Invitation to Provence(28)



“But …” Rafaella began.

He knew she was going to ask how he knew Felix was murdered, and he put up a warning hand.

“Better not ask,” he said. “Just let sleeping dogs lie.” Yet even as he said it, he knew that he would not. He would not rest until he found Alain and discovered the truth about Felix’s death.





20





WHEN SHAO LAN’S INVITATION arrived by special delivery, at first she refused to open the door, afraid it was the landlord about to throw them out again. The “apartment” was only a single small room that Shao Lan had divided with a screen made from bamboo poles strung with red cloth. It gave a false air of gaiety to the place, which pleased her, but now she ignored the knocking and hurried into the sleeping part of the room with her sick grandmother’s supper—a bowl of chicken broth and a rice cake and some hot tea in a small, blue-patterned egg-shaped cup. She stood the tray on the rickety table next to the bed and said in Shanghainese, “Look, Grandmother, here is your supper and your pills.”

Shao Lan spoke Shanghainese because that was her grandmother’s only language. But Shao Lan also spoke Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as some English, which she had learned in school. She could also curse fluently in all of these languages, as could every child in the poor neighborhood where she lived.

Bao Chu wafted away the soup with a limp hand. Struggling upright she took the packet of pills, swallowed two and washed them down with the tea. Then she lay back again, eyes closed, her breath rasping harshly.

Poverty hung around the Ching household like a cold shroud of despair. The meager room was as clean as Shao Lan could keep it while also attending school, trying to keep up her grades, and looking after her sick grandmother.

That same despair had carved a stamp of seriousness on ten-year-old Shao Lan’s heart-shaped face. Her large, round blue eyes, with just the slightest tilt at the corners to say she was Chinese, were solemn and she never smiled. There was nothing to smile about—she just took care of things.

All she knew was the daily juggle with money. Shao Lan never got new clothes, only second-or third-hand school uniforms from charitable societies who also chipped in with a present at Chinese New Year. The present was never what she’d dreamed about though, so she had given up dreaming and just got on with the harsh business of living, relieved when every month the letter arrived from the Bank of Shanghai containing the few dollars that paid their rent and their small expenses. Because of her grandmother’s illness their expenses were soaring, terrifying Shao Lan, who wondered where they would ever get the money to keep her grandmother alive.

She often thought of the unknown man who was her father, wondering if he knew about her, and if so why he had never come to see her. Her mother had died when she was born, and the only family she had known was her grandmother, who had named her Shao Lan, or Little Blue, because of her startlingly blue eyes, rare in a world of brown-eyed people. Bao Chu’s own name meant Precious Pearl. This was so far from the truth, because she had no monetary value whatsoever in this world, that even Bao Chu herself laughed at it.

The knocking at the door had stopped. Shao Lan lingered by the bed, wanting to ask Bao Chu about her father, but she was afraid of the harangue that came whenever she tried to bring up the subject: She had no daddy. There never was one and never would be one, and she had just better get used to it. Sometimes Shao Lan wondered if it were true and that, like the Madonna, her mother had a virgin birth and she was some kind of freak.

She sighed as her grandmother started to cough. She coughed for what seemed to Shao Lan like a long time as she hovered over her with the tea. Oh god, please don’t let her die, she prayed. Don’t let her leave me all alone.

Visions of herself in an orphanage with bars on the windows, a place where it was always cold and there was even less food than here, flitted through her mind. She shivered, facing the truth. More likely she would end up on the streets, sleeping in a cardboard box and begging for a living, along with the other homeless. It was that or doing bad things with men.

When the knocking started again she went to peek through the door crack and saw a man holding an envelope. She flattened herself against the wall but he rapped even harder. “Hey,” he shouted, because he knew she was there and knew the fears of the poor, “this is no summons to court. The landlord isn’t after you for the rent. It’s a letter from France, that’s all.”

Shao Lan hardly dared breathe in case he heard her. They didn’t know anybody in France and she hoped he’d just go away. Too curious to let it go though, she finally opened the door a cautious crack. The messenger thrust the envelope through the gap. “Sign here,” he said. Terrified, she cursed at him and flung the envelope back at him and made to shut the door in his face again.

He cursed back in rapid Shanghaiese, telling her she was a foolish child and all he was asking her to do was to sign this paper saying he had delivered it and she had received it. Still reluctant, Shao Lan opened the door again and signed the paper. She hoped she had done the right thing.

The letter was addressed to Bao Chu, and she took it into her. “Look, Grandmother,” she said. “Here’s a letter for you,” but Bao Chu wafted her away with a limp hand.

“It’s from France,” Shao Lan said, and Bao Chu lifted her head, suddenly alert.

She struggled upright against the sweaty pillow, pushing her black hair from her hot face. “Open it,” she said. Shao Lan did. “Read it to me,” Bao Chu commanded. Shao Lin did.

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