“Horrible,” Yukying murmured.
Mrs. Lanzette shook her head. “Their poor sons.”
“Tinseng-ge knew one of them, you know,” Chiboon said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes, his brush with infamy. Wu Tinseng!” Chiboon elbowed the man next to him. “Tinseng, we’re talking about the Mei Affair. Tell Mrs. Lanzette about how you knew Mei Jinzhao back in the day.”
Until now Tinseng had been oddly quiet, paying attention to his friend or else staring at the other passengers around the room. Now he turned fully and settled his drink in his hand.
“I didn’t really,” he said. “It was for eight weeks when I was sixteen. A lifetime ago.”
“Tinseng doesn’t know how to tell a story,” Chiboon said, and proceeded to tell it himself. They had met at New Asia College in Hong Kong, where Mei Jinzhao’s uncle taught philosophy. Mei Jinzhao had been sent by his parents, an emissary of sorts for China, and at sixteen taking the responsibility seriously—too seriously, Chiboon said, but who wasn’t a radical for their beliefs at sixteen? Wu Tinseng had already been taking university classes for a year and a half; at sixteen, he excelled in all the sciences, but his tutors were urging him to round out his studies. “They could see he needed philosophy and the arts or risk becoming an absolute bore like his brother over here.” So he had agreed to take the intensive on Chinese literature; taught by a staunch Neo-Confucianist, the course had been just as much history as language. Wu Tinseng and Mei Jinzhao had argued all term over politics.
Yukying remembered the arguing. Tinseng had come home every night, unable to afford the dormitory fees, full of stories about the other boy. Looking back, Yukying understood much better why Tinseng hadn’t been able to stop talking about him: she’d nursed a few secret crushes herself. She had wondered, when the headlines first broke last year, if Tinseng had felt for the boy he’d once known.
“Mei Jinzhao was his father’s son,” Chiboon said, nodding meaningfully at Mrs. Lanzette. “Isn’t that right, Tinseng?”
“He was his father’s son back then,” Tinseng said. “Absolutely principled. And stubborn: we could have died arguing and he would have found me in the afterlife just to continue on. But it was stubborn in a good way, a righteous way.” His smile spoke of faraway sunlit memories. “And when he decided on his loyalties, he never wavered.”
“How fascinating that he didn’t stand by either of them, then,” Cheuk-Kwan said. “Or his country. You’d think such a loyal person would have stuck around, instead of disappearing into thin air like he did.”
“Who knows why he disappeared.” Tinseng pointed his fork at his brother. “Maybe that was loyal, and we just don’t know why.”
“How could letting your parents be flogged by every reporter alive be loy—”
“I’m telling you,” Tinseng interrupted, “if Mei Jinzhao did something, it was for the right reasons.”
Next to him, Shan Dao huffed. Strangely, his ears were bright red. “You flatter him too much.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Cheuk-Kwan said, then confided gleefully, “Back then, he wouldn’t shut up about him.”
Shan Dao raised his eyebrows. “I recall a comrade describing Mei Jinzhao as sour. Uninteresting. Stuffy. Not the type Wu Tinseng could ever befriend.” It sounded like he was reciting something. Now Tinseng’s ears were red too.
“Well, you’re wrong about that,” Cheuk-Kwan said, “Tinseng would have kidnapped him back home if he could.”
“I know more about Mei Jinzhao than some of my own cousins,” Chiboon agreed. “Mei Jinzhao likes boiled tofu over fried, Mei Jinzhao’s read Les Misérables in the original French . . .”
“Mei Jinzhao can recite dozens of Mao’s best speeches by heart,” Cheuk-Kwan threw in.
“Mei Jinzhao hung all the stars individually.”
“You make it sound like he was all I talked about!” Tinseng moaned.
“You were very detailed,” Yukying said. “I think I can still remember some of the pranks you said you were planning for him. The poor boy, he didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Yeah, he didn’t know you torture your friends,” Cheuk-Kwan said.
“I didn’t want to be his friend,” Tinseng snapped, then his head whipped up and he said quickly to Shan Dao, “I mean, I—I did, but I didn’t know . . . Oh my god,” he concluded, and drained his drink.
“So he thought Mei Jinzhao was his rival?” Shan Dao asked, ignoring whatever was going on with Tinseng, which Yukying thought was very sensible of him.
“It seemed so,” Yukying nodded. “I think he liked that he’d found his match. I remember him saying he couldn’t believe someone so smart could think the way he did, so staunchly Maoist. Tinseng wanted to prove Mei Jinzhao wrong. You know how Tinseng gets. They were always fighting over politics.” She looked between them and smiled. “That doesn’t seem to have changed.”
Shan Dao nodded solemnly. “Tinseng has very steady preferences. In friends.”
Tinseng groaned again and buried his head in his hands. “I’ve died. I must have died. This is hell.”
“This is the best day of my life,” Cheuk-Kwan declared with a huge grin.
“Anyway!” Tinseng said. “Shan Dao doesn’t know him! It’s not important right now! Chiboon, save me, change the topic. Tell us more about Lisbon, huh?”
With a pitying smirk, Chiboon obliged him.
Laurence waited to comment until they were back in the room, finishing the last of their unpacking.
“Tinseng’s friend seems . . . nice.” Laurence shook out his sweaters and casual slacks from his valise, then refolded them one by one into the dresser. “I won’t mind having him stay with us.”
“I’m not sure he is,” Yukying fretted.
“Oh. Tinseng hasn’t said anything?” Laurence shook his head. “Well, Shan Dao would be welcome. One never knows about these foreign types, if they only know how to eat 面包 and not 面条.2 His accent, did you hear it?”
Yukying attempted to do the same with her own clothes, folding and refolding the same capris with no improvement. “If he’s friends with Tinseng, I’m sure he’s nice. He was very polite earlier.” She didn’t know how to address the other things. She wished she knew what to say, but the enormity of her disagreement overwhelmed her; she didn’t know where to start. So, she ignored it all and changed the subject. “I wonder how long they’ve known each other.”
“He didn’t mention Shan Dao in any of his letters?”
