"What animals did you bury?" she asked.
"Well, some dead chickens and ducks, and a mad dog, that was our neighbor's. The dog bit a schoolgirl and was shot by the police." He turned to Lin. "Elder brother, I meant to ask your professional opinion. Do you think it safe to eat grapes fattened up by a rabid dog?"
"I have no professional opinion," Lin said curtly. Then he caught himself and added, "What a question! By common sense that should not be a problem."
Manna was intrigued by Liang Meng's talking of grapes. Evidently he was a family man; he even raised poultry, although he was a sort of intellectual. Perhaps she should find out more about him.
Since the hospital was an inconvenient place for more conversation, Lin suggested that the next day his cousin and Manna meet and talk by themselves somewhere in the city. They agreed to rendezvous at Victory Park. Perhaps the Songhua River was a more pleasant place, but there were always so many people on the bank that they might miss each other.
Victory Park lies at the southern end of the city. It was built in 1946, in memory of the Russian soldiers who had fallen while fighting Japanese troops in Manchuria toward the end of the Second World War. At the main entrance to the park, a stout statue of a fully equipped Russian soldier stood against an obelisk; his helmet and the barrel and round magazine of his submachine gun were missing, chopped off by the Red Guards at the outset of the Cultural Revolution. But currently the statue was under repair, surrounded by scaffolding. On the ground, in front of the monument, a slogan was still legible: "Down with Russian Chauvinism!" Those words had been scraped off, but the dark strokes remained distinguishable on the grayish concrete.
Manna arrived at ten o'clock. Inside the park, Victory Lake was greened by drooping willows. Two young men, apparently college students, were laughing heartily and paddling a dinghy, whose bow carried a line of words in red paint: "Long Live Chairman – -!" The word "Mao" had washed off. A few pairs of white ducks and wild geese were swimming near the bank. Manna leaned over the railing on a stone bridge and observed carps gliding in the water beneath, most of them about a foot long. She had on a yellow poplin shirt, which together with the army skirt made her look younger and more curvaceous. She was sweating a little because of the long walk, so she remained in the shade of a willow, which sheltered almost a third of the bridge. A sudden breeze blew a few candy wrappers into the air, and a brown plastic bag was flapping on the blossoms of a cherry tree. She remembered meeting her first love, Mai Dong, at this place. That had been eight years before. How time had passed. The park was different now, almost unrecognizable; it had become a zoo, noisy and crowded, with hundreds of animals kept in iron cages and deep concrete pits. On the opposite shore, behind rows of trees, stood several new buildings.
Her memory of Mai Dong feeding mallards with popped rice on this very bridge brought a slight contraction to her chest. Where is he now? she wondered. What a heartless man he was. Does he really love his cousin? What does he do for a living? Is he still in Shanghai? Does he often think of me?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a male voice speaking from behind her. "Hey, Comrade Manna Wu." Liang Meng appeared, carrying a large manila envelope under his arm and waving at her.
She waved back, but didn't move toward him.
Coming over, he smiled and shook hands with her. "How is your daughter?" asked Manna.
"She's doing all right. She returned home yesterday afternoon. My sister-in-law is with her now. The doctor said there wouldn't be any aftereffects. "
"That's good news. Is she your oldest child?"
"No, she's the youngest and she has two brothers. One is eleven and the other nine. She's seven."
They turned to go farther into the park. Before they stepped off the bridge, Liang Meng cleared his throat and spat into the water. Immediately a red carp, about two feet long, rushed over and swallowed the blob of phlegm. Manna made a mental note that Lin wouldn't do that. They bore left, walking along the bank clockwise.
He told her that he had heard a great deal about her from Lin and was impressed by her work as a head nurse. Then, without a transition, he began talking about himself. He had graduated from Harbin Teachers School in i96j, specializing in the fine arts. The graduation year was significant, meaning that his education had not been disrupted by the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately his wife had died two years ago; people used to call them "a pair of mandarin ducks," meaning an affectionate couple. True, the two of them had spent some peaceful, loving years together and had never fought or quarreled. His children were well disciplined and sensible, the boys being model students at school. Though approaching middle age, he was in good health and only had a cold sometimes in winter when the air in Hegang was heavy with coal dust. He earned seventy-two yuan a month; since they had no debt, the family managed fine.
Manna was afraid he would ask about her rank and salary. If he did, their relationship would end here, because she hated that kind of materialistic attitude. But he had the decency not to raise the question, and instead he switched to the topic of his teaching.
When they reached the opposite shore, the dome of a concrete building emerged on their left, partly blocked from view by poplar crowns. That was the city's Children's Palace. A row of sedans – Warsaws, Volgas, and Red Flags – were parked in a lot encircled by hawthorn hedges. Children's singing, accompanied on the organ, could be heard.
Manna and Liang Meng sat down on a long bench facing the lake. The blue paint on the bench was flaky in places, and the wooden slats forming its back felt scaly. On their left a cartridge box sat on the ground, filled with snow crocuses. Liang Meng put the large envelope on his lap and pulled out a few small drawings. " These are my work. I hope you like them," he said and handed them to her. She noticed he had stubby fingers.
She looked through the drawings. They were all illustrations of a battle in which the Vietcong wiped out the American invaders. In one of the pieces, two enemy men – a black soldier and a white officer – were impaled upon the bamboo stakes in a trap, yelling " Help!" Manna wasn't interested in the illustrations. She had come here to see the man, not his work. She handed them back and said blandly, "Good pictures."
"They are for a children's book. You like them?"
"Yes. When will the book come out?"
He knit his brows and muttered, "It was supposed to be out this year, but the publishing house wants to wait."
"How's that?"
"There're too many books of this kind on the market. I'm told that the United States is no longer our chief enemy. So they don't want to publish the book now."
"What are they publishing?"
"Anything related to criticizing Confucius."
"Then why not draw something they want?"
"It's so hard to predict the wind. If I take up a project now, by the time I'm done with it, it will probably be out of fashion."
"I'm sorry. " She truly felt for him.
He put the drawings back into the envelope. "It's all right. I just did these pieces as an exercise. But God knows how hard I worked on them. "
"I can tell you did."
A pause set in, and Manna looked across the lake for a view of the other shore. She was struck by the sight of the massive mountain in the southeast. It suddenly brightened as sunlight penetrated the clouds and fell on its craggy shoulders. She said to Liang Meng, " Wow, look at that mountain!"
"It's really pretty," he echoed.
In the distance, beyond the train station where locomotives were chugging past and puffing dark smoke, the immense mountain rose, tall, rugged, indigo. The jagged rocks on its ridges pierced the mist surrounding it; a footpath could be seen winding up the precipitous slope and disappearing in the clouds. A few birds were soaring almost motionlessly along the middle of a cliff; an air-raid cave beside the path was visible owing to the yellowish fresh earth dumped at its mouth, which formed a gigantic triangle spreading down the slope. The sun cast a few colorful streaks of light above the pine woods that stretched on the western shoulder of the mountain. Suddenly a dusty cloud arose from a ridge; the birds swerved in the air, soaring higher. A few seconds later came the sound of an explosion. Apparently people were quarrying rocks up there.