At the Heart of the Universe by Samuel Shem Read Free Book Online

“Ready?” Clio asks.
    â€œSure.” Pep has little desire to talk to a Chinese policeman, but he has to be there, not only for marital solidarity but so that, if Clio starts talking about Tibet or Human Rights or the Enslavement of Women or the One-Child-Per-Family Policy, he can step in and avert an international incident.
    ï­ï­ï­
    They walk across the courtyard and in under the overhanging roof to a kind of veranda, a shelter from the dusty heat. Turning left they go through a low doorway and into a small concrete-walled room, another smaller room to their left with a table and three chairs—maybe an interrogation room. Rhett walks to a door in the first room and knocks. He motions Pep and Clio into the interrogation room. The walls are bare but for a poster of the men, ships, and planes of the Chinese army, navy, and air force, in formation beneath a large red star. Through a rectangular hole in one wall they glimpse several men lying on mats on the floor, smoking. Some of the men are only partially in uniform, their ’30s-style undershirts an affront to the image of authority. Pep and Clio sit at the table and wait, listening to Rhett talk to the lounging policemen for what seems a long time.
    Finally in comes a policeman, followed by Rhett. The policeman has a striking head—large, square, framed by a brush cut of black hair. His dark eyes show his suspicion and, because of the reddened sclera, his fatigue or dissipation. As if, Pep muses, he’s been up all night tormenting a suspect and drinking it off the rest of the day in the back room with his buddies. His cheeks are lightly pocked, giving him a tough look, but this doesn’t fit with his lips, which are small and curled and impish. You can see, in the man, the boy, and the boy is not the bully of the class but the astute observer of the bully. Not the gunslinger, but the sidekick. The top two buttons of his uniform shirt are open, revealing a hairless chest. Rhett introduces him—neither Clio nor Pep catches his name but from three weeks in China they are used to never catching names and don’t ask again—and his handshake, like that of most Chinese, is limp. Rhett says he will translate. The chief and Rhett look to Pep for his questions. Pep looks to Clio.
    Clio, on the spot, fingers the smooth jade Kwan Yin on the red thread around her neck that she bought ten years ago at the temple on Mount Yuelu here in Changsha. Jade to dispel ghosts, red thread for luck, Kwan Yin the Chinese bodhisattva of compassion. This helps. As does looking at the kindest part of the chief, his lips, and then looking into his Chinese face as a whole, for this suddenly brings back a warm rush of familiarity—she sees in it the beloved Chinese-ness of her daughter’s face. Ever since Katie was a baby, whenever Clio sees an Asian face, she feels this rush of connection, of affection. After the first three months of staring into her baby’s eyes, one day she went out to shop at the mall and was shocked to realize that it was the Caucasian babies who looked strange—noses too big, faces too custard white, eyes too round, all dull expressions and huge heads on rubbery necks. Assume that he is, at heart, kind. A father of a daughter.
    â€œThank you for taking the time to see us. We adopted our daughter from Changsha ten years ago—she’s sitting out there in the bus, the nice air-conditioned bus?” She stops, hoping that this mention of air-conditioning might amuse the chief. Rhett conveys her words. The chief is not amused. “Her documents say that she was brought to Nan Du Lu Police Station. We wanted to find out if there are any records.”
    To Clio, Rhett’s Chinese seems even stranger than usual, filled with clangs and bangs—someone from Beijing told them that the Changsha dialect sounds like a bunch of knives and forks and spoons being jangled around in a cloth bag. Clio is sweating hard.