The Dissident Page 12

  “I’ve been telling Mr. Yuan a bit about our name,” Gordon said. “Did Cece tell you I’ve turned up a new lead?”

  “Hail,” Phil said. “Noble Travers!”

  “What my brother doesn’t realize is that before the revolution, the name was quite plausibly ‘de Travestère’—ci-devant, as they say.”

  Phil coughed suspiciously and frowned at his gin and tonic. Historically it had been difficult for Joan not to laugh when Phil did. Luckily Gordon wasn’t paying attention to them.

  “I’m searching for our crossing ancestor. I turned up the family I mentioned, in France, and also an unlucky gentleman who succumbed to fever somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. There’s also a family of obviously English origins—Travers, or alternately Travis—from Lancashire, who settled in Newfoundland in the mid-eighteenth century.”

  Mr. Yuan’s expression was one of polite interest, but Joan wondered how trivial this conversation must seem to someone who had recently been jailed for his political beliefs. The article had given a little information about conditions in Qincheng, the “extremely isolated” facility where the dissident had been detained and the only prison in China run by the Ministry of Public Security. In addition to political prisoners and high-level Party officials, it had also once housed Puyi, the last emperor of China. The journalist who wrote the article wouldn’t have been allowed inside Qincheng, located in a remote county outside Beijing, and so of course he could not describe it. How interesting that there was someone standing on Cece’s dazzling ivory carpet, underneath the stunningly subtle Diebenkorn, who could.

  “Of course,” Gordon was saying, “my attraction to the subject is not entirely personal. What is it about our collective psyche right now, in America in the year 2000, that makes us so interested in digging up our roots?” Her brother looked like he was going to continue, but just then the phone rang: a shrill double tone from every corner of the house, like an alarm. Mr. Yuan jumped, spilling some of his white wine on the rug.

  “Excuse me!” The dissident looked wildly around the room. “Is that the door?”

  “Just the phone,” Gordon said.

  “My God,” Phil said. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Not in the children’s wing,” Gordon said. “They answer it the second it rings. It’s impossible to get anyone to pick up the main lines, though.”

  “Please forgive me,” said Yuan Zhao.

  “Are we expecting someone?” Phil asked.

  “Harry Lin,” Gordon said. “A friend of Mr. Yuan’s, and a colleague of mine from UCLA.” He gave Joan a significant look: clearly he was in on Cece’s plan. She thought she would die if Phil knew she was being set up.

  But Phil’s attention was focused on the dissident. “How do you know Harry Lin?”

  “Very slightly,” the dissident said. “We met once in Beijing. He came to see an art project. I was a performer.”

  Joan wanted to ask about the project, but Yuan Zhao’s expression stopped her. He seemed as glad as she was that the professor hadn’t arrived yet.

  There was the clicking of heels in the dining room; a moment later Cece appeared in the archway between the living room and the foyer.

  “That was Harry.” Cece turned to Mr. Yuan. “I’m sorry to say that Professor Lin won’t be joining us to night. Something came up with his work at the last minute.”

  One glance at Mr. Yuan confirmed Joan’s suspicions. The dissident noticeably relaxed, and even smiled a little.

  “Harry’s a very bright guy. But he’s consumed by department politics. And it’s not his fault. He’s a fantastic scholar, first-class—and so what do they do with him?” Gordon shook his head: “They give him an endowed chair, and turn him into a glorified administrator. The tragedy of American academia.” He looked at Yuan Zhao. “Harry’s from Beijing, isn’t he?”

  “Originally,” Yuan Zhao said. “But he married an American. When I met him he was doing research in Beijing, for a book about the Southern Song. We had an interesting conversation about the monk painter Fanlong.”

  “I thought he wrote about contemporary painters,” Gordon said.

  Yuan Zhao nodded. “In Beijing that year his focus changed. Now I believe he is writing about even more recent work—about performance art.”

