A persistent, rhythmic thumping and the rattle of the front door against the loose frame drew Faith out of the shadows of sleep into a predawn gray. By the time she’d climbed out of bed and made it into the front room, Jian-jun had opened it. Standing across the threshold from him was a young woman wearing a military surplus coat. A battered scooter was parked behind her on the bare yard, the motor silent, but the headlight glowing into the haze.
The woman whispered two sentences, then fell silent as her eyes widened at the sight of Faith, who wondered whether her surprise was provoked by the fact that this white ghost standing in the darkness hadn’t fled like the rest of the Westerners had done in the days after the earthquake.
Jian-jun turned around, following the woman’s gaze.
“What is it?” Faith asked.
Jian-jun pointed back over his shoulder.
“She says that a couple of the rebels have found where I hid my parents. But out of respect for my grandmother, they haven’t turned them over to the mob.”
Jian-jun walked over to where Ayi Zhao was still asleep on a cot and sat down next to her. He touched her on the shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered, then she looked up. He told her what had happened as he helped her to her feet.
Faith gestured for the woman to come inside.
Jian-jun introduced her in Mandarin only as Xiao Mei, Little Mei, and Faith only as “the anthropologist.”
Faith knew the unspoken question behind Little Mei’s eyes, for she’d heard versions of it throughout her career: for what was an anthropologist, but a spy in plain sight, a psychoanalyst of families and of relationships and of culture using obscure methods to discern the function behind the structure and the living reality behind the camouflage of appearances—at best to objectify people, and at worst, to strip them naked.
Little Mei’s blank expression and averted gaze seemed to Faith to be those of a sister or girlfriend who suspected she’d been discussed in therapy and whose secrets had been exposed and dissected—
Except today those secrets were political and the consequence of exposure wasn’t shame or embarrassment, but death.
They all understood that there’d be no time to argue filial piety to a mob. Appearances would be everything.
“I’ll show myself,” Ayi Zhao said, then looked from the woman to her grandson. “That will give the children time to escape.”
Jian-jun shook his head. “The army may view your arrival as a provocation. We can’t take the chance that they’ll use it as an excuse to intervene.”
Ayi Zhao raised her palm toward Jian-jun. “They don’t need an excuse. Their orders come from Beijing and the issues now are bigger than the symbolism of an old lady.” She pointed down toward the city. “Tell them I’m coming.”
Faith looked back and forth between Little Mei and Jian-jun, then gestured with her hand through the open door toward the scooter and said, “Go. I’ll find a car to bring her down.”
Jian-jun grabbed his jacket and then said to Ayi Zhao, “They’re in the backup generator room of the burned out Meinhard electronics factory.”
He turned to Faith. “It’s on the western edge of the city in the economic development zone.”
Faith’s body jerked sideways as the house jolted in an aftershock. She grabbed a chair back to steady herself. The scooter fell over. A glass next to the sink toppled and shattered.
As Jian-jun reached an arm around Ayi Zhao’s shoulders, he and Little Mei stared at each other, trading end-of-the-world looks.
In their anguished gaze, Faith saw that she was a Christian, too. Maybe an evangelical, and this was her secret.
The quake had half the force of the last one, and Faith’s internal calculator, calibrated by a lifetime in San Francisco, told her it was either a small aftershock nearby or a huge one far away.
Faith thought of the Three Gorges Dam, fearing that it had given way as the cracking and crumbling schools and hospitals of Chengdu had. But she said nothing, for she knew that they were all thinking the same thing, and they understood that if it had given way, it was too late for fear, or for hope.
“Most of the mob has moved back to the center of the city,” Jian-jun said to Faith. “But be careful. Don’t show yourselves until you get to the factory. I’ll come out to meet you.”
Jian-jun led Little Mei outside and then straightened up the scooter. He sat forward on the elongated seat and she climbed on behind him.
Faith walked to the door and looked past them and toward the valley, wondering what would greet them when they arrived.
The motor rattled, then engaged, shaking the bike. Exhaust belched from the tailpipe as he gunned it to keep it from stalling, then the cloud swirled in the air and grayed the rising sun.
Faith blocked the glare with her hand and squinted at the city. Smoke no longer drifted up from yesterday’s smoldering factories in the industrial clusters, but still billowed from the mile-diameter tire pile adjacent to the solid waste incineration plant. She knew that it would burn for months and suspected that the mob, now choking on its fumes, had come to regret having chosen arson as a form of protest. In the pollution that now blanketed the countryside, they had spread the scourge they had fought to contain.
Jian-jun leaned toward the handlebars, pushed the bike off its stand, and accelerated down the dirt street toward the center of town and then beyond it to the highway on the other side.
Ayi Zhao walked up next to Faith and looked up at her.
“You don’t need to do this,” Ayi Zhao said. “I can find a way down on my own.”
“We can protect each other,” Faith said. “Because of you, no one will harm me. And because of me, the army and police will see that the world is watching and perhaps will leave you alone.”
Faith thought for a moment. It struck her that the best way to shield Ayi Zhao from the army might be to recruit them to help.
“Is there an herbalist up here that you can trust?” Faith asked. “Maybe he can put something together to raise your blood pressure and make you look like you have a fever. Then we can ask the garrison to take you to the People’s Hospital. They won’t want you to die on their watch.”
Ayi Zhao nodded. “I can do it myself. All I need is ephedra, ginseng, and ginger. We can get those at the vegetable market.” She paused and then asked, “Do you have any cold pills? They always make my heart beat faster.”
“I think so,” Faith said, reaching out her hand and gripping Ayi Zhao’s shoulder. “Just be careful not to overdo it.”