A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [91]
Kangmei finished her translation amid an assenting chorus from the Zhuang peasants. The commune president chose not—or dared not—to affront the majority. He nodded slowly and Stratton could almost see him thinking: to hold Stratton on the unsupported word of an overwrought old man would anger the peasants. To release him cost nothing. Tomorrow they could always bring him back in. Stratton sensed that the man was the kind of political bureaucrat who would most of all prefer to make no decision at all. If Stratton were to disappear from the face of the earth, so much the better.
Favoring his leg, Stratton used the wall as a crutch to gain his feet. Kangmei stood at his side.
“Say something graceful and let’s go.”
Before she could speak, the old policeman fired a fresh staccato burst.
“He says he knows how people are tired of the memories and the obsessions of an old man who will not forget. But he begs for patience. There is another witness, he says, one who will say positively that you’re a murderer and a spy. The witness will come soon.”
The commune president sighed resignedly. He would humor a trusted old colleague.
The president spoke briefly and courteously to Kangmei.
“He asks if you would please remain for another few minutes, even though you are tired, so that this matter may be finally resolved without further affecting our friendship.”
Stratton shrugged. It was a sugar-coated command, but the worst was over. Mentally, he ticked off the witnesses who had seen his face that other night in Man-ling. Besides the policeman, only the commissar, the professor and the student. All dead. The policeman should have been, too. There had been no other witnesses.
They left Stratton and Kangmei alone then, side by side on wooden chairs in a corner of the room.
“The train will be leaving soon,” said Stratton.
“There is still a little time. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
She was back in a minute with gossip and two steaming mugs.
“The witness is a schoolteacher, a young man who is very bright, but is of poor family background.”
“What does that mean?”
“His father, or perhaps his grandfather, was a landlord or a capitalist. That means he cannot go to the university or join the army or belong to the Party. So he is a schoolteacher.”
A lovely system, Stratton mused. Convict a man for his ancestors’ crimes. For how many generations? He sipped his tea and watched shadows from an overhead lamp play across Kangmei’s lovely features.
And then Stratton knew who the witness would be. His cup fell, set free by stricken fingers.
“Thom-as, your tea!” Kangmei exclaimed in alarm. “You are shaking. What is wrong? Shall I get the doctor?”
“No, no,” he said. And thought for the second time that night of Bobby Ho.
The young man entered the room with quiet poise. The policeman limped over and spoke urgently with him, gesturing at Stratton, the hatred unmasked. The president said something to the young man and so did one of the peasants. Lobbying, Stratton supposed.
The young man dragged up a chair and sat directly in front of Stratton—mute reviewer of a one-man play. They stared at one another across three feet and eleven years.
The rag boy had added weight to the skin and bones, but not much. The face had filled, but still it spoke of suffering. The body had remained as insubstantial as it had looked the night Bobby Ho’s quixotic, absurd, fatal gesture had spared one life and cost many more. The inborn pride had not changed, or the cold, calculating intelligence in the masked obsidian eyes.
Stratton knew he was finished.
There was eloquence in the poker gaze of the grown-up rag boy. His identification was as certain as Stratton’s. He, too, like the tormented old policeman, like Stratton, still dwelt in the debris of horror.
Did he also weep, alone at night, for friends so brave? Did he dream terrible