Chapter 9

He knew it was her the moment he entered the park. She sat on a bench, her back straight and legs crossed, holding a knee with both hands. The park had once been a wealthy family’s private rock garden. The rocks were still there, multicolored and jagged, accentuating the wildflowers and trees lining the gravel path. A few other couples lounged about holding hands as they chatted. She saw him and bowed her head. She was shy, he saw. Right away he liked her. Their eyes met, yet neither could do more than stumble through muttered greetings.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said. He sat on the bench beside her, though not too close.

“Not at all,” she said.

“Is it true you go to work at three-thirty in the morning?” 

“And at three on weekends.” 

“Is it safe to walk alone that early?”

“Sister Zhou and I always go together.” 

“But what about your kids?”

“I worry much more about my oldest daughter than about my baby boy. She goes out with kids I don’t know and sometimes doesn’t come home till after dark. She’s the captain of a platoon of Little Red Guards and the co-leader of its propaganda team. She’s like her father, far too zealous for an eleven-year-old.”

“I saw your other daughter at the tap last week,” he said.

“How did you know it was her?” 

“My sixth sense,” he said, and winked. It was true, of course. He had gone to fetch water and noticed a girl of six or seven washing clothes in the wooden basin. She’d rolled her sleeves up to her elbows, a child fiercely scrubbing clothes without pause. As he drew nearer, he could see her hands, both of them riddled with scabs.

“It must have been her. I don’t know what we would do without her. She does everything, cook, wash, clean. I’ve never asked her to do any of it. She just does. And she gets up every morning to see me off.”

The child’s hands had disturbed Qing Yuan since he’d seen them. He ached at the thought that the poor girl must be suffering. Feng Ge might be sensitive to the matter, but he felt it better to let her know his feelings sooner than later. “This is a bit awkward for me,” he said, “but may I ask what’s troubling her hands?”

“Chilblains,” she said, grateful, it seemed to him, that he had noticed.

“Has she seen a doctor?”

“The doctors at the Children’s Hospital prescribed a cream. It helped a little, but then it came back.”

“There’s a dermatology department in our hospital,” he said. “They have specialists. Maybe you could bring her?”

“I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said. She smiled and shook her head. Her beauty continued to strike him. “Would you like one?” She hesitated before accepting. He struck a match and held it out. She leaned in closely. The skin of her neck was flawless. He swooned at the scent of her hair.

“I only ever smoke with Sister Zhou,” she said. “During our breaks.”

Through the trees, they could see the sun meeting the horizon. Clouds had piled up along a rim of shifting pink and gold, the sky above a deepening blue. 

They’d been silent, mesmerized. “How beautiful!” she whispered. 

“So,” he said.

“I haven’t been in a park for years,” she said.

“1949,” he said. “That was the last time for me. On Lotus Birthday.”

“I never knew that the lotus had a birthday,” she said.

“June 24th,” he said. “When I was a student, my university used to hold a dragon regatta on Lotus Birthday every year,” he said. “I raced with the team. The year we won, we celebrated in a restaurant on the river and got into a fight with the guys who lost. We were all too drunk and got our asses beaten. A guy kicked me into the river. I went home like a half-drowned dog.” 

She laughed, and he laughed with her. They leaned back, more relaxed now. 

Something unexpected was happening, he knew. How different everything felt tonight! For years, his life in the morgue had been his one reality. He had been mashed into a wretched creature. He had ignored what he saw. He’d hidden behind the curtains of his dingy room in Worker Village. When seized by despair, he had skulked to the morgue and like a madman babbled to the dead.

But here, now, next to a woman who laughed with authentic delight and talked with true serenity, everything had changed. Yes, he had lost so much. Yet it didn’t have to stay this way. Here he sat talking and acting not like a wretched morgue keeper but like the man he once had been. He could feel it. He knew it was true by the sound of his voice, dynamic and melodic, by the effect of his smile on the woman beside him. Already he had endeared himself to her. His rapture at the possibility of a new life with her and her children was soaring. He could find peace with his past, he could see a different future, happiness and contentment, even zeal.

She, too, had become herself, affectionate, admiring, alluring, gay. She had gazed into his eyes when he lit her cigarette. She had let him see her attraction. And it was genuine for a reason—he was elegant, his tenderness was real. Her own charms were also true, her smooth sleek face, the tilt of her nose, her voice, so supple, her intoxicating aroma, her shyness. His banter had enchanted her. She laughed at his jokes. She teased him, too, and murmured with him as he spoke—That’s funny! and How silly you are! and Oh, my goodness, really? Her hand brushed his knee. She asked his forgiveness, but he knew she had touched him on purpose.

“I have to say,” she said, “I couldn’t remember what you looked like before you came.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to,” he said. “I remember you, but only faintly. We haven’t seen much of each other, you know.” They were both a bit embarrassed, both more than a little shy. “I met your husband once and smoked with him,” he said. 

Her face in the falling dusk was wonderful and pale. “What did you talk about?”

“Nothing serious,” he said. “We shared a moment smoking.”

“He liked to talk and could get along with anyone, even the tramps. There was one he talked to all the time, the beggarwoman who makes her rounds in Worker Village. Do you know the one?”

“Fan Fan?”

“That’s her. He knew everyone in Worker Village.”

“May I ask how you found out?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What happened to him?”

