Old Lovers Don't Die (20 page)

The bus overloaded with people and animals was strangely on time. Bags of belongings hanging precariously from the roof along with cane baskets with live chickens squawking incessantly reminded him that in life some things never changed. Word obviously had gotten around about the disaster from the week before as he heard the bus engage lower gear and begin to brake from close to the top of the hill. The braking sound was not very reassuring. It was the metal on metal sound he had come to associate with absent brake pads. The slow speed of the bus was reassuring and after avoiding several potholes, it stopped in front of the hospital. He quickly scanned the bus and could see that Cindy had positioned herself at the back. She waved out the open window he had exited a few weeks previously. John, he could see, was not the driver; perhaps John had been promoted to assistant pastor. As he walked to the back window, Cindy passed out her backpack and then quickly followed.

“Hello, hello, how nice to see you, Christian,” she said, giving him a big hug as she landed on the ground next to her backpack.

“It’s great to see you too. I didn’t realize it would be this soon.”

“So this is the hospital that you’ve been doing all the great work at,” Cindy said as she stood surveying the hospital.

“I’m not sure about great work. We have been very busy what with refugees from the Congo and a recent tanker disaster.”

“Yes, we had heard about the tanker rolling over in front of the hospital, and the new tall Muzungu doctor saving the local Imam’s son. Good news travels fast in these areas.”

“It has been a fascinating few weeks and I can’t wait to talk to you and find out what’s been going on at your end. Follow me,” Christian said picking up her rucksack. “The Sudani’s is about a fifteen minute walk from here.”

“Only if you promise to show me the hospital later.”

“I will show you the hospital, but I’m interested to hear about the orphanage as well.”

Cindy put her arm through his and on the walk down the hill, told him how well the orphanage was run. Three hundred children not only had schooling but three meals a day. Everything was regularly cleaned and the children beautifully dressed. The orphanage was even looking at supplying some of the older children with laptops that they could wind up, after a significant donation from Zhanghou, the large computer and mobile phone manufacturer in China. The Chinese woman that managed it, Kim Yao, was so efficient, that at times Cindy felt she would not have been out of place in the military.

Christian thought about the last remark, in the context of Petrea’s email, and was about to ask Cindy about her concerns with the orphanage, when they arrived at the Sudani’s house.

“What an amazing house. It’s quite unlike anything that I have seen so far in Rwanda,” Cindy said.

“Yes. It was apparently designed by a German or Dutch surgeon who was due to live and work here, and then for some reason did not arrive after the house was built.”

“You will find that there is a real shower down the hallway with hot water. I’ll put some of the best coffee on that you have ever tasted and you can tell me more about the orphanage and your concerns.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ll have a quick shower.”

Christian made his way back to the kitchen thinking how infectious her enthusiasm was and how naturally she just put her arm through his as they walked along. The hand grinder for coffee beans, bolted to the sink, had a wooden funnel for the coffee beans and a matching wooden base, on which was a small hand-carved picture of Lake Kivu. As he ground the beans, he remembered it was not the caffeine in coffee that produced the stimulatory effect; it was rather the smell of the freshly ground coffee beans. He inhaled the aroma of the coffee beans before he put them into the coffee pot; their smell was delightful, although he could detect little stimulation. Within a few minutes, the coffee pot was percolating its dark rich aroma throughout the kitchen. As it started to whistle, Cindy appeared in the doorway, a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

“Perfect timing,” he said turning towards her. “Black, white, sugar or no sugar?”

“Black with no sugar would be great, thank you.”

By the second cup of coffee, Christian realised that they had found out an enormous amount about each other. Cindy had grown up in Wisconsin on a small farm with two older brothers and one younger sister. She described it as a tightly-knit family, and she had been expected to do her fair share of the chores. There was no distinction made just because she was a girl. As Cindy talked, he could not help but feel a small degree of envy for her family life—such a distinct contrast to his own as the only child of a single parent. It was so easy chatting to Cindy that he had almost forgotten that he wanted to ask her about any strange happenings at the orphanage. When he finally did ask her, she looked at him rather quizzically and said,

“It’s more of a feeling that something is not quite right there. There are many meetings at the orphanage but the vehicles that bring people to them have darkened windscreens. You would not know who was inside. Kim Yao, the manager, tells us they are Chinese benefactors wanting to see how their Yuan or dollar is spent. There are special quarters for them, which are separate and completely secure from the orphanage. However, after one of these meetings, four or five of the older boys disappeared overnight from the orphanage. When I asked one of the staff about it, she had said there were entrepreneurs at the meeting who had offered the boys good jobs and free lodging so that they had gone with them when they left. That all seems to be a bit strange as one of the boys, Michelangelo, I knew quite well. He was very proficient in English and French, exceptionally gifted in mathematics and I know he wanted to go to University. I can’t imagine him accepting a job without a future.”

