“Not to everyone.” There was something he wasn’t saying—a wall between them she couldn’t scale.
“I’m sure if you liked it, it’s worth reading,” she said neutrally.
“My mother first recommended it.”
“Then I would truly love to read it. Do you own a copy?”
“I used to.” His mouth worked around some large truth. “We sold most of our books after Tinseng left his position.”
She turned toward him then. Shan Dao stared out the window, his back perfectly straight. She knew selling possessions wasn’t the worst thing Tinseng had ever done to survive, but he hadn’t needed to this time; he could have asked her for help. Yet he didn’t, and possibly he never would. She hated that she was finding out this way. What must Shan Dao think of them, this family Tinseng didn’t trust to support him?
“Did he ever mention . . . we would have—if he had written, of course, we would have . . .”
She trailed off, shame flushing her cheeks. No, of course he wouldn’t have mentioned his struggles. She knew more than anyone just how much Tinseng left unsaid. And what had she done about it? Written him kind, impersonal letters; waited for his occasional replies; and hoped he’d return one day, impassively letting the world happen to her, just as her mother had always feared.
“I’m sorry you had to do that,” she told Shan Dao. “We’ll be with Tinseng from now on. And you, of course,” she hurried to add. “Hong Kong has plenty of booksellers, you know. You and A-Seng will be able to get your collections back in no time. It won’t be like living in Paris, but you’ll be able to order anything you want. And, you know, the waiting makes the books even more enjoyable,” she added, a little desperately.
“Mm,” Shan Dao murmured. She had no idea how to interpret the sound. Wrong-footed, Yukying remained quiet. The fact that Tinseng had run off today without telling either of them struck her again, harder this time. Tinseng assumed he was on his own, always. He hadn’t changed at all; possibly he’d gotten worse during these intervening years, all alone in Paris until Shan Dao had entered his life. How was she supposed to prove she had changed when he wouldn’t give her the chance? Even if he couldn’t see it, surely being on this tram proved she had: She wasn’t waiting for permission, and she wouldn’t hold herself back. She only needed Tinseng to believe in her. She would have to prove it to him somehow.
As they stepped off the train, she studied the map, then pointed them north. The post office was embedded on one of the main streets of a lively neighborhood enjoying their Friday market. The crowd wove around them, uninterested in accommodating two slow tourists. The area was completely unlike Lisbon: Lisbon’s beaches had been for tourists, but nothing here was for her. This neighborhood had not kept her in mind. Spices hadn’t been added or subtracted, accents weren’t flattened, menus didn’t have a second language under the mother tongue. In Estoril, hawkers had called out to her in English; here, she heard nothing but Spanish. They had no use for her here. Homesickness jolted straight through her; she didn’t fault the people of Barcelona for not caring about her, but she wanted to be somewhere familiar, where they did care. She wished she was walking through Lei Yu Mun, surrounded by her crowds.
Shan Dao grabbed her elbow, too hard for politeness.
“What is it?” she asked, her melancholy disrupted. “Do you see him?”
“Grodescu.” He pulled her in, crowding them both behind a rotating stand of postcards. Only he could see over it; she had to peer around. Grodescu moved down the road, out of sight. Yukying and Shan Dao exchanged a grim look and followed.
They tried to stay as far back as possible without losing him in the swirling crowd. They followed Grodescu as he walked through the narrow spaces between the stalls of the produce sellers. It was the perfect place to lose someone, and Yukying didn’t think it was a coincidence they quickly fell behind. Shan Dao moved even slower than she did, his politeness nearly rooting him to the spot. They must not have had these sorts of crowds where Shan Dao was from. He was stopped now behind a group of old grandmothers in simple black dresses standing in the middle of the walkway, completely unaware or perhaps not caring how they blocked traffic.
At the end of the row of stalls, Grodescu was slipping away. Yukying watched him turn right, then looked back at Shan Dao, who balefully pleaded with her over the women’s heads.
She walked back and held out her hand to Shan Dao. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it. With him in hand, she pushed through the flock, who shouted abuse at them, but Yukying ignored them peacefully as they hurried through the crowd.
He didn’t let go of her hand and she gripped back tightly, two buoys bobbing in an unfathomably deep ocean. His grip was too strong as she pulled them through, but she didn’t complain. He’d forgotten to be gentle with her. Something in her jumped at the knowledge. This wasn’t endless rounds of mahjong with the church set or arranging appetizers on a plate for Laurence’s bosses. This was an adventure.
Maybe, she thought, if Mother could see me right now, she might even be proud.
The chase ended when they peered around the corner to see Grodescu waiting in a doorway on a quiet family street. They stood out of sight, biding their time. They didn’t have to wait long.
“You’re late,” they heard Grodescu say in English as the door opened.
“You’re early,” a nasally English accent whined back. “C’mon, upstairs.”
The sound of hinges, then a door shutting. They exchanged a look: What now? Yukying gestured with her head: Closer? Shan Dao frowned and looked around the street. Tapping her shoulder, he pointed to a wall where rough handholds were built into the side of the building to create a makeshift ladder. He looked at her with a question in his eyes: Did she want to climb up to the roof? Yukying was already tired, and she wondered how much more she could push her body. Her knees would protest tonight. Her feet were already protesting. Her back ached, and she was bent over like a crone from a story.
But she thought about what Shan Dao had said this morning—had it been just this morning? It felt like so much longer—when he’d given her his mother’s shawl. How things were made to be used, not to sit in a trunk gathering dust. She thought about that now: how this body was a gift and made to be used.
“Let’s go up,” she said.
“Mm.” Are you sure, she heard, and for a moment more she did consider. But everyone else in her family was always ignoring their good sense. Why couldn’t she for once? She nodded, looking up the ladder, then back at him.
Shan Dao tilted his head down with a look of understanding. “Would you like to go first?”
She beamed at him and started climbing.
On the roof, they craned their necks toward the open window below. Voices floated up to them, carried by the warm summer wind.
“Mr. Wu.” Grodescu’s voice held a snake charmer’s melody. “Your quick work is appreciated. Tell me about the material.”
“I have sorted them into personal and professional,” an unknown man said, not the one who had opened the door; he spoke English, but with that accent, Yukying thought he was probably from Guangdong province somewhere. “The personal will be of no use to you; they are journal entries, nothing more. These are the ones that someone might be interested in buying.”
“What’s in them?” Grodescu asked.
“This one, I do not know. I cannot crack the code, but others might. These are her impressions of those in the Chinese embassy, and those who worked with her husband.”
“Hmm. And what about this part here?”
“Ah, the poetry. Yes, that was strange. It was helpful to know I was looking for a name. You see this character here? It’s odd. Not incorrect exactly. Dismissed as a translator’s strange taste. But if you know it’s hiding something, it becomes this.”
“What is this?”
“A name. This is the romanization.”
“You’re certain?”
