A Map for the Missing(30)

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask unless—”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Of course, I’ll ask him to help. He can talk to the police chief for the city. They’ll put out an alert to all the townships in this area. Do you have a picture and a description of him? If he’s still here in Anhui, we’ll find him.”

Yitian’s fingers lingered on the picture of his father. Even though the young man in that photo was so impossibly young, almost incredible to name as his father, this photo was the only physical evidence of his face.

As if she could feel his panic, she said softly, “I’ll ask them to copy it and give it back to you, all right?”

When he mentioned he was thinking about going to the barracks to check, she said, “You don’t need to do that. You’ll have no idea of who to talk to if you go. I’ll get my husband to contact the people over there.”

He was relieved that he hadn’t had to ask, that he’d said the problem and she intuited what he needed. Her utter sureness in the world, of how she could work in it, was a quality she hadn’t had before, one he’d never developed himself. He felt a glimpse of that old tenderness again, but in the next moment, she was rising, saying she really did have to leave now. She couldn’t keep her husband waiting at dinner any longer.



* * *



—

Over his protests, she called a car for him and instructed him to stay in Hefei while they waited for news from her husband.

“Here’s my phone number. I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything. I’ll have the driver take you to a hotel we know,” she said to him at the door.

“Oh, I already have a hotel. Don’t worry.”

Eyeing him with his old duffle bag hanging off his shoulder, she didn’t seem to believe him, but he insisted. If he went to the hotel she suggested, then she would offer to pay for the stay, and by the rules of propriety they would have to engage in a protracted battle over the bill. It wasn’t the kind of polite, phony argument he wanted for their reunion.

When the car approached, without thinking, he stepped toward her for a hug, only realizing what he’d done wrong when he felt the absence of her arms around him. Her body stiffened, and he let go quickly.

“I’m sorry.”

The gesture had felt so natural to him, the one that would have marked a moment like this in America, but he could see how uncomfortable he’d made her. It was as close as he had ever held her. She stepped away from him, wobbly on the pointed tips of her shoes.

“Bye, then,” he said, and ducked his head into the car.



* * *



—

He regretted asking the driver to take him to any cheap hotel. The instinct he had in America, to always save as much money as possible, had taken over, though he could have afforded much better here. His room had the strong odor of mildew and vinegar, and in front of his bed there was a long, wood-colored stain on the carpet, which he had to shuffle sideways to avoid. Despite the fact that he had barely slept since his arrival, he couldn’t fall asleep. The blankets on the hotel bed had a slick quality to them, as if coated in a thin layer of plastic film, making them cling to his skin.

He gave up sliding around the comforter and went to the lobby.

“You want to make an international call?” the clerk asked. “You do know how expensive that will be, right? You’ll have to pay up front.”

She fumbled with the phone, checked the connection, and shuffled to find a phone card from inside a disorganized drawer of old hotel trinkets.

Then, miraculously, her voice came through the line.

“Hello?” Mali spoke groggily, slow, unlike her. He checked the clock on the cracking lobby wall and counted backward.

“Sorry. I forgot to check the time before I called.”

“No, I should be awake anyway. How are things over there? Any news?”

He told her about the neighbors in the village and the unhelpful police department, then, “I met with an old friend today who works in the city. They said they’ll help me contact some officials, to check the train records and see if my father has been there. They’ll talk to the central police station, too, and send out a notice,” he said. The pronoun he used—她—sounded the same for both men and women, its gender only distinguishable in written form. He knew what Mali would hear, and what she would guess instinctively. A city official, an old friend of his—a man.

“I didn’t know you knew anyone who worked in Hefei,” she said.

“They’re an old friend. I haven’t spoken to them in years.”

“After all this time, I still keep finding out new things about you, Tang Yitian.” He heard the smile in her voice. “Well, I feel hopeful, then. I expect I’ll hear good news from you, any day now.”

Yitian felt suddenly exhausted by the brightness of her, that he could not breathe in the small space around it. Even in America, she’d flung open the door of her life so widely that he was only able to squeeze himself around its sharp edges. When they first arrived, she’d jumped into learning English, making a whole group of friends in the community college where she took night classes. Her ease made him afraid to voice the deep loneliness that he’d felt for much of those first few years, the sense he held that, even as his English improved, there would always be some boundary in the transmission of meaning that he never would be able to cross. When they were at the store, and the clerk made a joke they couldn’t understand, he wanted her to meet his eyes and to let their secret language pass through them, not bluntly ask the clerk what the joke meant. Her reactions to the unexpected were nothing like his own feelings of frustration, ones that quickly calcified into loneliness. If she sensed his reticence, she pushed against stating it out loud, until all he was left with was the small house of his sadness that he could only enter into alone.