A Map for the Missing(29)

“Once, when I first learned to drive, there was this time I was stopped at a traffic light. I was so nervous driving back then. I always thought I was going to mess something up. My hands were sweating on the steering wheel. I looked over just to have something to do. And there was this woman in the car next to me sobbing. She was so young and beautiful, I wondered why she would be crying alone. Maybe one of her parents had died, or she’d broken up with her boyfriend. But she couldn’t see me at all. Then I heard everyone honking behind me, because the light was green.”

He glanced up to see if she was still listening. He was afraid the story would not make sense, but her lips were pressed together in concentration.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about that for a long time afterward. I thought I’d probably seen one of the saddest moments of her life, but we were so separate. I thought, something like that would never happen in my village. People never cried alone like that. Someone would always hear you and come to you.

“But then when I was finally back in the village a couple of days ago, I wondered if that was true anymore. There were houses locked up, and from the dust on the knockers you could see no one had been inside them for a very long time. People are going to the cities to live and work, and they aren’t going to come back to live in those houses ever again. The only ones left are like my mother, who wouldn’t know how to survive in a big city. I thought, I could go into any one of those empty houses and cry like that woman, and no one would notice.

“I have to remind myself that there are reasons we wanted to leave so badly back then. Don’t you think?” he paused. “What happened to Yishou would never happen now.”

Her shoulders twitched. He imagined that she’d wanted to reach out her hands to him. “No, it wouldn’t,” she said at last.

“We know the names for everything now,” he said. His brother’s name, which he hadn’t said in so long, still hung heavy between his lips. He never spoke of Yishou with Mali.

“I never knew what to say to comfort you. I always wished I’d had better words. Then when I got back to Shanghai, I realized I didn’t need to say anything to you at all. That nothing would have helped.”

He felt the warmth of her words, but also a prick of disappointment, of the implication that she’d felt her own griefs in those years, which he didn’t know and which had made her the person in front of him.

“You did the best—”

“Ma, Ma!” A young boy’s voice rang through the hallway, interrupting him. Then a small figure dashed into the room.

The boy was only about as tall as the table, on which he almost bumped his head as he rushed in. He was followed immediately by an older woman, stooped at the waist, grabbing his arm. “I told you, your Ma is busy with a guest!”

“I wanted to show Ma,” he yelled. He shoved at them a piece of paper blanketed in slashes of red and green crayon. “Look, it’s a rainbow!”

“Come on now,” the old woman said, grabbing the boy’s hand. But her gaze lingered on Yitian and she didn’t move to leave the room.

“Ma, this is Tang Yitian. An old friend from my sent-down days. Yitian, this is my mother and my son.”

“I’ve heard about you, many years ago,” he said to her mother, and immediately regretted it. Her mother’s eyebrows raised as she said, “Oh, really?”

“Ma,” Hanwen said quickly, “could you bring Yuanyuan back to his room?”

“Come on, let’s go,” her mother said. To Hanwen, she said, “Don’t forget, you need to leave for dinner soon. Nice to meet you.” She looked Yitian up and down before she left.

When he looked back at Hanwen, the openness had gone. She was checking her watch. “My mother is right. I do have to go to a dinner soon.”

Did he imagine a hint of regret in her voice, the implication that she’d prefer to stay here and talk with him?

“How long will you be in town?” she asked. “Maybe we can see one another again?”

“Yes—actually, I came here because I wanted to ask your help with something.”

“Ah, so you have a favor to ask?” Her eyebrows lifted up, and he hurried to say, “Not like that—”

“I was joking,” she said, but her eyes didn’t have their earlier mirth.

“Something happened in my family.” He paused. For the past half hour, the lingering dread in his chest had gone, so occupied was he with the surprise of seeing her again. But now it returned suddenly, roaring and even more painful than before, as if angry he’d forgotten for even a moment. “I mean, my father has gone missing. For eight days now. He left and no one has any idea of where he went.”

She asked him a series of questions: Eight days? What have they discovered? Hadn’t they made any progress by now? Had he gone to another official to ask for help? Her questioning was rapid and demanding, but he felt reassured. He was reminded of how she’d approached each book they read so rigorously and methodically. Each time they met she brought an organized notebook, containing all the copied passages that she thought were important. Beside her, he’d felt sloppy, but always safe in her hands.

He told her about his visit to the police station.

“So many small town officials are like that now,” she said. “They ask for a bribe to do even the simplest thing. Most of them wouldn’t dare try that with a foreigner, though. This man must have been especially daring. People are always coming to my husband to ask things from him, too.”