“He knew my father,” Liu Mei said in tones of wonder. “I never thought I would meet anyone who knew my father. I have cousins in this country. I never thought I would have cousins anywhere.”
Absurdly, Liu Han felt a stab of jealousy. So far as she could tell, she had no relatives except Liu Mei alive anywhere in China. Between them, the little scaly devils and the Japanese had ground her ancestral village to powder; of her family, only she had got out from between the millstones.
“Major Yeager knew your father better than I ever did,” Liu Han said slowly. A strange thing to say, she knew, when Bobby Fiore had sown the seed that grew into Liu Mei deep inside her womb. Strange-but true. “He knew him longer than I did, and they spoke the same language, so they could understand each other. Your father and I spoke in broken bits of Chinese and the little scaly devils’ language and English. He never learned to speak Chinese very well.”
And with our bodies, she thought, though she did not say that aloud. Our bodies understood, even when we did not. That, by the spirit of the compassionate Buddha, was knowledge of Bobby Fiore Major Yeager did not have.
Liu Mei said, “Is it tonight we are going back to Major Yeager’s house?”
“Yes, tonight,” Liu Han answered. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it is good to go to a place where people understand the little devils’ language,” her daughter answered. “It is not as good as if Major Yeager and his wife and his son spoke Chinese, but we both know more of the little devils’ language than we do English, and all three of them are fluent in it.”
“I will not tell you you are wrong,” Liu Han said. Even so, she glanced over toward Liu Mei. “And you will have a chance to talk with that son-Jonathan, his name is. Do not be too free with him. The Americans have less restraint in their dealings between young people than we do.”
“Do you know what he reminded me of?” Liu Mei said. “The young people in Peking who imitate the scaly devils, that’s what. Except he knows more about them than the young people in Peking do.”
“There was that one we saw,” Liu Han began. But then she shrugged. “You are probably right. You have to remember, though, that his father and mother deal with the scaly devils every day. If he has learned much of them, he has learned it because of what his parents do.” Liu Mei nodded, accepting that. Liu Han let out a silent sigh of relief. She did not want her daughter to have any excuse for developing an infatuation for any American youth.
By the time evening came, she was ready and more than ready to go down to Major Yeager’s home, if only to relax. She had spent the day conferring with several American members of Congress. Frankie Wong helped by interpreting, but she tried to speak as much English as she could, because she did not fully trust him to translate accurately. That made it a grueling session, one in which she felt as if her brains were being rolled out onto something flat and hard like dough being made into noodles.
And the congressmen were less sympathetic than she’d hoped they would be. “Let me say I do not see why we should be helping international Communism,” declared one, a man with a long nose and jowls that showed even more dark stubble than Bobby Fiore had had.
Frankie Wong gave her an expectant look, but she answered that one herself, in English: “You help us, you help people go free from Lizards.” The long-nosed American abruptly stopped asking questions.
Another congressman said, “Why shouldn’t we just send you lots of ginger, to keep the Lizards too drugged up and too horny”-Wong did have to translate that for her-“to be able to fight back?”
“Power come from barrel of a gun. War and politics never separate,” Liu Han replied. “So say Mao. He say true, I think.”
She got through the hearing. She thought she held her own. But letting an American drive her and Liu Mei down the wide but still crowded highways of Los Angeles was still a relief. She’d spent more time in motorcars here in the American city than in all her life in China. Fair enough: these foreign devils did reckon her an important personage. But so many people in the city had automobiles, had them and took them for granted. Even the way the city was built took them for granted. She’d seen that from the start. Prosperity, she thought again.
Only the richest Chinese would have been able to afford the home in which the Yeagers lived. Only those who collaborated with the little scaly devils would have been able to get the electrically powered machines that were so common in this country. “We greet you,” Barbara Yeager said in the little devils’ language when Liu Han and Liu Mei rang the doorbell (even it ran on electricity). Her husband and son nodded behind her. She went on, “Supper will be ready soon.”
Supper was an extravagantly large slab of beef served with a baked potato. Potatoes, Liu Han had found, were harmless; they took the place of rice and noodles in a lot of American cooking. The beefsteak was another declaration of U.S. affluence. Liu Han had never eaten so much meat in China as she did at almost every supper in the United States.
After supper, Major Yeager surprised her by helping his wife clean up. No Chinese man would have done such a thing, despite the Communists’ preaching of equality between the sexes. When the job was done, he went into the front room and pulled a paperbound book off a shelf. “I had to do some shopping around before I found this,” he said in English, sounding pleased with himself, “but I did.”
He handed it to Liu Han. She read English haltingly. “Nineteen Thirty-eight Spalding Official Base Ball Guide.” She looked over at him. “Why you show me this?”
“Open it at the page where I put a card in,” he answered. She did, and looked down at small pictures of men in caps of the sort Americans still sometimes wore. After a moment, one of the faces leapt out at her. She pointed. “That is Bobby Fiore.”
Major Yeager nodded. Yes, he was pleased with himself. “Truth,” he said in the scaly devils’ tongue before returning to English: “He is wearing a baseball uniform there. I wanted your daughter to have the chance to see what her father looked like.”
Liu Mei had gone off to talk with Jonathan Yeager. When she came into the room after Liu Han called, her mother looked closely to see if she was rumpled. Liu Han would not have bet American youths behaved much differently from their Chinese counterparts if they got the chance. But everything here seemed as it should.
Liu Han pointed to the photograph. “Your father,” she said, first in English and then in Chinese. Liu Mei’s eyes got very wide as she stared and stared at the picture. When at last she looked up, they were wet with tears. Liu Han understood that. She and her daughter were good Marxist-Leninists, but the ancient Chinese tradition of respect for one’s ancestors lived in both of them.
“Thank you,” Liu Mei said to Major Yeager. She’d spoken in English, but added an emphatic cough. That let her shift to the little devils’ language: “This means very much to me.”
“I am glad to do it,” Yeager replied in the same language. “He was your father, and he was my friend.” He turned to Liu Han. “Keep the book, if you want to. It will help you remember, even when you go home.”
“I thank you,” Liu Han said softly. She still believed-she had to believe-the American system was flawed, regardless of the prosperity it produced. But some of the foreign devils could be men as good as any Chinese. She’d seen that with Bobby Fiore, and now she saw it again with this other man who had been his friend.