us, that was all.
“But you can have mine, too,” I said and passed the plum to him.
Kuan gave me a defeated look. “You need your vitamin C, too,” he said softly. I shrugged my shoulders. “It just makes me want more. Just as well not to have any.”
Kuan smiled at me. “All right.” Then he also let his plum slide onto Wei-Wen’s plate.
In just two minutes Wei-Wen had eaten all of them. He was on his feet again, wanted to climb the trees. And we had to stop him.
“The branches can break.”
“I want to!”
I opened the bag looking for the pen and paper.
“I thought instead that we could sit here and play with arithmetic a little.”
Kuan rolled his eyes, and Wei-Wen didn’t seem to have heard what I’d said.
“Look! A boat!” He held up a stick.
“That’s nice,” Kuan said. “And there’s a lake.” He pointed towards a mud puddle a short distance away.
“Yeah!” Wei-Wen said and ran away.
I put the pen and paper back into the bag without saying anything, turned my back to Kuan. He ruffled my hair. “The day is long.”
“It’s already half over.”
“Come here.” He pulled me down onto the blanket. “Feel how lovely it is, just lying here like this. To relax.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “OK.”
He took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed his back. He squeezed mine in return. We both laughed. The usual discord was nowhere to be found.
I turned over onto my back. Stretched out completely, without any fear that someone would come and order me up from a break. The sunlight blinded me. I closed one eye, the world lost its depth. The bright blue sky merged with the white blossoms on the tree above us. They became the same surface. The sky peeked through between each individual petal. If I looked at it long enough, the foreground and background changed places. As if the sky were a blue crocheted blanket with holes against a white backdrop.
I closed both eyes. I could feel Kuan’s hand resting in mine, completely still. We could have talked. We could have made love. But neither of us wanted to do anything but lie like this. Down by the mud puddle we could hear Wei-Wen put-putting, the boat sailing back and forth.
After a while I had to change positions. My shoulder blades were digging sharply down into the ground. The small of my back started aching a bit. I turned over onto my side and supported my head against my arm. Kuan had of course fallen asleep, and was snoring lightly. He could probably have slept for a whole week, if given the chance. He was always a little too thin, a little too pale, his body at all times running on a deficit. He got less sleep than he needed, less food than his metabolism consumed. Still, he kept himself going, worked longer days than I did, but was never dissatisfied. He rarely complained.
How quiet it was out here… Without the workers around me it was even more obvious. Even Wei-Wen’s noises had stopped. No wind in the trees, just the absence of sound, emptiness.
I sat up. Where was he? I turned towards the mud puddle. It lay alone in the sunlight. The muddy-brown water glittered.
I stood up.
“Wei-Wen?”
Nobody answered.
“Wei-Wen, where are you?”
My voice didn’t carry for more than a few meters, was swallowed up by the silence.
I walked a few steps away from the blanket, gaining a full view of the landscape.
He was nowhere to be seen.
“Wei-Wen?”
Kuan was awakened by my shouting, got to his feet and also began scanning the landscape.
“Can you see him?”
He shook his head.
It was only then that it struck me how infinitely large the area was. And that everything looked the same. Field after field of pear trees. Nothing else by which to navigate except the sun and the forest. And a three-year-old alone out here…
We hurried down to the puddle. The stick lay bobbing on the surface of the water.
“If you walk over there, I’ll go here?” Kuan’s voice was matter-of-fact and undramatic.
I nodded.
“He’s probably just wandered off somewhere without thinking,” Kuan said. “He can’t have gone very far.”
I hurried across the field, trotting across the uneven ground, along the tire ruts heading north. Yes, surely he had just wandered off. He had probably found something or other that was so exciting that he didn’t notice us calling.
“Wei-Wen? Wei-Wen?” Perhaps he had been very lucky and discovered a small animal, an insect. Or perhaps a tree stump that looked like a dragon. Something that stopped him, made him start daydreaming, forget everything around him, learn something. An earthworm. A bird’s nest. An anthill.
“Wei-Wen? Where are you? Wei-Wen!”
I tried to keep my voice light and breezy, but heard how piercing it sounded.
In the distance, I could hear Kuan’s calls. “Wei-Wen? Hello?”
His voice was calm. Not like mine. I tried to call with the same calm. He was here, of course he was here. He was sitting and playing and lost in his own world.
“Wei-Wen?”
The sun scorched my back.
“Wei-Wen? Little one?”
It was as if the temperature had risen dramatically.
“Wei-Wen! Answer me, sweetie!”
My own breathing. It was uneven. Jagged. I turned around and discovered that I had already run several hundred meters away from the hill. It was impossible that he’d gone this far. I started running back, but changed course, moving in relation to the tire rut that was a few meters away.
I remembered that he’d been wearing the red scarf. Wei-Wen had been wearing the red scarf. That should be easy to see. Between the brown earth, the green grass and the white blossoms the scarf should stand out brightly.
“Tao! Tao! Come here!” Kuan’s voice. Unfamiliar and sharp.
“Have you found him?”
“Come here!”
I changed directions and ran towards him. Something was squeezing my larynx, with every breath I took it became more difficult to breathe, as if the air didn’t reach my lungs.
I caught a glimpse of Kuan between the trees. He ran towards me from the forest. It lay huge and dark behind him. Had he come from there? Had Wei-Wen disappeared in there?
“Is something wrong? Did something happen?” My voice forced its way out, was constricted, strained.
And now I could see him properly. Kuan ran towards me. His face was frozen, eyes open wide. He was carrying something in his arms.
The red scarf.
One shoe that flapped in time with his steps as he ran, a black, dangling child’s head. I ran over to Kuan.
A weak sound escaped me. I squelched a scream.