Little Emperors (35 page)

“I see . . .”

“Can you see? Can you imagine? I don't think so. But I can. I was there. I experienced it. Students were told to disobey teachers, workers their bosses. No authority. Total disorder . . . You can't imagine. Do you know? It wasn't a Cultural Revolution. It was a Cultural Disaster.”

I don't say anything. I just watch as he stands and paces to the other side of the room. “Yes. It was a
disaster
,” he repeats, his voice cracking. “Do you know? After the Korean War, foreign teachers were compelled to leave China. My English teachers left. One of my colleagues, a professor of French literature, was married to a young French teacher. When his wife was forced to go back to France without him, he hanged himself.”

The words
he hanged himself
make me jump in my seat. I am silent. I feel nervous. The old man is near tears. Why is he telling me so much? “That's horrible,” I say at last.

He shrugs and sadly shakes his head. “Many intellectuals did so at this time. It was total disorder.” He sits down again and reaches for the half-empty second bottle of beer. He tops up my rice bowl, then his. “Drink much,” he says to me, and lifts his bowl.

The
miandi
careens around the corner, tossing me around its bare metal interior. The driver guns it, then hollers back at me for the street number. I claw the vinyl of the only seat in the back and yell the address to him above the radio. I squint out at the dark sidewalk until I see the entrance to the old man's
hutong
and tell the driver to stop. He slams on the brakes, and the little yellow van heaves forward, then rests. I pay the driver, then slide and slam the dinted door shut.

I'm late. It's eight o'clock, but I was supposed to be here for dinner with his entire family — his other sons came in from Tianjin for the day — at six. I'm late because my hotel's minibus blew a tire on the highway an hour outside of Beijing as we were coming back from the Great Wall at Simatai. I walk quickly down the
hutong
's alleys through the silver-blue light of an almost full moon. I reach the old man's courtyard and see a light on in his sitting room. I rap hesitantly on the screen door. “Hello?”

“Ah! JoAnn teacher from Canada! Welcome!”

I open the door and find myself standing in yellow light in front of his three sons, his daughter-in-law, and little Mike. The old man gets up to greet me with a handshake, making a show of our acquaintance to his family. I phoned him the moment the minibus returned to the hotel to explain I would be late, but I apologize and once more explain what happened. It is no matter, he says, and introduces me to his sons.

“I hope you went ahead and ate dinner without me,” I say, worried when I spy dishes of food wrapped in cellophane on the coffee table.

“They ate,” answers the old man, “but I wanted to wait for you. It is not good to eat alone. Please, sit down.”

With smiles but no words, his entire family vacates to the alternate living room, where Mike once again practises piano. I sit in my spot on the sofa next to the fridge and wonder what his family thinks of the strange young foreign woman who arrives after dark to sit alone and drink with their old man. The TV is on in this room, and the old man leans over to turn down the volume. “You must be tired. Here, let me get you rice.” He picks up my bowl and shuffles over to the rice cooker on top of the microwave. He scoops two big dollops of rice into my bowl, hands it back to me, then reaches into the fridge for a bottle of beer. We have glasses this evening, so the drinking begins while we eat dinner.

“You leave Beijing tomorrow?” he asks. “On the train to Xi'an?”

I nod as I scarf down slices of chicken.

The old man goes to the washstand and takes a small leather-bound notebook from its drawer. He scribbles something, then tears out a page and hands it to me. “My address. Please send me letters from Canada.”

“Yes, of course,” I say through a mouthful of rice.

“Now I will need your address,” he says, his fountain pen poised. I spell it out to him, and he chuckles at the name of my hometown. “Do fish have arms in Canada?” he asks, eyes twinkling.

I smile and shake my head, too tired to explain the origins of the name Salmon Arm.

Jiang Zemin's face appears on the TV screen. The old man glances at the image. “I don't like this government,” he says abruptly. “I prefer the American style of government.”

“Because Americans can vote?”

