Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [144]
“But she left flowers—”
“A decoy, don’t you think, to protect you and her servants? You can tell the police you didn’t suspect anything.”
This can’t be. “Do you really think she’s tried to escape? She’s an old woman.”
“She’s just sixty, maybe a little older, maybe a little younger.”
“But if she’s caught, she’ll go to prison for a long time. She’ll never survive that.”
“She has a brave heart, just as you have a brave heart, Pearl. We must pray that she is safe and that she gets out.”
A brave heart? It feels like a swollen and aching thing in my chest.
“Let’s get some tea,” Dun says. “You’ll feel better.”
He takes me to a government-run teahouse. We sit as close as we can to the charcoal brazier, but even here cold air whistles through cracks and swirls around our feet. We sip our tea in silence. I stare into my cup, but I’m aware of Dun watching me. I’m surprised by the depth of my sadness. My mother and father are both dead. My sister is far away. My daughter and granddaughter are physically near but could just as easily be a million miles away, since they can’t come to Shanghai and I can’t go to the commune. Auntie Hu was one of only a few links to my past, and now she’s gone.
“Pearl.” I look up and see concern in Dun’s eyes. His expression makes me want to cry. “We don’t know what will happen in life. This is why it’s important for us to move forward, to live, to buy flowers, to—”
“What are you saying?”
“Look at Auntie Hu. She lost everyone, but she acted. Wherever she is, she’s trying to find a better life.” He pauses to let me think about that. Then, after a few moments, he slips off his stool to one knee. The teahouse’s proprietor hurries to our table in concern, but Dun waves him away. “We are not so young, you and I, and things will not always be easy, but would you do me the honor of marrying me?”
The tears that have been threatening finally come, but the drops that fall contain not sadness and loss but great joy.
“Absolutely,” I say.
Dun pays for our tea, and then we’re once again on the street. We’re too happy to go straight back to the house, where we’ll have no privacy. Our best way to be alone is right here, strolling among hundreds of people along Huaihai Road. But we don’t go far before a limousine pulls to a stop just ahead of us. The door opens, and Z.G. gets out.
“I saw you walking,” he says. “I had to say hello.”
Dun puts a hand on the small of my back—a gesture of reassurance or possession? Z.G. gives us an amused smile.
“I’m on my way to a dinner,” he goes on. “They’ll be showing a movie too. Would you like to come? You’re just the kind of people they want, probably more so than me.”
“We’ve already eaten,” I say, even though it was a small meal.
“And we’re on our way home,” Dun adds.
“I won’t hear of it.” Z.G. steps between us, loops his arms through ours—just as he used to do with May and me years ago when we walked together down the street—and leads us to the limousine. “Come, come. Get in the car.”
Z.G. has always had the ability to sweep people along with him, and soon we’re speeding through the streets, the driver honking at pedestrians and people on bicycles.
“Where are we going? What’s the occasion?” I ask.
“There’s a delegation here from Hong Kong,” Z.G. replies. “We’re to show them that China is doing well, that no one is starving, and that they should do more business with us.”
“A delegation from Hong Kong?” Dun asks, perplexed. “That’s a British colony.”
“I know,” Z.G. responds, world-weary. “It’s to be one of those events that’s so vexing in the New China. On the one hand, England is considered an ultraimperialist country, since it was the first foreign power to invade China and it still occupies Hong Kong. On the other hand, England is one of the few countries that recognizes the People’s Republic of China … even though it still aligns itself with the United States—the most ultraimperialist of all countries—in the United Nations to keep China from membership. We must do what we can to win over the few capitalists we’ve