Wang nods and, without pulling his gaze away from Echo’s sleeping face, says, ‘The police suspect an electrical fault?’
‘That’s what I heard,’ the doctor says. ‘Your wife is talking to them now. She will have a clearer idea of what is going on. .’
Wang can’t hear the rest. Who once bragged in a letter about going to Apartment 404? Who was once convicted of arson for setting fire to a shed he thought his ex-lover was inside? Who is deranged enough to attempt to burn a woman and child to death in their beds? When he sees Zeng, Wang doesn’t know what he will do.
The door to the private room opens and Yida enters, her eyes dazed under the craziness of her hair. The smoke of the fire clings to her as it does to Echo, ashes smudging her cheeks. She wears the floral polyester nightdress Wang bought her for her birthday, and must have fled without shoes, as she has disposable hospital slippers on her feet. Yida stiffens when she sees Wang, who walks to her, reaching out his arms.
‘Yida. . what’s wrong?’
She glares at him, her smoke-inflamed eyes shot through with red. ‘I don’t want to speak to you.’
‘Yida? You don’t blame me for the fire, do you? That makes no sense. I wasn’t even at home!’
Dr Shu clears his throat, excuses himself and slips out the door. Yida strides past her husband to Echo’s bedside. Her chest heaving under her nightdress, she turns and points a shaking finger at him.
‘I warned you the wiring in the bathroom was dangerous. I warned you we had to get it fixed. But you were too lazy. We accidently left the water heater on tonight, and look what happened!’
‘So it’s my fault then? That’s what you’re saying? If you were concerned about the wiring, Yida, why didn’t you report it to the landlord yourself?’
Though Wang thinks he’s made a valid point, Yida reacts as though he has said something offensive. She stabs a finger at the door. ‘Get out! Now! I can’t stand the sight of you.’
Wang takes a deep breath. He reminds himself of what Yida has been through. How she woke in the night to suffocating heat and smoke and had to escape with Echo on to the neighbour’s balcony. Apartment 404 has been gutted by fire, and everything they own destroyed. She has nowhere to live, and her only child is in a hospital bed, hooked up to a machine. Yida is too shaken up to think straight, and Wang aches for his wife. She should be turning to him for support, not turning against him.
‘I’m sorry that I wasn’t there, Yida,’ he says. ‘I thank God that you and Echo got out of there safely. I owe you for rescuing Echo. You were very brave.’
Wang’s words, the tremor in his voice, break down her animosity. She lowers her shaking hand. ‘I thank God I woke up,’ she says. ‘It frightens me to think what would have happened if I hadn’t woken. .’
A sob catches in Yida’s throat and she throws a hand over her mouth. Wang goes to her, and she doesn’t resist as he takes her in his arms, embracing her for the first time in weeks. He strokes the back of his wife’s messy head as she quietly weeps on his shoulder. The fire has destroyed everything they have, but at least it has brought them back together, Wang thinks, as a family once more.
‘We shouldn’t blame each other,’ he says soberly. ‘The fire had nothing to do with the wiring.’
‘What are you saying?’ Yida pulls back to look at her husband at arm’s length. There is a wary look in her bloodshot eyes. ‘That it was arson?’
Wang nods. ‘I know who did it.’
Yida laughs, shoves his chest with both hands and steps backwards out of his arms. ‘Let me guess,’ she says. ‘Your friend? The man who wrote the letters?’
‘The police couldn’t do anything about him before,’ Wang says, ‘but now he has harmed us they can arrest him.’
Yida laughs again, harsh and cynical. She goes back to their daughter’s bedside. Leaning over Echo, she strokes the hair at her temples, as though to close ranks against him.
‘You think it’s all in my head, don’t you, Yida?’ Wang says.
‘Yes,’ Yida says. ‘The fire started in the bathroom. The firemen said it was the wiring. I can’t take any more of your madness, Wang Jun. I’m sick to death of it. The police are waiting to speak to you in the hall. Go and tell them your arson theory! Go!’
Echo is waking. She coughs faintly into the breathing apparatus over her mouth, the sound muffled by the plastic. Her eyes flutter open up at her mother, standing over the bed, and she attempts to raise her head from the pillow. ‘Ma?’ she croaks up at Yida. Wang’s heart contracts and he wants to stay with his daughter, to reassure her that she is safe. But the last thing Echo needs right now is to see her parents fighting. So he leaves to speak to the police. Yida will come round.
The policeman is sleeping in the chair outside Echo’s room, called off duty by his three-in-the-morning fatigue. Wang looks up and down the otherwise empty hallway. He hears the policeman’s colleague in the examination room. ‘This one’s a bullet wound. I was chasing a gangster,’ he boasts. The nurse giggles. ‘What bullet wound needs. . ten stitches?’ Wang stares at the policeman sleeping in the chair. What if he tells the police he suspects arson and they suspect him? What if they look up his records, see that he was once a psychiatric patient and arrest him? He has heard how the police solve their cases. They will take him to the station and throw him about an interrogation room until he confesses. The investigation will begin and end with him.
Wang walks back to reception, where a mother hugs her asthmatic, wheezing toddler, and a drunk smiles, bleeding from a head wound but too numbed by baijiu to feel the pain. The sliding glass doors part for him as he leaves, and out in the hospital car park Wang starts to run, past the ambulances and parked cars. At the hospital gate, he looks back at the emergency-room entrance. No one is coming for him but, not wanting to take any chances, he keeps on running down the street.
Morning. The sky, cleared of pollution by pre-Olympic closures of coal-burning factories outside Beijing, is blue and streaked with cirrus clouds. The alley, however, is its same sordid self, smelling of beer, gutter urine and the sweet rot of cabbage in bins. The barber’s is closed, the red, white and blue pole not spinning, the cord unplugged. Wang turns off the taxi engine and calls Zeng. The phone rings and rings. Wang is on the verge of hanging up when Zeng picks up.
‘Wei?’
Zeng is sleepy, his tongue groggy on the bed of his mouth. Ten past seven and he probably hasn’t been in bed for long.
‘I need to speak to you,’ Wang says. ‘Come outside.’ He hangs up.
As he waits, Wang smokes a Red Pagoda Mountain, tugging nicotine and tar, the only stuff his body won’t reject with nausea, deep into his lungs. He has smoked it down to the butt by the time Zeng appears. Yawning. Bare-chested in boxers. The bruises on his nose and cheeks darkened to purplish black, making him look like a featherweight boxer staggering out of the ring. Zeng walks to the taxi, the emerald scales of his dragon tattoo glinting in the sun. The waistband of his boxers hangs from his narrow hips, and his lean and sinewy body looks vulnerable and undefended.
Wang leans out of the driver’s-side window. ‘Get in.’
‘What is it? Why have you come to see me?’ Zeng asks. He touches his hand to the bruises that Wang beat into him the day before.
Wang chokes back his anger, struggling to bring his voice under control. His heart is beating hard and sweat dampening his brow. He looks straight ahead through the windscreen.
‘You know why. Get in.’
Zeng goes to the passenger-side door, unconcerned that he is barefoot and in his underwear. He slides into the passenger seat, slams the door and turns to Wang. ‘I don’t understand you, Wang Jun,’ he says. ‘The way you. . attacked me yesterday. I thought you never wanted to see me again. .’