The Interior - Страница 38

"Do you want dinner in the room?" David asked, admiring her transformation.

Hulan shook her head. "I'd like to go out, especially if we can walk somewhere."

They went back downstairs. Hulan checked with the concierge for a restaurant recommendation, but he insisted that all the restaurants in Taiyuan were for the masses. "You are only two people and he is a foreigner," the concierge said in Mandarin. "You will be an inconvenience to the other patrons. It is better that you stay here. If you really must go someplace else and you want authentic food, I can recommend the restaurant in the Hubin Hotel, which caters to our overseas compatriots."

When the concierge wouldn't budge on his suggestions-he probably received kickbacks from the two hotels' chefs-David and Hulan pushed through the revolving doors and into the sultry night air, crossed the street, and decided to take a chance on a small restaurant decorated with Christmas lights. Hulan conversed with the waiter about specialties and ingredients, then ordered. David asked for a Tsingtao beer, while Hulan accepted some chrysanthemum tea. A few minutes later, the waiter returned with fresh corn soup.

David and Hulan had both experienced a lot since the previous morning, but at first they shared only trivialities. David said he'd looked for her at lunch but hadn't seen her; she said she'd seen him. He said he was impressed by how cheerful the women seemed as they walked to the cafeteria. "They waved and called out to us," he said. Hulan smiled but didn't tell him what the women were really saying about Aaron Rodgers.

The waiter arrived and with a flurry set down three dishes: diced chicken sauteed with hot peppers, baby bok choy warmed with giant mushrooms, and prawns that had first been stir-fried with ginger, garlic, onions, and black beans, then dipped in molten lard to create morsels that were flavorful on the inside and crispy on the outside. It all tasted wonderful, especially to Hulan, who hadn't had a decent meal in twenty-four hours.

At last David asked, "So tell me about the factory."

"Last night when I called you, I'd only seen those places that were nice enough to keep me from walking out on the contract," she said, putting down her chopsticks. "But here's what it's actually like: There's running water only for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. To flush the toilets, you scoop water out of a barrel and dump it in the tank. There's no hot water at all. The shower stalls-if you can call them that- probably haven't been cleaned since the factory opened two years ago. The food in the cafeteria has hair on it. From what animal, I don't know. And then there's the factory floor itself-"

But before she could go on, David interrupted. "You're a Beijinger who's happened to have gone to a Connecticut boarding school. You're always telling me about dirty or backward conditions like on your train trip or in that hotel in Datong. Didn't that place only have hot water two hours a day?"

"There's a big difference between no running water and rationed hot water."

"To a peasant? The women I saw today looked perfectly content. It has to be better working in the factory, no matter how primitive, than being out on a farm."

His ignorance surprised her. "Is it that you don't believe me when I tell you that we're tricked into signing contracts that promise one thing but deliver another, or is it that you think that just because the women are peasants they should be grateful for what they get?"

"I'm saying neither of those things, Hulan," he replied patiently. "I'm saying they were singing. They seemed happy to me."

"I'm sure that's what your slave owners used to say," she bristled.

"Hulan…"

"I just spent a day working shoulder to shoulder with two women. Siang and Peanut may not have been educated in the way that you or I have been, but they have a deeper understanding of how things work than either of us."

"Aren't you romanticizing them?"

Hulan thought back. "No," she said, "just the opposite. They've lived at the whim of so many things. They are truly close to the soil. You know what that means to me? A kind of earthiness."

"In my meeting Sandy said something like that as well. He was referring to crudeness, I think."

"Perhaps it's crude to live from hand to mouth, but it makes things very clear. The women I worked with today understand that they're being taken advantage of. The hours are long. The living facilities are substandard. The noise level on the factory floor has to be bad for our ears. A lot of what we're doing is dangerous. Look at my hands, David."

Of course, he'd already seen the gauze wrapped around her left hand and that wound remained covered. But the exposed flesh on both of her hands was scratched and scabbed, while her fingernails were broken and jagged.

"But this is nothing," she continued. "A woman was badly injured in the factory today. Her whole arm was torn up."

David waited for Hulan to tell him about the death. When she didn't, he said, incredulous, "Their security man was right. He cleaned it up and no one even knew what happened."

"What are you talking about?"

"The woman who was hurt jumped off the roof of the building. She's dead."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" she asked.

"I assumed you knew. I figured that's why you were so upset."

Hulan ignored his last comment and said, "Tell me everything."

"We were in a meeting. Sandy Newheart got a call. He said we should break for coffee. He and the Knights left. When they didn't come back, I went outside and found them with the body."

"And?"

"And nothing. A security guard wrapped her up and took her away. We went back to the conference room. The old man was pretty shaken up, but he's tough, focused. We continued our meeting."

"David," Hulan said, leaning forward intently, "tell me about the body. Where was it in relation to the building? How did it look exactly?"

"Oh, Hulan-"

"David, please."

"Okay." He sighed, then began to conjure up the picture in his mind. "She was on the ground, obviously."

"Right next to the building?" she inquired. "On the steps? Up against the wall?"

"No, she was on the dirt. I'd say seven to ten feet from the building."

"And how did she look?"

"How do you think?" he asked impatiently. "Her head was flat. There was lots of blood."

Hulan closed her eyes and slouched back in the chair. "On her side? Face up?" "Face up."

Her eyes still closed, Hulan nodded grimly as if she'd seen the body herself. "Do you know what Peanut said?" she asked. "She said that Xiao Yang-Little Yang, that's the dead woman-wouldn't be coming back. I thought she was joking. At the time I thought she meant that Xiao Yang's injuries were so bad she'd have to go home. But now I see Peanut meant something quite different."

"Don't read anything into this, Hulan."

Hulan slowly opened her eyes and stared at David. "I'm only responding to what you saw."

"I saw a woman who jumped from a building and died." "Look at it with me: A woman gets her arm half torn off. She loses a lot of blood. She's probably in shock. She can't walk off the factory floor-"

"Aaron Rodgers said he carried her to his office, but that doesn't mean she couldn't walk."

"I'm telling you she couldn't walk." Hulan waited for David to challenge her again. When he didn't, she continued, "He takes her somewhere-"

"His office…"

"And goes for help." David nodded, and Hulan went on. "Now, you're suggesting that Xiao Yang gets up, climbs a set of stairs, somehow finds her way onto the roof, goes to the edge of the building, and jumps?" "That's what happened."

"David, think about that building. If you were on the second-floor roof and you jumped, do you think you would die?"

"Probably not, might break an ankle, though." He smiled, but Hulan would have none of it.

"So you'd go feet first?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Then how do you explain the fact that Xiao Yang landed ten feet from the building, with her head crushed?"

"What are you suggesting?"

"Someone threw her off the building," Hulan said gravely.

David disagreed. "If you jump, your body's going to have a forward trajectory. Even if she landed on her feet, she'd have to fall forward or backward. If the circumstances are right, the • momentum could be enough to cause that damage."

"Three weeks ago Miaoshan supposedly kills herself. Today Xiao Yang also kills herself. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Look, it's terrible what happened to Miaoshan, and it's sad what happened to that poor woman today, but you're seeing murder where there's only suicide. These things are tragic, but that's all they are."

On another day, maybe in other circumstances, Hulan might have heard these words differently. Instead she filtered out everything except for what she took to be his condescension.

She stood and put her purse on her shoulder.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm not sure yet."

"You're not going back to the factory."

Hulan's eyes flashed. "Are you telling me what I can and cannot do?"

"You said a day, Hulan. You were in there two days."

She looked at him in anger and disappointment. "You're a lawyer. You're supposed to look at things logically. Where is your brain, David?"