“Do you think the boys are being traded or sold as cheap labour?”

“I don’t know, just that I don’t have a good feeling about whatever is going on. Then the same staff member came to me a few hours later and said I should stop asking questions, that I was there to teach and they were there to make the orphanage the success that it was.”

“Are you allowed to go anywhere near the quarters where these guests stay?”

“No. As I said, there is a separate locked compound, and when guests arrive, they drive through the locked gates and park at a separate entrance to the quarters, which you can’t see from the orphanage.”

“Well, perhaps when we come up the week after next, we should have a look around.”

“I’m not sure that you would be allowed to.”

“I wasn’t thinking particularly about asking for permission,” Christian said with a wry smile.

“And here I was thinking that you were a very straight-laced doctor whom I could rely upon for an ethical approach to the problem! Although I do like the fact that there is a little bit of rebellion mixed in with all the straight-laced doctoring stuff.”

While Christian wondered how to respond to the coquettish look that accompanied Cindy’s last statement, the front door opened and Emmanuel and Chantal called hello down the hallway.

“Would you be happy discussing your concerns with Emmanuel and Chantal?”

“I think let’s leave it until you’ve been up to visit so we know that it’s not all in my imagination.”

The phone rang in Kim’s Yao’s office, the green light indicating it was Lee Kaiping from the embassy in Kigali. The meeting at the orphanage had gone well, Kim thought; Lee would be ringing with further instructions. There were never any congratulations; lack of condemnation was the highest form of Chinese political praise. Kim picked up the phone, listening as she heard the embassy secretary quietly say,

“Kim Yao is on the phone sir.”

“You have failed in your responsibilities.” Lee Kaiping screamed down the phone.

“The party doesn’t tolerate incompetence or failure. There is an iPad missing from the secure briefcase. I told Beijing not to send me another stupid woman. You have one hour to find it and call the embassy or you get sent home.”

“One of the Rwandan businessmen at the meeting might have mistakenly taken it,” Kim interjected.

“Don’t insult my intelligence. Our security people scan all guests before they get back in their cars. Either it is in the room and you have missed it or someone else has taken it. You now have fifty-five minutes to find it.”

Kim listened as the line went dead. The information on that iPad in the wrong hands could lead to an international incident. It would embarrass both the Rwandan and Chinese governments. In addition, she would be sent home in disgrace.

Kim hated the thought that she might have failed. Her whole life in China had been shaped by the fact that she had born a woman. Being a female in China made being a success almost impossible, unless subservience was regarded as the highest achievement. Her father had been desperate for a boy to help him work in their fields around Laoshan. He had never attempted to hide his disappointment that she was, he said, an inferior girl.

When she was five years of age, she tried to help him in the fields; however, he had just looked her up and down disparagingly and told her to go home. At six years of age, her cousin had informed her that her father had tried to give her up for adoption, but no one had wanted her because she was such a puny girl. Kim remembered that she cried herself to sleep for over a year and then resolved that she had to prove that she was better than any male. After school, she went for walks through the village. Initially she would walk to the hills and then take her sandals in one hand and tuck her dress into her underwear so that she could run up the hills. In a glade, close to the top of one of the hills, surrounded by chinaberry and tallow trees, she would do sit-ups and push-ups until she started shaking from near exhaustion. Some days she would just lie on the ground wishing that she had been born a boy, oblivious of the beauty of the red and gold tallow trees and the chinaberry dropping its yellow seeds around her.