  “Including yours?” Joan asked, making an effort to steer the conversation away from Harry Lin.

  “Mine and others,” the dissident said modestly.

  Perhaps that was why the professor made Yuan Zhao uncomfortable, Joan thought. No one liked to be studied. She wondered if there was a way to write about people without unnerving them. Of course it was different for fiction writers than it was for scholars. If Joan sometimes began with a real person in mind, the character would either cleave from the real-life model almost immediately, or die on the page. Since you could never set someone down on paper as they really were, it didn’t make sense to ask permission.

  Phil stepped closer and put his arm around her: “It’s great to see you, you know that?”

  “It’s great to see you too,” Joan managed.

  “How are you really? Are you seeing…” Phil looked around, as if he might have missed Joan’s date until now.

  “No.”

  “You’re lucky.” Phil sighed. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “It’s better for me at the moment,” Joan said. “I’m at a point where I have to prioritize my work.”

  Phil smiled knowingly. “What are you working on now?”

  “My book just came out,” Joan said. “I’m getting ready to do some readings for the paperback.”

  “Oh, the paperback,” Phil said. “I thought you meant a new book. The—wait a minute, I’ll get it—Honest Truth?”

  “Half Truths,” Joan said. “‘Honest truth’ is redundant.”

  Phil laughed. “That’s right. Well, you should get me a copy—or don’t get me one. I’ll buy it from the bookstore. Can you get it at any bookstore?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your play,” Joan said.

  Phil did an impression of someone who was feeling bashful. He wiped an imaginary smudge off his glass, looked at the floor, and shook his head. “I’d be embarrassed to talk about it with you.”

  “Why? What’s it about?”

  “Not because of what it’s about.” Phil raised his eyes demurely from his glass. Her brother had incredibly long, thick eyelashes, one of the many things that had inspired her envy as a teenager. “Because you’re the real writer.”

  It was not a compliment. It was a way for her brother to be the underdog, a tactic he’d used all through their childhood and adolescence. While she and Gordon had struggled and strived, Phil managed to make everything he did look like the product of luck and grace.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” Joan said.

  19.

  JOAN DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO TALK WITH THE DISSIDENT UNTIL AFTER dinner, when the children disappeared upstairs and the adults retired with their coffee to the deck around the pool.

  “You must be exhausted,” Joan said, pulling up a chair next to Yuan Zhao’s. Cece and Phil sat down a little distance across the deck: they seemed to be having their own conversation. Gordon had left to walk the dogs.

  “I’m not used to so much wine,” the dissident said.

  “And you must still be suffering from the jet lag,” Joan said. “I always found it very hard to speak a foreign language when I was tired. Your English is excellent, though.”

  “I went to a good primary school.”

  “That was in Shanxi Province?”

  The dissident looked surprised. “Excuse me, how do you know that?”

  “You’ll have to forgive me—I read an article about you. From the Taipei Times? It was the only one we could find in English.”

  “I’d like to see that article.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Joan that Yuan Zhao might not have had access to foreign press about himself until now. “I’m so
rry, I left it at home. But I’d be happy to bring it for you another time.”

  “Was there a great deal about my early life?”

  “Not much,” Joan said. “It was mostly about the protests at Tiananmen Square.”

  “Ah,” said the dissident, but he did not offer any more information.

  “I’m interested because of my own political involvement in college,” Joan said. “Which was very minor compared with yours, of course. You’ll have to forgive me all of these questions. The news wasn’t very complete here.”

  “The news was not very complete there, either.”

  “But you were one of the leaders,” she said, flattering him a little.

  “I wasn’t a leader.” Yuan Zhao looked profoundly uncomfortable, whether because of modesty or simply from the pressure of his memories, Joan wasn’t sure. She was afraid she’d gone too far.

  “We heard about the hunger strikers a great deal,” she said. “Going without food makes a big impression on Americans.” She was trying to make a joke, but the dissident didn’t get it.

