It came to me that the villagers must surely have heard and most likely seen the accident. In a cut in the hills like this, the sound had nowhere to go but up. They may even have seen or at least heard me running away. Ting knew I was in her home. She could have exposed me, but instead she had protected me by locking me in. When Zhang came to her place, he had called her out and tried the door. Finding it locked, he assumed I couldn’t have been in it. His tone in speaking to her had been so harsh, and yet she had saved me. She’d waited until she was sure he’d gone, perhaps watching in the darkness from a little open porch I’d seen on the back of her house, a porch that afforded the same view of the road that I now had, and then she had come to make sure I was all right, and to make me tea, and to fashion some sort of bed with a blanket, something that was probably in pretty short supply in this place, to keep me warm. I wanted to cry.
Rong was talking to the driver of the truck, which was loaded down with all kinds of merchandise. There were plastic washbowls, running shoes, towels, sweaters, jackets. It was a kind of moveable general store and several people were gathered ‘round it checking out the wares. Others were standing at various places on the slopes of the town. They looked like sentries in a way, and perhaps that’s what they were. It seemed possible to me that the whole town knew I was there.
When everyone had made their purchases, Rong gave Ting a signal and we quickly headed the rest of the way down the hill. I felt terribly exposed there, the two hills looming over me like malevolent giants. Zhang or his henchmen could have been up there, and any moment could come swooping down to get me, probably hurting my newfound friends in the process. I thought it was very brave of them to help me. “Zhang Xiaoling,” I said again, this time to the driver, and all three of them spat on the ground. The feeling in this town appeared to be pretty much unanimous on the subject of Zhang Xiaoling. I thought perhaps this was part of Zhang’s fiefdom, where terrified people were forced to do whatever he asked. These three seemed prepared to defy him, something for which I was exceedingly grateful.
Five minutes later, I was lying on the bed of the truck with sweaters, jackets, pots and pans, and just about everything else piled on top of me. We were underway. It was a really rough ride. I could feel every bone, and at one point the truck stopped, and I heard someone talking to the driver. I held my breath, and soon we were on our way again.
About half an hour later, I think, the truck stopped again, but this time the driver started pulling the merchandise off me, and signaled me to get into the cab of the truck, which smelled very slightly of manure. We sped along for a couple hours that way, he talking to me, me talking back, neither of us understanding a word, but both of us nodding and smiling away.
He dropped me in front of the Forbidden City, at the north end of Tian’anmen Square. I think he would have taken me to the door of my hotel if I could have told him what and where it was. I had given some money to both Ting and Rong, although both had protested. I knew that for these people what was a posh dinner out in my hometown was a fortune for them, and I insisted they keep it. I gave the driver most of what I had left. I had enough for a taxi to the hotel. The woman who swept the sidewalk in front of the hotel was gone. I suppose she didn’t expect me to get back. Twenty minutes after the man dropped me off, I was walking through the door to my room.
Rob was there. I could tell he’d been pacing. “Where have you been?” he demanded in the tone he uses when he’s worried, but would prefer me to think he’s annoyed. “You were supposed to get here first. Was your flight delayed or something?” He looked me up and down with a somewhat perplexed expression—perhaps I wasn’t looking as well turned out as usual, what with the dirt and straw all over my clothes—before coming toward me as if to give me a hug or maybe a shake. I gave him a shake of the head of my own. Unless he liked the smell of manure, he’d regret getting any closer to me than he already was.
“Well?” he said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No, my flight was right on time.”
“Then where have you been?”
“I have no idea. I met some wonderful people, though. It’s a long story, but let me summarize it this way: any man who gets between me and the shower is dead meat.”
Later, not only clean but safe, I placed a call to George Matthews. Did I care it was rather early in the morning in Toronto? I did not. I reversed the charges, too. When he heard my voice he did not ask why I was calling, nor did he make any attempt at small talk. I didn’t think, though, that this was because I’d awakened him. He just waited for me to say something.
“You have not been honest with me,” I said, not bothering with small talk myself. “Neither you nor Dorothy have been.” For some reason, my tongue and brain would no longer permit me to call her Dory. “Now you will tell me everything I need to know.”
“I was afraid it might come to this,” George said.
That night I dreamed about Burton and Dorothy. Burton, who was still blue of face and wearing surgical gloves, accused Dorothy of being responsible for his death. Dorothy just kept saying over and over that she was sorry.
Eleven
Lingfei was gone. I searched for her everywhere. In some ways I hoped she had used the opportunity provided by the chaos created by An Lushan to escape the bounds of the imperial harem and join the man she loved. I asked if a message had been left for me. There was none. I confess that hurt me deeply. I wondered if perhaps she was angry because I had not said good-bye to her.
I went to her apartment but someone else lived there now. Her workshop too was gone. I looked in every possible hiding place I could think of, but could find no evidence of Lingfei or of her life’s work. It was as if she had never existed.
In many ways, life at the Imperial Palace returned to normal I found I had more influence than ever before and took full advantage of it. Soon I had a splendid home in the countryside outside Chang’an, a wife of sorts, and two adopted sons, one of whom was to follow me into the Imperial Palace, the other to provide me with grandchildren some time later.
Still, I thought often of Lingfei. Was she my sister? What had happened to her? No one seemed to know, or if they did, they were not revealing that information to me. I looked for her, as I had looked for Number One Sister, in the marketplaces. I looked for her in the brothels of the Gay Quarter.
Life at the palace now was different, of course, with a new Son of Heaven, but in many ways it was the same. There was a ghost though that now haunted the quarters of the harem. It was an angry ghost, someone who had died violently, without the proper rituals to ensure that the cloud soul would be nourished.
One day, several months after I had returned to the palace, a package was delivered to me. Wrapped in a piece of fabric that I recognized as being cut from the plain robe that Lingfei wore when she worked, were a few pages of notes in my hand. It was some of the last work I had done for Lingfei. The eunuch who delivered the package said a stranger had asked him to do so. He did not know who it was. I could only guess what this would mean.