“When he married May Ling, both wives had their own houses, but he found it impractical to run back and forth. So he built a house for the two of them, and then when the third wife came, he built a new one for all of them. The first wife lives on the second floor with her mother and father and some aunties. The third wife lives on the third floor with the two sons, her mother, a sister, and the amah. May Ling and Wong Changxing have the eighth floor.”
“A house with eight floors?” Ava said.
“It is like a castle,” Tam said.
“What’s on the other floors?”
“I’m told the ground floor has a banquet hall, a theatre, and kitchens.”
“And on the floors between the third and the eighth?”
“Offices? Rooms for visitors? I really don’t know.”
As natural as Ava found her own mother’s relationship with her father, and her father’s relationship with her and Marian, the idea of all Marcus Lee’s wives and children living in harmony under one roof seemed impossible to her.
“I wonder what they want from us,” Uncle murmured.
Dusk was settling as they drew near the city. The overhead highway lights cast a refracted glow, and it looked as if tiny fireflies were dancing in it. Ava looked more closely and saw that the light was playing on dense smog. Not even in the countryside could you get away from the industrial invasion. “Is the air always this bad?” she asked.
“It’s worse in the summer,” Tam said.
The driver turned off the highway before they reached the city limits. He drove down a two-lane road flanked on either side by factories. Ava saw the workers’ residences and shuddered at their gloominess. Four identical twelve-storey buildings with grey concrete walls, no trace of colour, and rows of tiny windows designed for peering out rather than letting in light. All that was missing for them to look like a prison was a fence topped with razor wire. Outside, in the floodlit factory courtyards, life looked more pleasant. She saw people playing volleyball and badminton, groups of women chatting, makeshift barbershops, and of course ballroom dancing. Such dancing was the most pleasant and lasting image Ava had of Chinese cities. In the mornings, couples could be found dancing to a tune being coaxed out of an old phonograph in every park and factory courtyard.
“Wong’s factories, most of them,” Tam said.
They saw the lights of Wong’s property some distance down the road. As they got closer, Ava could see that the mansion was set about a hundred metres back from the entrance, which was guarded by a tall, spiked wrought-iron fence. The car paused in front of the solid metal gate while the security cameras identified them. When it swung open, Ava gasped. She found herself looking at a replica of the gate of Tiananmen Square, the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
“It is an exact reproduction,” Tam said.
“Let’s hope the house is not a reproduction of the Forbidden City,” Uncle said. “The plumbing there is not up to par.”
Ava laughed. Tam looked as if he wasn’t sure whether Uncle was joking.
As they passed under the gate, the Wong castle loomed in front of them. It was a traditional Chinese design, constructed with red brick and a sweeping green tiled roof. There were eight floors, each with eight large picture windows across the front facade, ten metres below those on the next floor. The scale and breadth of the magnificent structure conjured up images of the Louvre.
The Mercedes stopped in front of a wide stone stairway. Ava and Uncle climbed out of the car and found themselves looking up twenty steps, towards a set of red double doors flanked by enormous stone lions. The staircase was almost as wide as it was high. They started to climb, Tam two steps behind carrying their luggage.
The doors swung open. A man and a woman appeared and walked to the top of the staircase. Ava could feel their eyes following her and Uncle. When they reached the landing, the man took a step forward.
“Welcome to my home, Uncle,” Wong Changxing said.
(5)
Everything about Wong Changxing is nondescript, Ava thought. Medium height, medium build, clean-shaven, hair neatly trimmed, and clear, inquisitive eyes. Take away the Armani suit and the Gucci loafers and he could have been any small businessman.
Wong May Ling was not quite so neutral. She was slightly taller than her husband, and striking in a pink and white wool Chanel suit. Her hair was pulled back tightly, exposing fine cheekbones and smooth, delicate skin. She had a small, pert nose and thin lips. Ava noticed that she was wearing hardly any makeup. She also wasn’t wearing any jewellery, and Ava made a note to leave hers in the room.
The most striking thing about May Ling was her eyes. They were a deep, dark brown, almost black, an effect heightened by a touch of mascara. In Ava’s world, Chinese women were, if not deferential, then often reserved on a first meeting, avoiding direct eye contact. But May Ling’s eyes bore into Uncle’s, and then they turned to Ava. She did a quick appraisal of Ava’s clothes and then moved to her face. Ava stared back. May Ling didn’t turn away, but Ava saw her eyes flicker and wondered what she was thinking.
“We’ll have dinner in about half an hour. Unfortunately we have company tonight. It is an arrangement that was made some time ago and we couldn’t cancel. You will meet some interesting people, though,” Wong Changxing said. “Would you like to go to your rooms first?”
“Yes,” Uncle said for both of them.
May Ling nodded in their direction, then wordlessly turned and left. “She needs to check on dinner,” Wong said with a slight sweep of his hand, inviting them into the house. “My man will bring your bags. Your man can leave them here at the door.”
Wong walked them to an elevator. “You will be staying on the seventh floor. Staff are there waiting for you. If you need anything, just ask. Dinner will be served on the ground floor.”
When the elevator doors opened onto the seventh floor, two maids greeted Ava and Uncle and led them to their suites. Ava looked around the room, admiring the teak floors, the walls lined in soft, iridescent white silk tinged with pink. The bamboo furniture had plush cushions that matched the silk on the walls, and in the centre of the room was a solid oak four-poster bed that led Ava to assume the suite was intended for Westerners. She went to the window and looked out on a beautifully manicured back garden and land that seemed to stretch for about a hundred metres.
She turned away from the window and walked into the four-piece marble bathroom to freshen up for dinner, and to take off her Tank Francaise watch. She was thinking about lying down on the bed when she heard a knock on the door. Uncle walked in and said, “Come to my room.”
Ava followed him to his room. Uncle motioned for her to join him at the window, which looked out on the front of the Wong property. “Look,” he said. “Those two are military cars. Generals, I would think. And those other two are government cars.”
“I hope the evening doesn’t turn into a food-and-drink binge.”
Uncle shrugged. “What did you think of the Wongs?”
“He seems more passive than I would have thought. She seems the opposite.”
“We will see.”
The other guests were already in the dining room when Uncle and Ava arrived. There were seven other couples. All of the men were dressed in business suits while the women were dressed more elaborately, in evening gowns. Ava took in the cavernous room with its six-metre ceiling, white marble floors, and dark wood-panelled walls decorated with Chinese landscapes of the countryside.
Wong stood with his male guests at one end of an immense bar in a corner of the room. He waved at them and introduced them to two generals dressed in plain military uniforms, the mayor of Wuhan, an assistant to the governor of Hubei, and two executives from Wong’s business.