Her face palled, and straightaway he knew he’d gone too far. What a foolish question to ask this first time with her, courting her, it struck him, trying to win her over. She looked away and with two trembling fingers caressed her temple. He watched her, lashing himself for having committed this blunder.

After a moment she set both feet on the ground and straightened her back. Her head rose, too. Her face—he couldn’t think of a better word—had steeled. She had decided something, though he couldn’t say what until she began to speak.

“He didn’t come home that night,” she said, and he understood that she had refused to let her tragedy define her. “That wasn’t unusual. He often worked so late he’d sleep in his office. I didn’t find out till the next evening. One of his colleagues came to our house. He explained that after a meeting the night before, my husband had gone home alone. But when he didn’t show up in the morning, his colleagues began to worry. Shortly after that, the police called to say his body had been found on the street.”

His heart ached for this woman. She had endured too much. Everyone, he thought, had endured too much—Lao Jia, Qi Chu, Feng Ge, himself, surely himself and his family, and every last body sent to him at the morgue, all of whom had once been people, people who had suffered and suffered terribly, and the people suffering whom the dead had left behind, and, of course—more than the rest, he believed, though who really could say—#19.

He turned full to her. He wanted to take her hand but didn’t. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore if you don’t want to,” he said, striving to fill his words with his whole heart. “I’m sorry to have been so insensitive.”

She had the face of a Guanyin, he thought, gazing at her, that mélange of beauty and profound sorrow. Her grief had become her power, he realized. Her tragedy had made her stronger. Her melancholy was noble. She turned to him and looked into his eyes.

“But I want to,” she said. “I haven’t spoken about it once. I didn’t know till now, but it’s something I needed to do.”

A burden was lifted. He had been absolved. His gratitude was immense. He felt for a moment that his tenderness for this woman could destroy him. She was beautiful, he saw with total clarity, her heart, her body, her mind. One word alone captured her essence—exquisite. 

“Apparently,” she said, going on with her tale, “it was some Red Guards who found him. They brought his body to a morgue then reported it to the police. His belongings were still with him, they said, his bag, his wallet and employee card. They said that ruled out his having been killed by some deranged mugger. And anyway, it’s doubtful that would ever have happened, that he’d have been killed by a single man. He knew very well how to defend himself.”

Qing Yuan felt himself split inside, without knowing why. Then he recalled Sister Zhou’s version of this awful thing. It had been quite different than what he was hearing now. 

“Then what was the cause?”

“They said he’d been in a fight. I asked about his wounds, but they insisted he had none. He just died,” she said. “That’s what they said. He just died. I couldn’t understand. I was numb with disbelief and rage. I hadn’t thought for myself. I could only think about my children, and how we were going to survive.” She gazed into the growing dusk.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. 

A couple passed, hand-in-hand. He said hello. They smiled and went on, murmuring.

He leaned back to watch her and thought again about how much she had endured, and of her fortitude to carry on. Some unseen strength had buoyed her up. His admiration was profound.  

Almost to herself, she said, “I still doubt what they told me.”

“What about the Red Guards who found him?”

“The police claimed not even to know their names.”

“That’s absurd,” he said. “Do you think they were trying to hide something?”

She fretted at her blouse, observing it with reasonless intensity. “‘They just happened to be there.’ That’s what the police said.”

“It’s absurd,” he said again, apoplectic. “It’s absurd, just absurd.” It took him a moment to gather himself. “Were you able to see him? You know, before—” He didn’t know the proper words—“took him away,” “sent him off,” “cremated him,” “burned him.” Yet she understood.

“In the morgue of the funeral home,” she said. “We were ordered to stand in line, two meters away. I couldn’t really see him. He wore a cap, and they had covered him to the chin with a sheet. He looked peaceful enough, I guess.” She was crying now. His heart ached for this woman in her agony. “His colleagues had also come,” she said. “The morgue was small, so it was full. There were no windows. It was cold and dank and the light was dreadful. And the stench. I’ve never smelled anything like it.”

Several fingers on one of his hands began to twitch. He slipped the hand under his thigh. “A morgue is supposed to be windowless.”

“Who said that?”

“It’s what I’ve been told. Lao Jia says it’s because the souls of the dead would escape. They’d wander forever in agony and grief, beyond any help, he says. He talks about it all the time. The morgue, he’s always saying, is the gateway to the cosmos. He says a lot of things like that.”

“I took my three kids, also,” she said. “They were much stronger than I had thought they’d be. Not one of them cried. I don’t think it was because they felt nothing. It’s because they felt too much. They loved him. He was their comfort and their protector. I knew if I didn’t bring them they’d despise me once they were old enough to know.” She bowed her head. Her cheek was wet. “It’s them who keep me going,” she said.

He slipped a handkerchief into her hand. He was powerless. Even so, all he’d felt from the moment they met had stayed with him, the light, the hope. She hadn’t held back. She’d trusted him, she’d made herself vulnerable. He couldn’t speak for her, but she may have been as grateful as he was. He knew he was grateful. They had much more in common than petty need. They shared indescribable pain. They had loved, they’d been loved, they had triumphed, they had lost. They were still alive. They wanted still to live, and more, to love again, despite.

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Ruyan Meng was born and educated in China. She defied her country after the Tiananmen Square Protest and Massacre and fled to the United States in 1990.