Exercising as hard as she did meant that she was always hungry. However, there was never any spare food at home. If there were any leftovers, they went to her brothers because they were working in the fields with her father. When she started falling asleep at school, she was told that part of her punishment was that she had to clean the kitchen after school. As she cleaned, she ate the leftovers that were destined for the local piggery. After about six months, she felt strong enough to compete with the boys. Initially, most boys laughed at her and waved her away. However she waited, biding her time, and one day when the boys lined up for a running race after school, she quickly joined them and beat them all. After that, none of the boys talked to her and she was banned from being anywhere near them or competing against them.

In gymnastics, she found she could use her newly developed strength, representing Shazikou prefecture in floor exercises, but it produced no recognition from her father. It seemed the more she tried to prove that she was better than any male, the more she distanced herself not only from her father, but also from her mother. No one seemed to want a girl who was better than the boys in their village.

Yang Tao was the only family male who took an interest in her. He was his father’s brother by about ten years and offered her a job packing shoes in his factory. Kim initially was filling in for a sick worker during her school holidays. She had to pack shoes into boxes as they came off the production line, but after a week she saw a more efficient way of packaging. When she told her uncle, he was impressed, and promoted her to work in his office after school and at weekends. She had started to feel valued for the first time in her life, then one night when everyone had gone home, he forced her to lie on his desk, tore her underwear off and raped her. A half empty jar of ginseng facial cream was the only sop to losing her virginity at fifteen years of age.

Yang, once he had finished grunting and thrusting, pushed her off the table and said not to tell anyone; otherwise he would have her sent to a labour camp for spreading false rumours. Kim knew about the labour camps. The police could lock people up in a labour camp for four years without trial. Her auntie’s daughter was raped when she was ten. Auntie Tang Won tried to prosecute the man, and was locked up for a whole year for malicious gossip. The rapist was a friend of the town prosecutor and a prominent member of the local Communist Party. She also knew that one woman in the village, who complained to the Communist Party officials in Shazikou about the local mayor demanding sexual favours, had acid thrown in her face and was blinded. Her uncle was the chairman of the local Communist Party.

She left Yang’s office, hating that she had something of him in her. She walked to her glade in the hills and stayed until it was dark. Looking up through the branches of the tallow trees at the stars in the sky, she felt so alone. The stars were twinkling as though there was something to celebrate; they did not understand her pain and the disgust she felt. The universe did not care. She did not want to cry: the anger was too deep for tears, the insult too brutal. Then the tears flowed and slowly soaked the grass between her feet.

After many hours, she finally walked slowly home thinking that ending her life was an option, but concerned there could be dozens of Uncle Yangs waiting on the other side. She knew too little of the afterlife, and only knew she would never dream of being a boy again. Never would she lie in her little glade in the woods wishing she could change. Boys and men were disgusting creatures, lower on the evolutionary scale than rats with the plague. The only solution for a woman in China was to be stronger and more powerful and then determine her own destiny.

It was after midnight when she unlocked the back door and judging by the quietness, everyone was asleep. She was desperate for a shower to try to wash away Uncle Yang’s stains; however, she knew her father would shout at her for waking everyone up. She crawled into her bed and pulled the blanket over her head trying to ignore the stench of Yang. She could not sleep, for every time she closed her eyes, Uncle Yang was in front of her, grunting and thrusting. In the morning she tried to tell her father as he brought the wood in for the fire in the desperate hope that he might show that he cared. He didn’t say a word, looking at her and shrugging his shoulders as if to say what could he do.

The arrival in Laoshan of recruiters, a month later, from the Ministry of Defence and the People’s Liberation Army, offering scholarships to Shanghai University, was a way out of her personal hell. The entrance exam she passed with flying colours and was told she would study information technology, not mathematics, which she always thought was her best subject. She would have studied anything to get away from her family, her uncle, and the depravity of the village. That she was told that she would have to spy on fellow students mattered little; it was a chance for freedom.

Shanghai University was a revelation and a refuge. The university buildings were surrounded on all sides by large green poplar trees which provided a foliage umbrella, where she would often retreat and sit under. Some days she would just watch people walking past, noting how different they were to those in her village, neatly dressed and mostly they looked happy. She was amazed at the number of bicycles and that often she would see a man on a bicycle with children in a little basket seat behind him. In the village, men never cared for the child—that was a woman’s job.

