sand was blowing in from the deserts of Inner Mongolia, hazing the afternoon sky, but it hadn’t touched down yet. It hovered like a quiet threat.
It was on a long stretch that the traffic suddenly vanished, and only when he noticed the lines of cars parked on both sides of the road did he realize it was 2:28, precisely one week after the earthquake. He sighed and drew to the side of the road, parked behind a vegetable truck, and settled back in his seat.
At first, probably like most people, he fought it. His head was too full of panicked self-interest. Three minutes is a long time, though, and during that last minute his head was finally in the middle of the country, in the mountains, with the devastated homes, schools, factories, hospitals, shops, roads, and tunnels, and the many, many thousands of people whose lives had been irrevocably scarred at 2:28 P. M. one week ago.
He knew the silence was over because its end was marked by horns blaring long and low up and down the road. All over the city, all over the country, cars, trains, ships, and air defense alarms were screaming into the sky.
He waited until the sound faded and the cars around him had headed off before finally starting the Audi and driving on.
His destination, a kilometer north of the complex that had hosted the 1990 Asian Games, went by the name of Ziyu Shanzhuang, the Purple Jade Villas, a 160-acre resort of green fields, pools, forests, wildlife, and the superrich. It was one of more than thirty such walled compounds nestled in the green upper reaches of the capital, a world away from the Beijing that he knew most intimately. The guards at the gate seemed to sense his unfamiliarity, or perhaps it was just the clanking noise his car was making these days, and even his Guoanbu ID did little to scare them into submission, a fact that gave him serious pause.
He took the long drive to the villas at a leisurely speed, rolling down his window and taking in the cool air that was freshened by long stretches of trees cultivated to perfection. Across a field he saw women with children that ran wildly around baffled goats and peacocks, and it felt, until he raised his gaze above the tree line to take in Beijing’s skyline of towers beneath the gathering dust storm, as if he were deep in the countryside, far from prying eyes and ears. It was a magical illusion.
The guards at the gate had called ahead, so when he climbed out of his car Hua Yuan was already opening the front door, squeezing her hands together in front of her stomach. Her hair was in an amateurish bun, and he got the sense that she’d dressed in a hurry, which immediately gave him the picture of an old woman stuck in a claustrophobic, dusty house, in perpetual mourning for the husband who had killed himself. Nevertheless, she smiled as he approached.
“Hua Yuan, thank you for seeing me. I’m Xin Zhu.”
“ Colonel Xin Zhu,” she said, holding out a small hand that he shook.
“You know of me?”
“We met once at a Workers’ Day event. Briefly.”
“I’m honored you remember.”
She seemed to want to say something else, but changed her mind and asked him to come inside.
He’d been wrong about the claustrophobia and dust. It was an immaculate home, cleaned no doubt by a legion of workers, and open in its architecture-modern, almost American. She brought him through the foyer into a sitting room with blocky but comfortable sofas, a closed television cabinet, long, low shelves full of plants and books, and a large square window overlooking the fields. The window was framed by ivy that was threatening to grow madly across the view.
“This is a beautiful place,” he said as he sat down.
“Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She left him alone for a moment, then returned and settled across from him in a matching chair. “We didn’t use this place very much. Buying it was a favor for a friend of my husband’s, one of the original Purple Jade investors. We were usually in town or the countryside-the real countryside. I’ve come here because it’s easy. That’s something I appreciate now. Ease.”
A teenaged girl in a white uniform arrived with a tray and poured chrysanthemum tea for them both. Beside Hua Yuan’s cup, he noticed, was a white plastic drinking straw. Once the girl was gone, Zhu began, “Hua Yuan, I was hoping to speak with you about your husband’s death.”
“His suicide.”
“Exactly,” Zhu said. “Over the last weeks the question of why has been troubling me. If it’s something personal between the two of you, then it is certainly not my business, but if it had to do with his work, then I would like to better understand it.”
She examined him, as if he had arrived wanting to sell her something, and placed one end of the straw into her tea. She took a sip. “Xin Zhu,” she said, “you obviously know everything about that.”
“About what?”
“About Bo Gaoli’s work. He was very excited.”
Zhu stared at her damp lips. “Excuse me, Hua Yuan, but I knew very little about your husband’s work.”
“He talked to you about it.”
“No, Hua Yuan, he didn’t.”
Her head fell to the side, taking in this information. “He wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About his work. You know, he had become so excited that I thought he had a mistress. He shaved his shoulders that day. He was very hairy, you know. I thought he was shaving for some young thing. Funny, no?”
Zhu stared a moment. “Bo Gaoli was excited about something to do with his work, and he wanted to talk to me?”
“Was I not clear?”
“Well, we hardly knew each other. We’d met a couple times, but we were barely acquaintances. I would have been surprised to receive a call from him.”
“But he was preparing to meet you, Xin Zhu.”
“When?”
“Before he… left.” She paused, frowning. “He didn’t see you?”
“I never heard from him. Are we talking about the week of April 14?”
She considered that, drinking from her straw. “We are talking about Sunday, April 20, Xin Zhu. That’s the day he shaved his shoulders and went to see you.”
“But he didn’t come back?”
“Yes, he came back. He told me to stay with my mother. That’s in the real countryside. I left the next morning, Monday.”
Monday, April 21. That was the day Wu Liang picked up Bo Gaoli and eighteen others for interrogation. Zhu said, “Why did he tell you to leave?”
“He did that sometimes. He told me to stay with my mother if he had work to do. I’m a good wife, Xin Zhu. I didn’t ask. He was a practical husband; he never shared.” She frowned. “He didn’t see you?”
“No.”
“Then why did he shave his shoulders?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Hua Yuan.”
This seemed to disturb her more than anything else, and Zhu wondered about her sanity, wondered if anything could be taken as fact. Her husband had sent her off to her mother’s, and by the time she returned he was a corpse. Reactions to such a turn of events, he knew, were as varied as the species of fish. She said, “The maid had to clean the bathroom three times just to get all of the hair.”
“Perhaps he tried to get in touch with me, but couldn’t,” he said, then, suddenly remembering Sunday, April 20, nodded and said, “Yes. I wasn’t in Beijing that weekend. I was in Xi’an, and my phone had no reception.” It was a lie, for he had been in Beijing, in bed with his wife, and had allowed his phone’s battery to die. He tried not to think about how things might have turned out had he not been distracted.
But Hua Yuan had started on a particular train of thought, and it would take more than his little lie to derail her. She said, “I wonder how young she is. Could you find out?”
“Hua Yuan, I don’t think this is my business.”
“Don’t tell me what your business is, you ignorant shit,” she said, her steady calm tone making it hard for him
