"You keep it." He blinked wearily and shut the door in her face.
Lin Shiyang poured tea in his room. "It’s only cheap Fujian bottom leaves, stored in bricks too long by the smell of it, but it’s tea. Drink, girl child." He held the cup out to her with both hands.
She smiled, and took the cup the way she was supposed to, with two hands, in the old way. She had read her novels, read her history. "Please," she said, and indicated his own tea with her eyes.
He smiled at her manners. "In Zhengzhou we have wonderful tea. Jasmine tea, red lichee, chrysanthemum flower, all the best ones. And did you know there are ruins of an ancient city from the Shang era there? Very interesting excavations. You should come."
"Should I?" she said, turning it around, eyeing him over the rim of her cup.
"Wei shenmo bu?" he said, Why not. Then he sighed, drank from his cup, and set it heavily on the table. "Ai-li, I don’t know how I should talk to you about these things. In my world, it’s like this. When a man and woman do together what you and I have done-I mean the way you and I have done it -our hearts all the way open, do you understand me or not? -we know each other, gradually. We spend a long time. And eventually we talk about love."
Her heart leapt. A permanent relationship, that’s what he meant.
"But my life is complicated. I was married. And-you know this, Ai-li-I have never been able to find out what happened to my wife. If I could only find out-if I could be sure…"
The pain swelled up behind Alice’s eyes. They had felt so much in the last few nights. Yet still he clung to this.
"And another thing," he said. "You’re a foreign woman! Foreigners are different. I don’t know"-he looked at her beseechingly-"I don’t know what we would do."
"Wo ye bu zhidao," I don’t know either. But Alice did know, or at least she thought she did: they should forget everything from before and go forward. They should try. But she didn’t say this. She knew Lin had to realize it for himself.
They drank in silence.
He had his sleeves rolled up his hairless forearms. He stretched over to put his teacup on the dresser, settled his long body back down. "For example, your family. What would your father think if we talked about love?"
She closed her eyes. "My God, Shiyang, I can’t even imagine. My father is famous for his racism, remember?" She paused at the word for racism, zhongzu zhuyi, knowing what it implied in English, not sure if it carried the same weight in Chinese. "He is obsessed by the past, by a time in history when laws-not just attitudes-gave white people all the privileges. He thinks that’s how it should be."
"Yes, you told me. He thinks whites are superior to Chinese!"
She nodded.
Lin shook his head. "He’s confused."
"That’s one way of putting it."
"So. You are saying he would not then accept me as your-as your-"
She broke over him, seeing he was having trouble committing himself even to the words. "I’m saying it doesn’t matter. If you and I agree to love each other, and he doesn’t like it, that will be his problem. I don’t care what he thinks. I don’t care about him."
"Of course you care about him. He’s your father."
"No, I’m ashamed of him-everything about him."
"That has nothing to do with it," Lin corrected her. "Whether parents do good or bad, they are still one’s parents. One respects them. Loves them. Forgives them the bad that they’ve done."
She stared. How could he just cut through it all like that? "You’re right, Shiyang. I do care-of course I care-in a way. In fact, the truth is I’m worried-worried he might be sick."
His eyes darkened in concern. "Is he?"
"I don’t know. They don’t have a clear diagnosis yet. But it might be something bad."
"In that case, you should certainly put aside your anger. We have a saying: Renzi jiang-si qi yen ye san." Before a man dies you must forgive him everything.
She nodded. Feelings she had been holding down for so long surged up and welled in her eyes.
Lin reached for her hand. He sat, holding it, staring at their fingers, hers white. His dark ivory.
"Despite everything, I could not bear to lose him-"
"Whenever that comes, it must be endured."
"And what about you?" she said, blinking. "You haven’t told me about your parents."
"Only my brother living, and my old mother-in Shanghai."
"What would she think of me?"
He smiled faintly. His mother was old fashioned. When his father had died she had observed his passing the old way, for three years. Except that it had been during the Chaos, and she’d had to confine her rituals to what could be concealed. Like the white strip of linen she wore around her arm, inside her jacket. Like talking to the elder Lin’s picture every New Year’s. "Of you," he said now to Ai-li, "my mother would not know what to think. But she is like all mothers. She wants my happiness."
"I never had a mother." She sighed.
"Guolai, " he whispered, and pulled her to her feet and over to him. Guiding her with his hands he settled her on his lap, then placed his hand over her chest and pressed gently. Alice rested her head. The way her bones seemed to collapse, weightless, against him gave her the greatest comfort imaginable. As if she were home.
That night he came into her room instead of waiting for her in his. He couldn’t see much as he closed the door behind him, but he could hear her footsteps moving toward him. She surprised him by dropping low and grasping him by the ankle, the way she had done in the cave. He let out a tiny laugh, not enough for any of the others to hear in their rooms, where they would be just now settling down to sleep, just enough for her, to let her know he remembered. And as he had done in the cave, he responded by pressing his leg back into her hand.
Her hands slid up and opened his pants. He drew in a sharp breath. She was so immediate, so without artifice. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes at the sensation of her mouth picking him up and pulling him in-eh, he had to reach behind him now, find something to steady him. There. The rim of the bureau. Bracing his arms this way he was able to move against her mouth, just the small movements, just the first quickening. He twined one hand in her hair, gripped her head, moved more boldly in her. Ah, this woman. He remembered the first night, kissing in the desert, the way he had used only his mouth on her, the way she used her mouth on him now- Ah, the high tide. "Ai-li," he breathed, warning her.
But she tightened her hands on his hips, refusing to release him. At the same majestic moment that he felt his force rising he felt a flowering of trust as well, and so knew, for this moment anyway, that he could fully let himself go in her.
When the barest quickening of light was seeping into the room there was a small, urgent knocking on the door.
She was awake, instantly, stumbling across the floor. Suddenly, she remembered he was there. "Lin!" she turned and hissed.
But he had already heard, sat up.
She pointed to the bathroom; he slipped quickly across the room and shut himself inside.
The knocking again. Spencer sick? Some problem with Kong? A telegram about Horace? Her heart thudded as she crossed to the door.
"Shui-a?"
"Mo Ai-li?" A Chinese voice. It was a man, a voice she knew. But… She hesitated. Who?
"Is it you, Mo Ai-li? Please! I’ve driven half the night."
Guo Wenxiang! She unlatched the door and cracked it a few inches; impatiently he pushed it wide.
"Sorry to come to your place so early! Eh, it’s not easy to come by a ride to this village! Eren Obo’s truly not on the well-traveled road! But I have good connections. And last night luck favored me. I met some PLA officers from my home province, men stationed here in Eren Obo. As fellow Sichuanese, they naturally offered me a ride from Yinchuan."