Yes, thought Mae, that does make five thousand dollars. 'So amidst all the terrible things that have happened, there has been some good. The ladies of the Circle share the money. Sunni and I are friends again.' Mae shrugged with her eyebrows, a kind of peace offering. Don't forget that I have been hurt too.
They were at the Okans', the last house on Upper Street. Mrs Ali paused.
'I have noticed,' said Mrs Ali, 'that your friends tend to benefit.' She looked back at Mae, and there was something completely unexpected: a rueful humour, as if Mae were one of life's bitter jokes.
'Good day,' said Mrs Ali. 'I have no lard, and winter is upon us, and I go to beg some from Sunni.' She turned and began to trudge uphill towards Sunni's big house.
There was a rumble, as if from the sky. Mae scowled. Something shifted gears and roared and suddenly, a truck came round the hill and up Upper Street, straight towards her.
A big green truck with huge devouring tyres.
Army! Mae thought, and it was a though a fist had seized hold of her heart and stopped it pumping. She ducked to the side of the Okans' house.
Army, army, army, army, struggled her heart as if to breathe.
The truck roared past, green canvas over camouflaged sides, lashed down, bolted, huge. Army, army, army roaring up the hill, slowing to shoulder their way over the bridge.
Towards Kwan's house.
Mae ran without thinking. Her feet slipped on the snowy cobbles; the cold reached down like deep roots into her lungs. Please! Please! It was a prayer.
She had to be there to tell her story, to explain. I am
There was a bloodcurdling yell, and the green door of the cab swung open. A bull of a man burst out of it in piebald camouflage. Before Mae could think, he was running towards her, full pelt. male. huge, fast, young, and strong. She managed to skid to a halt, and was about to turn and run.
He grabbed hold of her.
And then swung her round and round and round. Her string shoes with their slippery leather soles left the ground. She flew. Kwan's courtyard became a merry-go-round, spinning around her, and the man was laughing. Mae wanted to be sick.
He kissed her.
'Surprise!' he called, as if out of a nightmare. Mae's feet were helpless as flippers as she fought to find footing.
She looked up at him. She saw his teeth grinning. 'It's me!' he said.
The world shifted gears like a truck. Her breath left her, she clutched at her chest, all was confusion.
'Lung?' she asked. 'Lung!' For one further terrible moment she thought her own son had come to arrest her best friend.
He laughed. 'Not expecting me were you?'
'No,' she said weakly. 'What are you doing here?'
He laughed again. 'We are bringing you your knitting machine!' As big as a tree branch, his arm was flung towards the cargo under the canvas.
'Oh!' she called out, clutching herself in relief. 'Oh! Oh!'
'Your Mr Oz told me the machine was going, and said, it would be a good chance for me to see you again. Also we have the new TV for you! Did no one tell you?'
Relief spilled over, sloppily, loosely into other emotions. 'Oh Lung!' she said again, and hugged him, held onto him as if he were a new village tree to root things in place. Suddenly it was joyful to see him. Out of confusion, relief, and love her eyes were suddenly full of tears. He chuckled and patted her back. 'Meet my colleagues,' he said.
Two more soldiers lurched out of the cab. One was small and wiry with bad teeth in a cheerful grin. The other looked uncomfortable smiling. He was slim in the hips but fat in the face. Fat and brutal was how he would swell into the future. Both bowed slightly in politeness.
'This is Private Ozer, and Sergeant Alkanuh,' said Lung. 'This is my mother, Mrs Chung Mae.'
Mae was shivering with cold and nerves but managed to bow to each of them. She looked back at her son. The cold was bringing a beautiful pink to her cheeks. The two soldiers were chuckling, the tears and emotion were what they expected from a homecoming. Mae saw Kwan, pale, grey at a window.
'Kwan!' Mae called. 'It is my son Lung. He has brought our knitting machine.' She pushed the tear out of her face and smiled, smiled as wide as she could so that Kwan would see everything was all right.
'Kwan, come out and see my huge, new son! I mean, machine!'
They all laughed because it was true.
Lung was a monster. He had left home as a skinny, spotty seventeen-year-old, off to Army College and refusing to admit that he was shy of the future. Army food and training had made him tall and broad and fit. And he was handsome, oh how handsome Lung had become! She stared in wonder at his perfect face, his perfect teeth, his perfect combed jet black hair.
'Why didn't you tell me?' she said and hit him, lightly on the arm.
His colleagues chuckled again.
'I thought Mr Oz would tell you,' he said, coyly, charmingly.
The skinny one spoke. 'Lung wanted to surprise you.'
'He surprised me all right, I thought I would die!' Her eyes betrayed her again, she wept again. 'It has been three years since I have seen him!'
Shaking like fine china on an unsteady shelf, Kwan crept down the stone steps of her house, clutching her coat. Kwan looked as though she had been punched in the belly.
'Mrs Wing-ma'am,' said Lung, with a practised adult politeness that would have been beyond him when he left home. He bowed, and beamed, and enveloped Kwan's frail hand in his own. 'It is so good to see old friends.' He smiled. He held onto Kwan's hand and said to Mae, 'Come, quick, see your beautiful machine.' He escorted them both to the back of the truck and flung back the tarpaulin with one huge gesture.
The weaving machine like her son was huge, brown and khaki.
Lung chuckled. 'Mrs Wing-ma'am,' he asked the owner of the barns. 'Where do you want it?'
Mae spoke instead. 'Oh not here. I have rented our old house. It needs to go there.'
Lung's smile faltered; he did not look at her, but he managed not to look sad, or ashamed.
The beefy one with the dark chin said, 'We better get it there, Lieutenant,' said the Sergeant. 'Before the snow settles too badly.
'And there's a power failure,' warned Mae.
Lung barked with laughter. 'Of course! There always is the first snow of winter! Come on, let's get this in!' He bowed again, quickly to Kwan, and was striding back to the cab on legs as thick as prize hams. 'Come on, Mama!'
'We need to stop at Sunni's.' said Mae. He pulled her into the cab, and for lack of space sat her on his lap. It was strange to be so supported by your baby.
'I remember when I used to hold you like this,' she said. He looked like a barrel full of apples, all round, red. She knew she was looking with a mother's eyes, but there was no doubt. He was so much better looking than the other two. They were invisible next to him, as if you were blinded from looking at the sun.
No wonder a Western girl fell in love with you, Mae thought. They must all fall in love with you. She felt herself fall in love with him, all over again. So this is what my son grew up into. Lieutenant Chung.
Mae realized that her son was the best looking man she had ever seen. Better looking than a movie star. But he smelled different from those pretty boys, there was nothing wispy about him. This was someone, you could tell, who jumped from aeroplanes, who built rope bridges across ravines.
Mae thought of Joe. No wonder he had been so proud, so amazed at what had stepped out from his own loins. No wonder he wanted to talk about nothing else. Lung was the one good thing he had done.
'We stop here,' Lung told the skinny driver, and the truck whined to a professional halt, not skidding in the snow.
