A Map for the Missing(25)

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It hadn’t been a lie, that he had a friend in Hefei he could ask for help.

“You’ll be back soon, right?” his mother asked. “You aren’t going to go back to America without telling me?”

“How could I do that? I won’t go back until we find out where Ba is.”

“You really have a friend in Hefei?”

He said yes, but she continued to worry the hem of her shirt. He understood her disbelief. How could he, who hadn’t lived in this country for years, who’d been to Hefei only a handful of times, possibly have someone who would help him there?

“I don’t know why you need to go so far. Can’t I go with you?” She searched for something else to stuff into the smaller bag he was bringing into the city, finally settling on a washcloth. He took the cloth and gingerly placed it on top of the textbook that he’d been careful to transfer out of his suitcase. It seemed so long ago that he’d looked at its cover in America and decided to pack it.

“This is the only person in any official position I know. Besides, what if Ba comes back and there’s nobody home?”

She complained that he was surely overpaying for the taxi he’d arranged. He didn’t reply; at a departure, he preferred the distance from the truth of a moment’s feeling.

“I’ll see you in a few days,” he said.

He motioned for her to go home, but she continued to wait at the village entrance as the car pulled away. He watched her grow smaller in the side mirror. She’d never shown an inkling of this kind of doubt about his father. If she disagreed with him about something, she simply changed her mind. To Yitian, the relationship appeared less like love and more like obligation, but perhaps there wasn’t a difference for a person like her. She boasted about her strength and ability to earn work points like a man alongside her undying loyalty to her husband without appearing to notice any contradiction.





Nine



The last time he’d heard from Hanwen was three years ago now, when she wrote to tell him her husband had been assigned to a posting in Hefei City. Can you believe it? he’d read. I don’t know how this happened. He has no linkages to this city or Anhui at all, so it is a surprise to be here, of all places. I thought of you when he told me. I thought I’d never return or be so close to this place again.

It was the first time she’d written in years. He didn’t know how she’d gotten his address at the graduate student office of his university, where the letter arrived unexpectedly on a dull winter afternoon when he was just about to lock up and go home. Mali had called earlier with the news that Mrs. Suzanna was giving her a raise, and she wanted to celebrate. He planned to buy her flowers.

He’d been flipping through his mail when suddenly her name jumped out at him, scrawled on a brown airmail envelope. He double-checked to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. He’d never seen her write in English before, and the sloping letters on the front of the envelope were messier than he would have expected from her.

After that, he’d hoped—guiltily, but still a hope, he had to admit—for more letters. He wrote to her when his office changed so that she’d have his new address. She would surely be reminded often of the village of their shared memories now that she was living nearby. He wondered if she would go with her husband on his official trips to visit villages around Hefei. Perhaps, rounding a corner of a road, she’d glimpse a hill that reminded her of the small embankment where they used to read together, and she’d rush home, excited to write him a letter about what she’d seen and how it made her think of him.

Whenever he picked up his office mail, he scanned each envelope carefully for the loping handwriting, but nothing came from her. Once in a while, he considered writing to her at that address on the envelope, but then he thought of Mali. He stashed the envelope into a drawer in his office, where Mali never went.

Now, he didn’t even know if Hanwen still lived in Hefei. Local government officials could be reassigned without notice, casualties of machinations higher above, and it was possible that she hadn’t bothered to tell him.

The only hint he had was a newspaper clipping from a year-old edition of Sing Tao Daily, one of the few Chinese newspapers they could get in America. The sighting had taken him completely by shock: a Sunday afternoon, he and Mali just returned home from the 99 Ranch Market. He was always tired after the grocery store trips, didn’t know how he’d once lived in a country that assaulted his senses as the crowds in the store and the briny smells of the fresh fish tanks did. So he’d been relaxing into the loveseat, ready to doze as he went through the paper, when he flipped the page and was shocked to see her husband’s name in the text captioning a picture. Deng Xiaoping had made a state visit to Anhui, and the newspaper printed a photo of him visiting a brick factory in the suburbs. Everyone was out of focus in the picture except for Deng, who was shaking the hand of a factory employee. The person labeled her husband was the farthest back. Yitian squinted at the photo to ascertain more about him, but the man’s hunched shoulders made him seem determined to blend into the background.

She’d written her husband’s name in the letter she sent him, but the feeling then was softened by distance, a kind of dull recognition that time could leave a person so changed. That was nothing like looking at the man’s face in the newspaper picture and his disbelief at the thought that this man had ever kissed Hanwen. Yitian’s hand had slipped around the handle of the teacup and when he looked down he saw the liquid had spilled onto the carpet, creating a stain that spread then darkened the floor to the color of wet earth.