The Speaker of Mandarin Read Online Free Page A

with.
    Lunch over, they went once again into the relentless sunshine to visit the school Mao had attended and the pond where he had swum. On the way back to the bus Wexford looked again for the old woman. He peered into the dim lobby of the hotel on the chance she might be there, but there was no sign of her. Very likely she had gazed so intently at him only from the same motive as the children's - because his height and size, his clothes, mddy skin and scanty fair hair were as remarkable here as a unicorn galloping down the street.
    'Now,' said Mr Sung, 'we go to Number One Normal School, Chairman Mao's house, Clear Water Pond.' He jumped on to the bus with buoyant step.
    Wexford's last day in Chang-sha was spent at Orange Island and in the museum where artefacts from the tombs at Mawangdui were on show. There, reproduced in wax this time, lay the Marquise of Tai, still protected by glass but available for a closer scrutiny. Wexford drank a pint of green tea in the museum shop, bought some jade for Dora, a fan for his younger daughter made of buffalo bone that looked like ivory - Sheila the conservationist wouldn't have approved of ivory- and a painting of bamboo stems and grasshoppers with the painter's seal in red and his signature in black calligraphy.
    There was an English air about the old houses on the island with their walled gardens, their flowers and veg- etables, the river flowing by. Their walls were of wattle and daub like cottages in Sewingbury. But the air was scented with ginger and the canna lilies burned brick red in the hazy heat. Off the point where Mao had once swum, boys and girls were bathing in the river. Mr Sung took the
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    opportunity to give Wexford a lecture on Chinese political structure to which he didn't listen. In order to get his visa he had had to put down on the application form his religion and politics. He had selected, not without humour, the most stolid options: Conservative, Church of England. Sometimes he wondered if these reactionary entries had been made known by a form of red grapevine to his guide. He sat down in the shade and gazed appreciatively at the arch with its green pointed roof, delicate and jewel-like against a silvery blue sky.
    Through the arch, supported this time on a walking stick with a carved buffalo-bone handle, came the old woman with bound feet he had seen at the hotel in Shao-shan. Wexford gave an exclamation. Mr Sung stopped talking and said sharply, 'Something is wrong?'
    'No. It just seems extraordinary. That woman over there, I saw her in Shao-san yesterday. Small world.'
    'Small?' said Mr Sung. 'China is very big country. Why lady from Shao-shan not come Chang-sha? She come, go, just as she like, all Chinese people liberated, all Chinese people flee. Light? I see no lady. Where she go?'
    The sun was in Wexford's eyes, making him blink. 'Over by the gate. A little woman in black with bound feet.'
    Mr Sung shook his head vehemently. 'Very bad feudal custom, very few now have, all dead.' He added, with a ruthless disregard for truth, 'Cannot walk, all stay home.'
    The woman had gone. Back through the arch? Down one of the paved walks between the canna lily beds? ~Vexford decided to take the initiative.
    'If you're ready, shall we go?'
    Astonishment spread over Mr Sung's bland face. Wexford surmised that no other tourist had ever dared anything but submit meekly to him.
    'OK, light. Now we go to Yunlu Palace.'
    Leaving the island, they met the train party under the leadership of Mr Yu. Lewis Fanning was nowhere to be seen, and walking alongside Mr Yu, in earnest conversation
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    with him, was the younger and better-looking of the two men who had quarrelled on the Trans-Siberian Railway. His enemy, a tall man with a Humpty-Dumpty-ish shape, brought up the rear of the party and gazed about him with a nervous unhappy air. The women's clothes had suffered irremediably from those thirty-six days in a train. They were either bleached and worn from too frequent