A Map for the Missing(26)

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After they made it some distance out of the village, Yitian extracted the textbook from his bag, opened the front cover, and handed it to the driver.

“This is where I’m going,” he said.

The driver squinted uncertainly at the address. “Don’t all you people who live over there have your own drivers?”

Yitian wondered if she had become one of the rich women he’d seen in the gossip columns of newspapers, being driven everywhere with a tiny designer purse wedged in the crook of her arm. If that was the case, would they still share any common language?

“Do you do business, boss?” the driver crushed his cigarette and sat up straighter in the seat.

Yitian ignored him. He didn’t remember the country like this when he left, so obsessed with status and money and finding their notions of self within the material. Back then, all anyone talked about were ideals for the country’s future.

They drove for an hour, out of the village and then into Hefei, until the taxi left him off at a gated complex bordering a small, man-made lake. Yitian eyed the guard standing to the left of the gates and tried to form a plan. Perhaps if he went straight through the gate as if he belonged here, the guard wouldn’t say anything to him. The man was old and diminutive, the shoulder marks of his uniform drooping down his arms, and didn’t look like he could hurt Yitian.

“Who are you? What is your business here?” The guard’s voice barked, before Yitian even had a chance to get close to the gate.

He was startled by the voice. The particular guttural tones and bend in the words identified it immediately as an accent from his village. He’d imagined putonghua would be more useful in this wealthy setting, but now he purposefully switched to his voice’s older form.

“I’m here to see Tian Hanwen. She lives here, right?”

If the guard also recognized Yitian’s accent, he didn’t show any sign. He went into the guard’s office and came back out flipping a register. “She hasn’t told us to expect any visitors today.”

So she did live in one of those homes beyond the gate. The realization arrived in him like a punch in the gut. It had been somehow easy to make the journey to this address when he didn’t really believe she’d be here. This place had only been like any other dot on a map, anonymous and distant, a house that he could walk into and find the rooms entirely empty.

“She didn’t know that I was coming,” he told the guard.

“Then go back home and tell her to come wait for you at the gate. She has to come here and get you herself.”

“I don’t have her phone number, and I’m only in town for a few days—” Yitian stopped. He sounded even more suspicious than before. “You’re from Tang Family Village, aren’t you?”

“So what if I am?”

“I am, too! We’re laoxiang.”

“I’ve never seen you there before,” the guard said.

“Well, I’ve never seen you there, either.”

“My family moved away when I was very young. But I go back there every year to see my aunts and uncles during the New Year. So I would have seen you there, if you were really from Tang Family Village.”

“How would I be able to speak like this if I was lying?”

The guard appeared to consider this. There were minuscule differences between the accents of their village and surrounding ones, created and solidified over hundreds of years. Even Baijia Village or Five Groves people didn’t sound the same as those from Tang Family Village. How remarkable, Yitian sometimes thought, that now he lived in a country where people couldn’t even hear the difference between Chinese and Korean.

“Fine, then you’re from Tang Family Village. What do you want here?”

“I told you earlier. I’m here to see Tian Hanwen.”

The guard gazed over Yitian’s shoulder, where there were lines of neatly pruned bushes. Yitian understood the strategy immediately—the guard would pretend that Yitian was not there, until he had no choice but to concede to the reality of the situation and leave.

He felt hopeless as he peered through the dense shrubbery beyond the gate. He couldn’t see any glimpse of houses within, which suggested that they were low and spread out, so unlike the block apartment buildings that filled the rest of the city. He was so close to her now. He could scale this gate and run away from the guard, and then sprint across the gravel path. He could run until he found her house and knocked on the door, and her smile of recognition as she answered would render the guard irrelevant.

He was sure the desperation was thick in his voice as he said, “Sir, please, I’m not trying to do anything bad. I’m from your village. My name is Tang Yitian.”

“How do you know Tang Yitian?” The guard’s eyes snapped into focus on Yitian’s face. “You’re Tang Yitian? No way. No way.”

Yitian took out his hukou booklet to show the guard, who suddenly broke into a grin. He grasped Yitian’s hand, brought his whole body close, and then patted his back.

“Well, why didn’t you say so earlier? My mother was always talking about you. So smart and going to America. Isn’t it strange we’ve met in this place now? Imagine!”

The guard was laughing, suddenly eager to go through the ritual of naming all the mutual places and people they knew.