She had her own small room in an apartment half a kilometre from the main campus on Shangda road. The apartment was like all the other student apartments, a bedroom with a small kitchen and no bathroom. Twenty students shared a communal bathroom at the end of the building. There was no door to the kitchen and all the rooms were painted a grey white. A small collapsible wooden table next to her bed sat under a small window and had a wooden chair. When she studied, she could look out of towards her favourite poplar trees and see other students walking below. The smallness of her apartment did not really concern her. It was the first place that she had lived in where she could lock the door. She felt safe for the first time since Yang raped her. She became friends with some of the other students who lived in the other apartments on her floor. Their parents were mostly Communist Party workers in Shanghai and worked in the shipyards. To them, though, it did not matter that she was from a small village; they included her in most of the things that they did.

Kim knew that she was being observed; she would often look out of her second-floor window and see someone in a PLA uniform sitting under one of many poplar trees. He would occasionally glance up at her window. That same person she would often see sitting in the furthest corner of a sushi restaurant, where she went with her new friends. None of her friends seemed to notice, or if they did, no one talked about it. In a strange way, Kim thought it was quite nice to have someone who was interested in what she was doing and approved of her. She felt someone was at last looking out for her.

Her contact in the People’s Liberation Army, Ruan Diu, initially visited her every two weeks. He encouraged her to go to any meetings on campus, a minimum of four a month, and report anything contrary to what the party expected. What the party expected, Ruan initially explained, was loyalty without criticism. He gave her a dossier on party policy and said that she was to read it and be familiar with it. He also gave her a list of students and their photographs to try to befriend. The first case he wanted her to report on was a German student. Kim was to film secretly all those attending. She was be given glasses to wear to the meeting which contained tiny cameras, and which broadcasted to a PLA truck which would be parked outside the meeting.

Kim had heard about the German student; her parents were diplomats and she was trying to improve her Mandarin. She had invited people to her parents’ home for an evening of German music. The PLA knew she was doing research on the one child debate and suspected she wanted to interview students.

A small quartet playing German music greeted Kim as she was ushered into a large room at the back of the German Embassy. Approximately twenty students were already there listening to the music and enjoying European food. Heidi walked over as Kim entered and introduced herself in very good Mandarin. She told Kim that she was interested in getting to know more about China, as she wanted to come and work in Shanghai. Kim listened as Heidi also chatted about Germany and its freedoms, wondering to herself why a woman with so much potential freedom would want to come and live in a country which was so limited for a woman. As she listened to Heidi talk, she wondered whether the PLA, might have been misinformed about her intentions. Then the quartet stop playing and Heidi took over the microphone. She explained that she was doing research and that she would really appreciate everyone’s assistance. They were to put up their hand if they believed they should be allowed to have more than one child in China. Kim looked around as the room went silent. No one put up his or her hand. Heidi asked the question again and still the same response, no hands were raised, and now was an embarrassing silence. Kim realised that the students knew someone would be watching and listening. Kim looked around the group, and there were at least three who had glasses similar to hers. The quartet started to play which broke the silence, but by that time, most of the students had started to make their way out through the back door

Kim’s first assignment pleased Ruan. The pictures were clear; they could hear the conversations and Kim had moved around to allow them to identify all the students at the meeting. The German student would not have her visa renewed at the end of term, he told her. Kim was assigned to another room in the apartment, two levels up, which had a built-in shower.

In her second year, Kim was top of her class in computer science and was invited to attend the People’s Liberation Army unit on the outskirts of Shanghai on Saturday mornings. The Ministry of Defence building was a large grey twelve story building. The fourth floor contained one of the biggest and fastest computers in the world. Ruan wanted her to be part of the team writing encrypted programmes. Her office was a desk with six others, each with the latest computer. She was given unfettered Internet access that allowed her go to websites, otherwise routinely blocked by the Communist Party. She knew that any site that she visited would be monitored. Nevertheless, it was privilege almost unheard of except for the senior Communist party members. She felt trusted and valued.

On most Saturday mornings there were six students. She was the only female, supervised by one of the professors of computer forensics at the University, Jin Sanwong or Professor Jin as he insisted everyone called him. Interestingly, he did not dress in a PLA uniform, which meant he had a very high standing in the party. Kim wondered whether he modelled himself on the Macintosh founder Steve Jobs, as he only ever seemed to wear black leather shoes, a black shirt, and black trousers. The only contrasting colour was his silver hair and rimless spectacles.