A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [28]
The Red Guards came to the scientist’s apartment. Hong, who was seventeen and full of fire, took a punch at one of the intruders. The youth was quickly knocked to the floor, and beaten so badly with the butt of a rifle that his leg bones were shattered. His father was put in detention for eighteen months, and was freed only after his accuser was arrested—for lying about the loyalty of another fellow worker.
Hong told me that he bears no ill will toward the Red Guards. I find that difficult to believe.
Later this afternoon, I had a marvelous surprise by the lake at the Summer Palace. I ran into an old friend, Thomas Stratton. He once was a student of mine at St. Edward’s, and now teaches art history at a college in New England. Tom is visiting China with a group of art historians and he is understandably eager to break away from the entourage as soon as possible.
I promised him a personal tour of Peking, as soon as I return from Xian. There’s some wonderful Qing hung porcelain on display in a state gallery near the Heping. I think we’ll stop there first.
Tomorrow is the biggest day of my trip. In the morning, I fly to Xian where I am to meet my brother at eleven sharp. After lunch, we will tour the archaeological site of the tomb of the Emperor Qin.
I’m thrilled about visiting this historical dig, but I’m even more excited about seeing Wang Bin again. He is only a year younger, but history and political fortunes have cast us centuries apart. Even without knowing him, I fear that we will be the inverse of each other. Perhaps not. Perhaps the journey backward to our Chinese childhood is not so great. It is easy to remember little Bin’s face as a boy. But it has been fifty years since we were together in my father’s home. And, in that time, I have not seen so much as a photograph. His invitation was so unexpected that I didn’t know how to respond.
I think it will be a powerful reunion.
Tom Stratton closed his friend’s journal and walked thoughtfully back to his hotel.
The words faithfully belonged to David, and reading them freshened Stratton’s grief. It was so typical of his old friend, he thought, to be moved more by the people of Peking than its art or scenery. David Wang had not returned for the temples and tombs of China, but for the people like Cheng and Hong. Each day had brought new faces, new chances to learn: What is it really like? What have I missed? Should I have come back sooner?
But David Wang was a circumspect man; not all of what he saw and heard would be recorded in his notebook—of this Stratton was sure. The professor had probably altered the names of the Chinese to protect them from reprisals. He had also carefully refrained from political commentary that could backfire against his brother, the deputy minister.
But the journal ended too abruptly.
It contained no mention of David Wang’s trip to Xian, or of his reunion with his brother. Stratton was baffled, for the professor unfailingly wrote in the notebook each night before going to bed. Why—full of such emotion, and dazzled by exotic sights—would David have forsaken this habit while on this most important trip?
Opening the journal again in his room, Stratton flipped to the last written pages. Something caught his eye. He retrieved a metal fingernail file from his luggage and slipped it between the pages, pressing toward the spine of the notebook. The binding easily gave way, and the pages separated in loose stacks.
Stratton ran a finger across the inside borders of the paper. It felt sticky. He held one page to his nose. The glue was pungent, and new. Someone had pried Wang’s journal apart, and then glued it back together so it would appear undisturbed. No ragged stubs revealed where the missing pages had been.
It was a professional job, Tom Stratton thought. Almost perfect.
“EVERY TIME I see you, you’re riding solo,” Jim McCarthy said with a cannon laugh. “Your tour group really must be wall-to-wall losers, huh?”
Stratton accepted McCarthy’s offer of a bottle of Peking-brewed