  “When you talk with Americans, the conversation always begins with June 4, 1989,” he observed. “That or the Cultural Revolution.”

  He seemed to be suggesting that they were only interested in the horrors of Chinese history, a criticism Joan was afraid had some merit. She wanted to prove him wrong: she wanted to be the kind of person who knew the right questions to ask.

  “The article said that you were arrested again, in ’94.”

  The dissident looked concerned. “I haven’t read this article.”

  Joan knew she should stop pressing him, but something encouraged her to keep asking questions. She had a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time, as if her brain was working involuntarily. It seemed to be mechanically sorting the information Yuan Zhao was giving her into larger and smaller piles. The pieces would have to be put together, and then cut up another way, and then half of them would have to be discarded. Very likely nothing would come of it: what did she know about China, after all? As she cautioned herself, however, she was getting more and more excited: an idea had appeared out of nowhere, like a puzzle, and one hand had begun to manipulate it, almost without her noticing.

  “I was just asking about the arrest in ’94. That was when you were involved with the Beijing East Village?”

  “It was an accident that I got involved with the East Village artists. I was never very interested in performance art.”

  “What kind of accident?” Joan asked.

  “A woman,” said Yuan Zhao. “My fiancée, at the time.”

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “I’m not,” the dissident said. “We were—how do you say it?—going to be married.”

  “Engaged,” Joan said. It seemed odd that the dissident would know fiancée but stumble over the word engaged.

  “Engaged,” Yuan Zhao repeated studiously.

  There was an awkward silence. At the other end of the deck, Cece and Phil were talking softly. Salty dozed at their feet. Gordon had returned with the dogs, but he hadn’t come back outside.

  “It’s so hard to balance work and relationships,” Joan ventured. “I was married once, to another novelist. We joked about it, of course, but there was always an unspoken competition.” She looked at the dissident; his expression seemed to encourage her to continue.

  “I knew it was a bad idea, even then. I don’t think married people should have the same career, but the problem is that often that’s who you meet. Was your fiancée also an artist?”

  “She was a fashion designer.”

  “But you went to jail together?”

  Yuan Zhao waved his hand, gracefully dismissing his own ordeal. “She was the one who suffered. Chinese prisons can be—uncomfortable. In addition it was summer, very hot. And there is the question of disease.”

  “Did she get sick?”

  He nodded.

  “But she’s all right now?”

  “She was not especially strong, unfortunately.”

  He was so calm that it took Joan a moment to understand what he was saying. She was horrified.

  “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “The article didn’t mention—please forgive me.”

  “Never mind,” said Yuan Zhao.

  He didn’t seem upset, but Joan guessed that was cultural. She had pushed him out of stupid curiosity, and blundered into a tragedy. Even the journalist from the Taipei Times had been sensitive enough to leave Yuan Zhao’s dead fiancée out of the story. And here, in Joan’s first conversation with him, she’d forced him to disclose it.

  “Is my sister telling you about her heyday at Berkeley?” Phil said, from across the deck. “Hey, hey LBJ, and all that?”

  Joan had never been so glad to be teased by her brother. “I barely mentioned it,” she said. “But I think we’ve been keeping Mr. Yuan up too late.”

  Cece stood up. “You’re absolutely right. Mr. Yuan, if you’ll just come with me, I’ll take you up the back stairs so we can avoid Max’s room. He’s furious with me for saying no to this party to night,” she added, to no one in particular.

  “Thank you for talking with me,” Joan said to the dissident. “I hope I didn’t—”

  The dissident gave her a little half-bow, and started across the lawn. Joan thought she’d rarely met someone who captured her imagination so immediately. It was a good argument for getting out more. Maybe people like Mr. Yuan were everywhere, just waiting to be discovered.

  “Strange, isn’t he?” Phil wandered over to her side of the deck, holding some sort of after-dinner liqueur.

