Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [47]
I was trying to understand Lu Xun’s essay “A Lost Good Hell,” when I received a call from Wen Lan asking me to come out and meet her. I said I didn’t have time, but she insisted, asking me to come out for lunch the next day at the Maison Boulud in Qian Men Street. It’s not easy to catch a taxi near there and I don’t have a driver, and besides I didn’t feel like accommodating that Baccarat-crystal chandelier. I changed it to a small coffeehouse in Qianliang Lane.
“Where is Qianliang Lane?” she asked.
“It’s off Dongsi North Avenue, close to your Shatan house, you must know it, right?” I said in exasperation.
She deigned to accept my arrangement—so I knew she must want something from me.
When we met the next day, just as I expected, she said, “Jian Lin and I are just good friends. He’s got a wife, you know.”
So she wanted to shut me up. She had not seen me for twenty years, and this is all she wanted to see me about. But I wasn’t really angry. I just wanted to see what other tricks she had up her sleeve.
“Jian Lin is a big real estate magnate,” I said to tease her.
“What’s a real estate magnate?” she replied. “Just somebody with a lot of money, nothing so great about that.”
What an imperious tone. Was she “riding a donkey while searching for a horse” again? I have to admit that although Wen Lan is over forty, she looks great for her age and has all the charm of a continental European woman. I can imagine that quite a few men have been captivated by her.
“Are you still living in Germany?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “I haven’t been in Germany for a long time.”
“Didn’t they tell me you married a German and went to Germany?” I alluded to what had happened twenty years earlier.
“You mean Hans?” She seemed to be scolding me for not being au courant with her activities. “We haven’t been together for ages. Germany was a stifling place, bored me to death. I went to Paris; my ex-husband’s Jean-Pierre Louis.” Seeing that I didn’t react, she added, “A very famous sinologist.” I was definitely not familiar with any French sinologists. “Sinologists are all insane, I can’t stand them,” she remarked.
“Jian Lin called you Professor Wen,” I said.
“Professor Wen or Dr. Wen are both fine. I received my doctorate from Sciences-Po in Paris. I’m a specialist in Euro-African affairs and an adviser to the European Union and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
I remembered that her father was in the Central Propaganda Department—the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, either inside or outside the organization, and profiting from both.
“So then, you intend to come back home?” I asked.
“You mean, return to China?” she said with an arrogant air. “We’ll see. There are people in Europe who are waiting for me now. There’s an old aristocrat who keeps asking me to marry him. But now everybody knows that the twenty-first century belongs to China. If a particularly good opportunity came along, I might consider coming back to do something for China. For the time being, I’ll just keep going back and forth. I have a house in Paris and another one in Brussels, and I’m just now looking for a suitable place to buy in Beijing. What about you? What are you doing in Beijing?”
“I just sit around at home, and once in a while I write something.”
At that, her interest began to wane.
Then she asked, “Where do you live?”
“Happiness Village Number Two.”
“Where?”
“Happiness Village Number Two, in Dongzhi Menwai.”
She didn’t react—it was probably not posh enough for her. After sizing me up completely, her last remaining interest in me evaporated.
“Well, Lao Chen, I have to go.”
“Go ahead.”
“About Jian Lin …”
I made a gesture of zipping up my lips.
“You’re an old Beijinger now,” she said in a slightly coquettish manner, “when I