The Man From Beijing (32 page)

‘My name is Huo,’ he said. ‘I will ask.’

‘My name’s Birgitta. Just pretend to be interested.’

‘Where you from? USA?’

‘Sweden. Ruidian, I think it’s called in Chinese.’

‘I do not know where that is.’

‘It’s almost impossible to explain.’

As he started to cross the road, she turned and hurried back to the hospital entrance.

An old man on crutches came slowly out of the open entrance door. She suddenly had the feeling that she was exposing herself to danger. She calmed herself down by noting that the street was full of people. A man who had killed a lot of people in the north of Sweden might get away with it. But not someone who murdered a Western tourist in a busy street. In broad daylight. China couldn’t afford that.

The man with the crutches suddenly fell over. The young police officers on guard by the entrance made no move. She hesitated, but then helped the man back onto his feet. A mass of words came tumbling out of his mouth, but she didn’t understand, nor could she tell if he was grateful or angry. He smelled strongly of spices – or alcohol. He continued walking through the grounds towards the street.

Huo came back. He appeared to be calm and wasn’t looking furtively around. Birgitta went to meet him.

He shook his head.

‘Nobody has seen this man.’

‘Nobody knew who he was?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Who did you show the picture to?’

‘The guards. Another man came as well. From inside the house. He had sunglasses. Do I pronounce that right? “Sunglasses”?’

‘Very good. Who lives on the top floor?’

‘They did not answer that.’

‘But somebody lives there?’

‘I think so. They did not like the question.’

‘Why not?’

‘They told me to go away.’

‘So what did you do?’

He looked at her in surprise.

‘I went away.’

She took an American ten-dollar bill from her purse. He didn’t want to accept it at first. He returned the photograph of Wang Min Hao and asked which hotel she was staying at, made sure she knew her way back there, then bowed politely as he said goodbye.

On the way back to the hotel she once again had the vertiginous feeling that she could be swallowed up by the mass of humanity at any moment and never found again. She felt so dizzy that she was obliged to lean against a wall. There was a tea house not far away. She went in, ordered tea and biscuits, and tried to take long, deep breaths. Here it was again, the feeling of panic that had occasionally overwhelmed her in recent years. The long journey to Beijing had not provided any release from the worries that were weighing her down.

She thought about Wang again. I could track him here, but no further.

She paid her bill, surprised by how expensive it was, then braced herself once more to face the bitterly cold wind.

That evening they went to the theatre located inside the enormous Qianmen Jianguo Hotel. Earphones were available, but Karin Wiman had arranged the services of interpreters. During the whole of the four-hour performance, Birgitta sat leaning to one side, listening to the young woman’s frequently incomprehensible summaries of what was happening onstage. Both she and Karin were disappointed, as they soon realised that the performance consisted of extracts from various classical Peking operas, no doubt top class, but aimed exclusively at tourists. When the show finished and they were finally able to leave the freezing cold auditorium, they both had stiff necks.

Outside the theatre they waited for the car the conference had placed at Karin’s disposal. At one point Birgitta had the impression she had caught sight of the young man Huo, who had earlier addressed her in English amid the hustle and bustle of the street.

It happened so quickly that she hadn’t really registered his face before it had vanished again.

When they arrived at their hotel, Birgitta looked over her shoulder, but nobody was there, nobody she recognised, at least.

She shuddered. The fear she felt seemed to have come from nowhere. But it
was
Huo she had seen outside the theatre; she was certain of it.

Karin asked if she fancied a nightcap, and she did.

An hour later, Karin was asleep. Birgitta was standing by the window, gazing out over the glittering neon lights.

She was still worried. How could Huo have known that she was there? Why had he followed her?

When she finally crept into bed beside her sleeping friend, she regretted having produced the photograph of Wang Min Hao.

She felt cold. She lay awake for many hours. The chill of the Beijing winter’s night embraced her.

23

There were snow flurries the following day. Karin had risen at six o’clock in order to check through the lecture she was due to deliver. Birgitta woke up and saw her friend on a chair near the window, reading by the light from a standard lamp; it was still dark outside. She experienced a vague feeling of envy. Karin had chosen a life involving travels and contact with foreign cultures. Her own life was played out in courtrooms featuring a constant duel between truth and lies, arbitrary decisions and justice: outcomes were usually uncertain and often frustrating.

Karin noticed that Birgitta was awake.

‘It’s snowing,’ she said. ‘Not a lot. You never get heavy snowfalls in Beijing. It’s powdery, but quite sharp, like grains of sand from the desert.’

‘You are a busy bee. Up so early.’

‘I’m nervous. There’ll be so many people listening to what I have to say, bending over backwards to find errors.’

Birgitta sat up and moved her head tentatively.

‘I still have a stiff neck.’

‘Peking operas demand a high level of physical stamina.’

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing another one. But without an interpreter.’

Karin left shortly after seven. They arranged to meet again that evening. Birgitta slept for another hour, and by the time she’d finished breakfast it was nine o’clock. Her worries from the previous day had vanished. The face she thought she had recognised outside the theatre must have been a figment of her imagination. The range of her fantasies sometimes surprised her, although she should have been used to them.

She sat in the large reception area where silent servants armed with feather dusters were busy cleaning marble columns. She felt annoyingly idle and decided to look for a department store where she could buy a Chinese board game. And she had also promised Staffan some spices. A young male concierge marked the way to a suitable store on her map. She changed some money in the hotel, then went out. It was not quite as cold as it had been. Occasional snowflakes were whirling around in the air. She pulled her scarf up over her mouth and nose and set off.

