He turned to me. “Ms. Chin. Good evening.” He gestured at the others. “I used to smoke. After I stopped, I realized one of the things I missed most wasn’t the cigarette itself, but the excuse to leave a room for a brief, unquestioned period.”
“I understand the feeling completely. But if you were hoping for an unquestioned period right now, I’m afraid I’m going to mess you up. I have a question.”
He didn’t give me permission to ask it, but he didn’t turn away. So I said, “Chau Chun is alive.”
“Is that the question?”
“No, Jack’s got me convinced that’s true. But the other day in your office you gave us a very persuasive account of holding your friend’s hand while he died. Either you’re a terrific actor, or that story was also true.”
“Performance has never been one of my talents.”
“I disagree. I saw you in Haig’s office. But that’s not the point. That story was true.”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t Chau Chun who died.”
“No.”
“But,” I said, “Chau Chun was there.”
A long pause. Dr. Yang looked down the quiet street. “Yes. He was there.”
“And he’s here now.”
“Tonight? At this party? No, he—”
“No, Dr. Yang. Here. On this sidewalk. With me. You’re Chau Chun.”
The professor didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t react at all.
“It was Yang who died,” I said. “You took his identity. That’s why there were rumors about Chau for months afterward. People saw you before you managed to leave the country.”
“You’re stating these hypotheses,” the professor said quietly, “as facts. My students learn early on not to do that. You said you had a question.”
“I have. What really happened that day?”
“I have a question, also: What gives you the right to ask that?”
“I could say, I just risked an awful lot to save your reputation, your daughter’s career, and your son-in-law. But that’s not really it. I took this case from the start to find out what was going on. I’ve found a lot, some of it complicated, little of it what I expected. But there’s still something else. There’s still something I don’t know.”
“And do you have to know?”
“Do you mean, will I shrivel up and die if I don’t find out? Probably not. But I might keep looking, now that I know it’s there to be found.”
“Are you that tenacious?”
I told the simple truth. “Yes.”
Another long pause, and I gave him time for it. “What happened,” he finally said, “was what I told you. Chau had been in the square for days with our students; teaching, painting, chanting, encouraging. Yang went to persuade the demonstrators to leave. ‘Violence will serve no purpose,’ he said. ‘We can build the movement with our art.’ As they debated, the tanks came. There was gunfire, there was running, there was blood and screaming.” The professor fell silent again, and again I waited. Staring into the night, he said, “Yang was shot. The gentle peacemaker. Bleeding to death on the paving stones. I held his hand.”
The door behind us opened. Music thumped out of the party as a couple left laughing.
“But I didn’t take his identity,” the professor said. “He gave it to me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“As he lay there. His name and his papers. ‘They know you, Chau,’ he said. ‘They’ll come for you. Everyone knows you’ve been here from the beginning. And Yang the Coward, back in the studio, everyone knows about me, too. Take my papers.’ I refused. I told him he was being foolish, that I’d get him a doctor, that he’d be fine. ‘I’m dying,’ was his answer. ‘It doesn’t matter. But they’ll come for you.’ ‘Then let them come.’ ‘And Yu-feng?’ he said. ‘They’ll come for her, too. Your daughter, born in prison and taken away? Don’t let me die with that fear in my mind.’”
“So you did what he asked.”
“Yes. I exchanged our papers. He thanked me, and he died. Thanked me! Do you understand? I made my way out of the square and back to our offices, to do another thing, the last thing he asked of me. On his wall were three paintings I’d made for him to celebrate his faculty appointment. I took them. ‘I have no gift for your child. Take the paintings. From you to me, and now from me to your daughter.’ I stayed until he died, and then I did that.”
“But his body,” I said. “It was identified as Chau’s.”
“By me! Who better? I presented myself at the Public Security Bureau in the morning, claiming to seek information on my friend. It was chaos there, frightened people whose loved ones hadn’t come home. They showed me bodies, a roomful of them, all laid along the floor. I recognized one of our students. And Yang. ‘Chau Chun,’ I said. ‘From the Art Institute. A painter.’ That was all they needed. All they wanted. I left Beijing within the hour, making my way circuitously to my hometown, to my wife. We went into hiding until it was safe to contact Xi Xao, the man who came to you as Samuel Wing. He brought us here. My wife needed false papers made. I didn’t. I used Yang’s.”
Overhead the stars were bright; before us the street was empty. Music pounded from the artists’ studio, where a poet’s freedom was being celebrated.