“That . . . and because they are free to oppose. With this government —” he points accusingly at the TV “— there is no opposition. Do you know? It is a dictatorship.”

I nod and gulp some beer. I decide not to argue that in America you are free to oppose as long as you aren't a Communist, a draft dodger, or a Cuban cigar connoisseur. I nod again.

“Do you know June 1989?” he asks suddenly. “Tiananmen Square? It was total disorder. For the month of May, our government ignored the students in Tiananmen Square. But the government's building is right beside the square! They ignored the students' requests. Total disorder.”

“Did you see what happened there?”

“In the weeks before, I walked past every day to take a look. But then
it became too dangerous.” He pauses, then his voice rises in anger, in anguish. “It was a massacre! Do you know? Massacre. That night I stayed at home, but I could hear the announcements on loudspeakers telling people to leave the square. Then, from here in my sitting room, I heard the shooting. I saw students go past my house lying on the backs of rickshaws . . . all bloody. The government says no shots were fired and nobody died in the square. But I heard. I saw. My neighbours saw.
All Beijing saw
. We know the government is telling
lies
. They were only students. They were children.” His voice cracks. “It was a massacre.”

He leans back in his chair and simmers under his skin, slowly calming down. I am speechless. Speechless because, for the first time since arriving in China well over a year ago, I realize that, from now on, for the rest of my life, news stories from China will no longer be about strangers in a strange, faraway land. They will be about places I have seen, people I have met. They might even be about my little students in Guangzhou. A knot tangles in my stomach. I feel sick at the thought of what the old man is telling me.

I look over at him, amazed. This man is the modern history of China in flesh and bone. History is sitting in an armchair across from me wearing a track suit and a brown cardigan. His eyes have seen what mine have only read. His ears have heard what mine have only been told.

He shakes his head and sighs. “Ah . . . but I am just an old intellectual. You mustn't listen to only me. To be truly clever, you must hear many stories from many people.” He glances at something behind me. “Do you know what that says?” he asks, pointing to the calligraphy scroll above the sofa.

I twist around to look. “No.”

“My friend made that for me. It says, ‘Though my room may be small, my heart is broad.' Do you know? That is my life.”

Before I leave, we stop in the other living room, where I am photographed with the family and the old man coaxes little Mike into telling me thank you yet again for his English name. I wave goodbye to his family as the old man escorts me down the alley. The moon is now directly above us. In its light, the small grey buildings of his neighbourhood have turned silver.

Out on the street, I thank the old man for the tea and beer and company as a bus creaks to a halt in front of us.

“It was my pleasure. You are welcome.” Then he adds, “Never forget me.”

I climb up into the dark, half-empty bus. I pay the conductor and wave to the old man through a dusty window as the bus rumbles away.

Back from Yunnan Province, I turn to put some socks in the dirty clothes when the calendar on my small desk catches my eye. A jolt thunders through me.

I have only two weeks left!

Part of me is joyous — only two weeks until I am once again free to wander the Earth's crust! Another part of me begins hyperventilating — only two weeks? Where does time go? Only two weeks to clean out and pack up all the junk in this room? Only two weeks to say goodbye to the kids?

Say goodbye to the kids? I try to push this thought out of my mind.

I go to the living room and look at the big map of China pinned to the wall. Alone, in the silence of the apartment, I read out the names of the provinces in this vast land. I feel emotions stronger, deeper, and more terrible than I have ever felt for any other place. I have gotten under China's skin; or, perhaps, it has gotten under mine. Either way, leaving China will be like a tearing of flesh.

I arrive at Number 1 School to find what looks like the aftermath of a bombing raid. The concrete plaster on the walls of the stairwells and the balconies has been smashed away, exposing brick innards and forcing us to step over piles of debris to reach our classroom. It is summer holiday renovation time again. The construction workers are replacing the drab concrete with white ceramic tiles. Despite the mess, the school seems brighter already.

As sledgehammers crush concrete outside our wooden door, I take a deep breath and begin telling the kids I leave in two weeks.