It took her almost an hour to get to the department store. It was on a street called Wangfuijing Dajie, occupied a whole block and, when she stepped in through the imposing entrance doors, felt like a gigantic labyrinth. She was immediately caught up in the crush. She noticed people on all sides giving her curious looks and commenting on her clothes and appearance. She looked in vain for a notice in English. As she made her way towards one of the escalators, she was shouted at in bad English by various sales staff.

On the third floor she found a department selling books, paper goods and toys. She spoke to a young shop assistant, but unlike the hotel staff she didn’t understand what Birgitta said. The assistant said something into an intercom, and within seconds an older man appeared beside her and smiled.

‘Board games,’ said Birgitta. ‘Where can I find those?’

‘Mah-jong?’

He led her to another floor, where she suddenly found herself surrounded by shelves containing all kinds of board games. She picked out two, thanked the man for his help and went to one of the cash registers. Once the games had been wrapped up and placed in a large, colourful plastic bag, she found her own way to the food department. She could smell spices and soon found a large selection in small, pretty paper packets. After buying some she sat down in a cafeteria near the entrance. She drank tea and ate a Chinese cake that was so sweet she had trouble getting it down. Two small children came to stand and stare at her until they were called brusquely back by their mother at a neighbouring table.

Just before getting up to leave, Birgitta had the feeling she was being watched. She looked around, tried to scrutinise several faces, but there was no one she recognised. She was annoyed by these imaginings and left the store. As the plastic bag was heavy, she took a taxi back to the hotel and wondered what to do for the rest of the day. She wouldn’t be able to see Karin until late that evening – Karin had a formal dinner that she would have liked to skip, but couldn’t. Birgitta decided to visit the art gallery she had passed the previous day. She knew the way there. She remembered having seen several restaurants where she could have a meal if she felt hungry. It had stopped snowing now, and the clouds had broken up. She felt younger, more energetic than in the morning. Just now, I’m that freely rolling stone we used to dream of becoming when we were young, she thought. A rolling stone with a stiff neck.

The main building of the gallery looked like a typical Chinese tower with small platforms and projecting roof details. Visitors entered through two majestically imposing doors. As the gallery was so big, she decided to restrict herself to the ground floor. There was an exhibit on how the People’s Liberation Army had used art as a propaganda weapon. Most of the paintings were in the familiar style she recalled from the illustrated Chinese magazines in the 1960s. But there were also some non-figurative paintings depicting war and chaos in bright colours.

Wherever she went, she was surrounded by guards and guides, mainly young women in dark blue uniforms. None of them spoke English.

She spent a few hours in the art gallery. It was nearly three o’clock when she left, glancing at the hospital and behind it the skyscraper with the jutting-out terrace. Quite close to the gallery was a simple restaurant; she was given a place at a corner table after she had pointed at various plates of food on other diners’ tables. She also pointed at a bottle of beer and noticed how thirsty she was when she began drinking. She ate far too much, then drank two cups of strong tea in order to overcome her drowsiness while thumbing through several postcards she’d bought at the gallery.

Then it hit her. She had had enough of Beijing, although she’d only been there for two days. She felt restless, missed her work and had the feeling that time was simply slipping through her fingers. She couldn’t continue wandering aimlessly around the streets. She needed something specific to do, now that the board games and the spices had been bought. First she needed to go back to her hotel and rest, then come up with a proper plan – she had another three days, two of them alone.

When she came back out onto the street, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds again, and it felt much colder. She wrapped her jacket tightly around her and wound her scarf over her mouth and nose.

A man came up to her with a piece of paper and a small pair of scissors in his hand. In broken English he begged her to allow him to clip her silhouette. He produced a file of plastic pockets with other silhouettes he had made. Her first reaction was to say no, but she changed her mind and took off her woolly hat, removed her scarf and posed in profile.

The silhouette he made was astonishingly good. He asked for five dollars, but she gave him ten.

The man was old and had a scar on one cheek. She would have loved to hear his life story, if only that had been possible. She put the silhouette into her bag; they bowed to each other and went their separate ways.

She hadn’t the slightest idea of what was happening when the attack took place. She felt an arm wrapped around her neck, bending her backwards, and at the same time somebody snatched her bag. When she screamed and tried to hang on to it, the arm around her neck tightened. She was punched in the stomach and left gasping for breath. She collapsed onto the pavement. It had come about so quickly and lasted no more than ten or fifteen seconds. A passing cyclist stopped to try to lift her to her feet, together with a woman who put down her heavy grocery bags in order to help. But Birgitta Roslin was unable to stand up. She sank down onto her knees and passed out.

When she recovered consciousness she was on a stretcher in an ambulance with sirens blaring. A doctor was pressing a stethoscope onto her chest. Everything was a blur. She remembered having her bag stolen. But why was she in an ambulance? She tried to ask the doctor with the stethoscope. But he answered in Chinese: she deduced from his gestures that he wanted her to keep quiet and not move. Her throat felt very tender. Perhaps she had been seriously injured? The thought scared her stiff. She might have been killed. Whoever had attacked her hadn’t hesitated to do so, despite the broad daylight in a busy street.

She started crying. The doctor reacted by feeling her pulse. Even as he did so the ambulance came to a halt, and the back doors were opened. She was transferred to another stretcher and wheeled along a corridor with very bright lights. She was sobbing uncontrollably and didn’t notice being given a tranquilliser. She drifted away as if on a groundswell, surrounded by Chinese faces that seemed to be swimming in the same waters as she was: their heads, bobbing up and down in the waves, were preparing to accept the Great Helmsman as he approached the shore after a long and strenuous swim.

When she regained consciousness she was in a room with dimmed lights and drawn curtains. A man in uniform was sitting on a chair next to the door. When he saw that she had opened her eyes, he stood up and left the room. Shortly afterwards two other men in uniform entered the room, accompanied by a doctor who spoke to her in English with a strong American accent.

‘How are you feeling?’