The general leaned back in his chair.
This was what happened after war.
‘I remember,’ he thought. ‘Before it all, before the bombs even, I remember walking down a boulevard in Beijing; the cherry blossoms were just beginning to fall. I remember the posters, and the songs about bravery and our country that we thought we loved so much. I remember I was very proud of my uniform and that when the time came I would earn its inherent respect. I remember thinking I would do anything for my country.’
We all thought that way.
Anything.
We had no idea.
We were wrong.
Chapter 41
The Boy had drawn a story wherever the Chinese general had placed his finger on Sergeant Presley’s map. If the Boy had been there or knew something about the place, he had rendered it in charcoal across the walls of the general’s study.
“One day,” said the general, “we must go to these places and find what is left there. Not to conquer as our current leaders wish and which will only bring the wrath of the barbarians down on us as it has already. But we must go to these places in order that we might make something new. What you tell me in your drawings may one day make a difference to those that must go to these places on the wall.”
And each day she had brought them tea in the afternoon.
And one day…
After she set the tea down and while the general stood close to the wall studying a picture of Little Rock, Arkansas, in which the Boy skinned a deer with trembling hands, the girl moved next to the Boy.
In the picture, the Boy was laying out the heart and liver on a crumbling table inside a large building, a library perhaps, by the look of the collapsed bookshelves. There was a river passing outside shattered and dirty windows. Among the collapsed shelves of books, the black man built a fire from fallen volumes. There was hunger on both of their faces.
The general said little once the picture was finished and as he studied it. He stood silently before it, consuming its every detail. Today, the girl did not leave as she usually did once she placed the tray of tea on the large and very old desk.
The Boy, because the day was cold and his withered side was stiff, reached for the tea, already inhaling its hot jasmine aroma. And she caught his hand just before he grasped the cup.
He looked into her eyes.
She squeezed his hand.
He was frozen.
His heart did not beat.
He was sweating.
And he squeezed back. Hard. Almost too hard.
“Jin,” she whispered.
The general called her Jin. He had learned that much.
She squeezed his hand once more and took a cup of tea to the general.
After that, she left and did not look at him, as the general had turned from the picture and was now talking to the Boy. Words in the English. Words the Boy did not understand because he could not concentrate on anything other than the moment of her touch. His face felt as though it were on fire.
“Is there no place that survived in some part beyond a mere day-to-day existence?” asked the general.
The Boy was watching the girl named Jin, though she had already left the room.
“She is the only one who believes in my work,” said the general, watching the Boy’s eyes. “She is the only one who, like me, wants to know what happened out there. She is not afraid of it. She is not bothered by the harsh reality of these times like so many of our people, who simply wish to live behind their gates and keep themselves from the ‘contamination’ as they call it, of the world as it is now. They require only that their lives be beautiful and a reminder of a homeland that is gone. They willingly live a lie, simply because it is fragrant.”
The general paused and sipped at the tea he had taken up in his two liver-spotted hands.
“Jin and I seek the truth because the truth holds its own beauty. In my opinion, it is the lies of our past that have brought about the current state of destruction. Late in my life, I vowed never to live another lie. My only sadness is that I made the vow after the world had been burned and poisoned by a rain of nuclear radiation.”
The Boy watched the general.
“Sometimes I think she merely humors an old man,” said the general, lost in the map again. “But she is a good granddaughter and I feel that she can look past the damage and the rubble and the warmongering of our collective past, both China and America, and find what was noble and beautiful about us.”
He fell to mumbling when his eyes found some new, previously unconsidered mark on the map, “I was saying…”
THAT NIGHT THE BOY lay on the floor of the shack near the brazier. It was exceptionally cold outside. His side ached. His hand was cramped and black from the charcoal he used to draw pictures on the walls of the general’s study.
Horse stirred as the fire popped.
The Boy was watching the lines.
He was watching Jin.
Horse complains for a moment as if sensing an animal outside in the cold wind and the dark night.
There was a moment of quiet that threatened to go on forever.
And then…
There was a knock at the back door that led out to the two-plank dock.
The Boy opened the door.
Jin pressed her mouth into his and he could feel her cold, soft cheeks grow warm. Her slender body melted into his arms, alive and living within his grasp. He felt her arms about him, clutching at his shoulders. And for a moment one hand slipped down to his withered arm, caressing him there.
“I am Jin,” she said haltingly. “I do not… speak American”—she said something in Chinese—“very well.” Then, “But I am learning.”
He closed the door and brought her to the fire. She stood warming herself while he got the bearskin and wrapped it around her.
“What is your… name?” she asked.
The Boy looked at her.
In the light from the glowing brazier, wrapped in the skin of the bear, she was even more beautiful. She looked at him expectantly, her eyes shining in the firelight.
“What do they call me? What do your people call me?”
“They call… you… the Messenger.”
“Why?”
“You brought… the news of the barbarians. I do not want… I do not want to call… you the Messenger.”
“Why?”
She kissed him again and again until their intensity threatened to consume them. Breathlessly she broke from his hungry embrace, panting, “It… cannot be.”
Later, they sat staring into the fire, she reclining against him, the two of them almost sleeping, dreaming.
“Why?” asked the Boy.
She drew her fingers along his powerful arm.