In the Grade One class, little Sandra is initially gleeful. She giggles and claps her hands because she thinks she heard Miss Connie say that Miss Dionne is taking everyone on holiday to Canada. No, Connie
explains again, Miss Dionne is returning to Canada and leaving you here. Sandra is shocked speechless by this double dose of bad news. Little Doug jumps up and clings like a boa constrictor to my leg. “No go, Miss Dionne!” he cries. “No go!”

Later, as the Grade Two class is cleaning up and getting ready to go, Russ straps on his Power Rangers knapsack and says to everyone, “I wish I was a fly so I could go with Miss Dionne in the airplane back to Canada.” As Connie translates this for me, Russ adds, “That way, I wouldn't need a visa!”

The Grade Six class takes the news in silent stride. After thinking for a moment, Gerry raises his hand.

“Yes, Gerry?”

“Miss Dionne, how old are you?” he asks in English.

“I'm twenty-eight.”

“Har!” he roars. He turns to the class. “It's about time she went back!” he shouts in Cantonese. “It's time for her to get married!”

An afternoon rainstorm rolls over the school just as we are finishing for the day. Connie and I leap over schoolyard puddles toward the gate where Russ and William are sheltering under the eaves of the doorman's office, waiting for their mothers to come pick them up. As we say goodbye to the two boys, Russ jumps out into the rain behind us and points skyward. “Miss Dionne!” he yells in English. “The cloud is sad. It is crying!”

This morning, I watch bamboo scaffolding being peeled off the new high-rise apartment across from ours. The newly revealed building is covered with pink-and-cream bathroom tiles. The glass in its windows is turquoise. It was a few concrete pillars sticking out of the mud when I first arrived in China.

Bamboo scaffolding is amazing stuff. A Western construction yard supervisor would probably eye it, its apparent precariousness, and mutter, “Oh, Lord.” But, lashed together, bamboo poles are strong enough to support thousands of men hundreds of metres off the ground as they work day and night on any number of Guangzhou construction sites.

On the tallest buildings, the bamboo scaffolding encircles the structure and seems to crawl up the sides, suspending itself in mid-air, as the concrete frame grows higher. It crawls back down as the tile or glass siding goes on, slowly unveiling the finished product. In time-lapse photography, the process might look as though a magician were running
a magic bamboo hoop up, then down, and —
presto!
— a new building appears where there was once only smoggy air.

On most buildings, however, the scaffolding stays rooted to the ground and sprouts up and around the new construction like a bamboo cocoon. It stays like that for months, hiding what is going on behind it. Bamboo scaffolding becomes grey in a very short time and is so commonplace you hardly even notice it. Then one day it is shed to reveal a new building of gleaming granite, tile, or glass. The shiny new building surprises you and turns your head as you zip by in a taxi. It looks so odd, so ostentatious — as if it were just planted there overnight — that it leaves you momentarily puzzled and asking yourself, “Where did
that
come from?”

Perhaps one day, when the scaffolding finally comes down, China will surprise the rest of the world in a similar way, leaving us craning our necks as we speed past, wondering, “Where did
that
come from?”

I approach the gate at Number 1 School and try to push Connie's words from yesterday out of my mind.

You are becoming the past tense
.

But it is true. After today, I no longer live in China. I
lived
in China. After today, these kids are no longer my students. They
were
my students.

“I'll be back,” I whisper to reassure myself, to keep my composure for class. “I'll be back. I'll visit next year.”

Even if this is true, I know it will never be the same. Even if I come back every year, soon the schoolyard will fill with the faces of little strangers, faces that will stare blankly up at me, unrecognizing. Meanwhile, the faces I do know will grow more angular, sprout pimples, collect scars, and begin to wither from memory. While their adult incarnations struggle their way through this unpredictable world, only their childhood ghosts will still run and laugh in the schoolyard.

I swallow the stone in my throat and push the gate open. I take a deep breath and try not to think.
You are becoming the past tense
.