charmed.
“Yes, I enjoyed myself very much,” he said, his voice lowered and eyes darting, as though worried they might be overheard.
It’s Toronto in the twenty-first century, Dan wanted to say. We don’t need to hide it here. But he wouldn’t risk Ren’s discomfort. He had no idea of his social conditioning, the boundaries he needed to observe to keep on an even keel, especially if he was a married man stepping out on the sly.
A waiter approached. Ren looked at Dan.
“Please, will you order for both?” He caught Dan’s surprised look. “I am open to many things.”
Dan resisted a smile, nodded, and turned to the menu. He rattled off a few dishes, hoping they would offer a range of appeal. The waiter gathered up the menus and left.
“Thank you,” Ren said. “Your hospitality is most appreciated.”
“So was yours last night. I’m just returning the favour.”
This time there was no blushing.
“That was also my pleasure,” Ren told him.
“We didn’t get much chance to talk,” Dan said. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”
“I am from mainland China,” Ren replied. “But I am abroad a great deal.”
Visions of the Taiwanese businessman slipped away and were replaced by countless questions on Dan’s part.
“I am here as a representative for my country,” Ren explained, as if anticipating his thoughts. “I am a cultural ambassador. I meet with members of your government and business community for trade and tourism purposes.”
“That sounds impressive.”
He smiled his disarming smile. “It is not really very interesting, I am afraid.”
“I’m also impressed by your English. Did you learn it in school?”
Ren shook his head. “Not as a child. Later, I went to a school for international trade relations. There I had an English teacher from Canada. She was extremely effective. This is one of the reasons I am allowed to come here. My government considers me to be a much-valued asset.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Of course, many people wish to leave China and come to the West.”
“Do you?”
A smile flickered and died. Ren held Dan’s gaze. “There are many things I would like.”
“Such as?”
“I would like to change certain things. For instance, there is almost no homosexual life in China. What is there is purposely hidden. For many years, I did not even know such things existed. No one spoke about it. Chinese say it is a Western disease.”
Dan nodded. “I believe Mao claimed that homosexuality was the result of a corrupt capitalist society.”
China’s great leader, Dan knew, was just one in a long line of politicians who had used scare tactics to intimidate people, equating the inferred slur of homosexuality with corrupt political practices. Ironically, both sides in the communist-capitalist debate fostered the same kind of fear, with gays caught in the middle, as usual. The infamous red-baiter, Senator Joseph McCarthy, went so far as to defend his beliefs by saying that anyone who stood against them was “either a communist or a cocksucker,” neither of which most Americans wanted to be called at the time. On the other hand, a committed communist named Harry Hay, founder of one of the first gay liberation groups in the U.S., was subsequently kicked out of the Communist party for being a homosexual. In an almost-farcical turnaround, he was expelled from his own Mattachine Society for being a communist. For queers, there was just no middle ground.
Dan smiled. “You can blame anything on money, I guess.”
Ren nodded shyly. “This may be true, but I did not grow up rich. My family came from Chengdu in Sichuan province. Although my father was in the military, we were still very poor.”
“Well, there you go,” Dan said. “You were gay and poor. So neither assertion is correct.”
“Yes.”
Ren’s face grew solemn.
“Thank you for coming today,” he said, as though addressing a will reading. “I would like to discuss a matter with you for professional reasons.”
He pulled an envelope from his pocket. A single black-and-white image slid onto the table. Dan picked up the photograph. A massive sculpture of a lion filled the background, while two teenagers stood in the foreground. Ren’s nascent beauty was already palpable; the girl beside him seemed ghostly, pensive.
“This is me with my sister, Ling. She died in Tiananmen.”
“My condolences.”
“Thank you. I would like to hire you to find her.”
Dan shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You want me to find a dead woman?”
Ren shook his head vigorously. “Excuse me, please. Perhaps she is not dead now. I have found her on the Internet. I believe she lives here, possibly under a false name.”
Dan’s expression must have been comical, because Ren suddenly began to laugh.
“Yes, it is a mystery!”
Dan flashed on the envelope that had showed up at breakfast two days earlier, the one filled with clippings on the Tiananmen massacre.
“You sent me photocopies of articles on Tiananmen.”
Ren smiled shyly. “Yes, I did this. It is true.”
“Why?”
Ren’s face was all seriousness now. “I did not know if you would be acquainted with the history of my country and the student revolts.”
“Tiananmen was famous. Everybody remembers it. Everybody who was alive then.”
Ren shook his head. “In my country, it is already being forgotten. It is buried along with the past.”
Dan’s mind was backtracking as he studied Ren’s face. “Then you already knew who I was when we met.”
“You will please forgive me. I tracked you down, as they say in the West.”
“Is that why you slept with me?”
Ren looked chagrined. “No. Please do not believe this was to take advantage. I was pleasantly … surprised to find myself attracted to you. Only because of this did I sleep with you, I promise.”
“Sorry, that was rude of me.” Dan glanced down at the photograph. “You had better explain what this all has to do with your sister.”
“When I learned my government was sending me to Canada, I investigated the Internet to learn about Toronto. To my surprise, I found a Chinatown with many Chinese people.”
“More
