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The door closed, and David and Hulan waited in the rain. Low, agitated voices, then the door opened again, revealing an older man, his eyes filmy white with blindness.
“I’m from the Ministry of Public Security,” Hulan said. “I’ve brought a foreigner with me. We’ve come from Beijing to speak with you.”
The man waved them inside, closed the door behind them, and felt his way to setting a rough-hewn piece of wood horizontally into two brackets that sat on either side of the frame. The young woman—the widow of the man who’d drowned—stood barefoot in the center of the room, her sleeping baby wrapped in a sling against her chest. Hulan edged forward to get a look at the infant, but the widow covered her baby’s face and backed away. Superstition and suspicion went hand in hand in the countryside.
The man barked at the woman to bring tea. She stared at him dully. These people didn’t have enough money for tea leaves.
“On a day such as this, a cup of hot water would be nice,” Hulan commented, keeping both sympathy and condescension from her voice. Without a word the woman picked up a thermos, poured hot water into three grimy jars, and handed them around. Then she backed away and stood against the wall. Her feet and arms were filthy; her clothes were heavily mended rags.
“Wu Huadong was my son,” the blind man spoke out into the room. “I am Wu Peng.”
Wu’s Sichuan accent was so thick that David could barely understand the words, so he surreptitiously tried to take in the surroundings. The room was larger than it looked from the outside because the back wall and part of the sides of the room were carved out of limestone rock faces. Two low sleeping platforms lay against the walls. A hutch had been constructed from three scavenged crates that were tucked into an alcove, which had also been chiseled out of the mountain. A piece of dingy cloth hung from the top crate down to the hard-packed earth floor, hiding what was inside. A homemade table sat against the wall. A clothesline had been strung kitty-corner across the room, and the baby’s clothes were drying, contributing greatly to the eye-stinging odor that combined urine, spit-up, and mildew. Lack of air circulation caused by no windows and the locked door exacerbated the stench.
David had been in other peasant homes, but he’d never seen anything like this. Even if the poor couldn’t afford glass windows, they left an open space for ventilation, which was sealed in the winter by newspapers. In the middle of summer, he would have expected to see the door open at the very least. Yet not only was it closed but a substantial barrier had been laid across it to prevent entry. Looking around, though, David saw nothing that could be of any value—no mementos, decorations, or personal belongings other than one eight-by-ten-inch piece of paper with Chinese characters that had been jabbed onto a nail. There wasn’t even a simple altar to commemorate the dead husband and son.
“People say your son’s death was an accident,” Hulan said as David began to follow the conversation.
“How can it be an accident?” Wu was wiry, and his face was as cragged and worn as the cliffs outside. “Our family has lived on this ground for many centuries. My son was born here and knew every rock of the land. How could he fall into the river?”
“If not an accident, what do you think happened?”
“There are evils to be guarded against,” Wu stated.
Hulan stiffened. David understood the words but was unsure of his wife’s reaction.
“Lust comes in many forms,” Wu went on. “For a woman. For money. For power. My son worked for a greater good, but he was deceived.”
“By Xiao Da?” Hulan asked.
Little Big, the leader of the All-Patriotic Society, the man whom Hulan held in such contempt. After the conversation David and Hulan had just had, he tried to listen more closely.
“Not by Xiao Da,” Wu corrected. “By others who wish to rip our country from our hands.”
“Such as?”
Wu sneered. “The yang guizi.”
David had no trouble understanding those words. He’d heard them shouted at him on the street many times. Foreign devil. Hulan didn’t even look his way but addressed Wu in the same tone that provoked confession even from the innocent.
“You are loose-tongued, yet you say nothing. You make general accusations, yet you tell me nothing to help me with your son.” She stood. ?
??I shall report to Beijing that there is nothing to learn here.”
David had been alarmed by a lot of things Hulan had said and done today, but he was unprepared for the cold way she was suddenly treating the old man.
Wu Huadong’s widow crept forward and whispered shyly, “Please, Miss, don’t go. Excuse my father-in-law. His heart is clouded by sorrow. Please.”
The woman eased back against the wall and lowered her head. When Wu said nothing, Hulan took a step. Hearing her, the old man held out a sinewy arm to block her path.
“My son worked at Site 518,” he said.
“This is common knowledge,” Hulan replied sternly. “Say something meaningful or get out of my way.”
“He did special work for someone there. I don’t know who, but it was a foreigner.”
Hulan sat down. “A man or a woman? American? English?”
Wu’s milky eyes blinked. He turned his head from side to side, trying to find her through sound. “A foreigner is trouble no matter what it has between its legs or from what corrupt soil it emerges. Huadong often went to meet this person. That last morning he held his hand out to me. ‘From the fist of the past to my fist to the fist of the future.’”