  “I thought he was fascinating,” Joan said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “He was telling me about being arrested. Did you know he’s been imprisoned for his work?”

  “No,” Phil said, watching the house.

  “It’s a paradox, I guess,” Joan continued. “Of course it’s better for artists to live in a free society, but I wonder if political pressure can sometimes be good for art?”

  Phil smiled.

  “What?”

  Her brother shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “I was just wondering”—he looked up innocently—“if you’re thinking of writing a novel about him.”

  That right there, Joan thought, was the infuriating thing about Phil. Why was there never anyone around to witness it?

  20.

  THAT NIGHT, DESPITE MY EXHAUSTION, I LAY AWAKE FOR HOURS. I thought of the Traverses (particularly the nosy lady novelist), and of Harry Lin. Why had the professor failed to show up at the dinner party? Would he really continue to leave me alone, as X had promised? I wondered if Professor Lin remembered our conversation, during his visit to the East Village in the spring of ’94: we had discussed the monk painter Fanlong, and his Sixteen Luohans, a scroll whose demon subjects are so persuasively human that you feel as if their faces have been copied off of people you know. There were few young artists, he had said, who were interested in the old masters today. When I got up onstage and did my part in the performance piece Drip-Drop, I heard the professor call out, “Bravo!”

  Even if I’d impressed the professor then, however, it had been years since I’d participated in anything like Drip-Drop. I didn’t doubt that I could teach schoolgirls to paint with ink, or that I could give a talk at the end of the year convincing the board of the Dubin Fund that I was “crossing borders and challenging my thinking,” as I “engaged with artists of other cultures and disciplines.” However I certainly didn’t want to engage with any actual artists, and especially not art professors, who would be sure to determine very quickly that I was making absolutely no new work at all.

  My cousin had dismissed these worries. Even if I didn’t produce anything, he reasoned, I still had the DNA-ture paintings, which would comprise my first show. Once that was over, I would have plenty of time to decide what to do next.

  I was not convinced. “Those paintings
are more than ten years old.”

  “American collectors are at least ten years behind in Chinese experimental art,” X told me. “Something that was made in the ’80s is really cutting-edge for them.”

  I thought of X (it was early afternoon in Beijing) and wondered if he was working, or lazing around his studio, smoking and drinking tea. I imagined my parents in their apartment in Shanghai: my mother cleaning up after lunch, while my father sat on the sofa with its pink protective cover, watching Italian football on CCTV. Maybe I was homesick, because even the thought of the girls in my father’s office gave me a pleasant nostalgic pang: their jackdaw voices complaining about their boyfriends and the traffic, as they snacked on hard candy and watermelon seeds. Although I was officially their boss, they managed me. They brought me small gifts, but only in order to lecture me. Why was I staring out the window instead of working? Did I think I could goof off, just because I was the boss’s son? And why wasn’t I married, they would like to know? They were all “after me” in the most obvious way; at the same time I had a convenient reputation as a man with a broken heart, and so in the serious sense, I was left alone.

  That night, for the first time since I’d arrived in Los Angeles, I allowed myself to think about Meiling. I wondered about the story I’d told (or at least strongly suggested) to the novelist. I thought I’d straightened out exactly how I would present myself to the Traverses, and I was a little disconcerted to find myself inventing new lies so early in my stay. However, there are various types of lies: an outright attempt to deceive another person is different from a story that feels true, and only needs to be translated into another form to be understood.

  What I am trying to say is that I lay in bed in the guest room in Beverly Hills, imagining Meiling dead. It was comforting. I thought of her martyred, in the pink-and-white printed cotton blouse I had bought her (which she later stopped wearing, in favor of a PLA army jacket and a pair of knockoff Adidas sweatpants), her face smooth and untroubled, her bangs brushed out of her eyes, the coiled jade pendant resting in the hollow of her throat. Her mocha complexion—a great flaw, in her eyes—would be pale and perfect as the Pond’s Whitening Cream girl in death.