The driver flicked his plastic green lighter and leaned into the flame. “What do I want with your old clothes? I don’t even know if you can afford to pay me for waiting.”
Charles was offended. His ability to pay for something like a taxi ride had never been called into question. “I can pay. There’s no reason to doubt me.”
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror, and Charles saw himself the way the other man saw him. Not as the prosperous businessman he so recently was, or as the scion of a landed family that he always would be, but as a foreigner wearing the same clothes he’d worn yesterday and the day before. He wanted to flash what remained of the bills, which he’d changed into yuan at the airport—that, at least, had made them multiply in a satisfying way—but Charles was now keenly aware of being in a deserted stretch of country where the driver might have compatriots without such law-abiding jobs. He left his money pouch strapped securely to his chest and instead opened his wallet to show the smaller stash of money that he’d placed there for incidentals.
The driver nodded, satisfied. “Leave your bag, and give me half now,” he said.
The land in China. The landinChina. ThelandinChina.
Charles got out of the cab, hopped over the ditch, and walked straight into the field. He had drawn a painstaking outline of the land on Xeroxed pages of a topographical map and now he held them up, trying to get his bearings. In Los Angeles, real estate had never interested Charles. He had made sure to own his factories and his home—useless ambitions, in the end—but he had never been like some of his friends who snapped up sixteenplex apartments in Koreatown and minimalls in Studio City as quickly as they became available. As a result, he’d neglected to develop a talent for estimating acres or square footage at a glance, but if he had translated the old surveyor measurements on the land correctly, his family’s holdings stretched out all the way to the mountains up ahead, acres and acres of it. More than hundreds, for sure. Thousands? Tens of thousands? The thought of it dizzied him. To the left and right, at the far edges of his vision, the horizon shimmered and the land seemed infinite. It was like owning all of Bel-Air and most of Westwood, too.
He peered out at the mountain. Was the family house still extant? It was hard to tell. Clusters of crumbling buildings dotted the mountainside and from a distance it was impossible to tell whether they were newer or older. The outline of the mountain ridge, though, felt familiar to Charles. I know this place, he thought. It was a comforting thought.
I know this place. This place is mine.
The soft curve of these mountains, interrupted by a tall jagged peak, was a part of his blood and his birthright. His father may not have managed to pass on the land itself, but this knowing was nearly as powerful an inheritance.
Only the land bordering the road appeared to be tilled. Charles kept walking until he reached a verdant open field dotted with tiny white flowers and climbed up a small rise. From there, he could see another rise in front of him, taller and a good bit farther away. Although each minute was costing him as much as that cheating cabbie wanted to charge, now that Charles was here, he had to see every inch that might have once belonged to the Wang family.
He plunged ahead.
The ground under him was damp, patches of mud hidden by the long grasses. One shoe got mired down, staying stubbornly behind when he pulled his foot up, so he took them both off, and his socks as well, and rolled up his pant legs. He marched forward, not minding that the mud was oozing over his feet. When he reached the next patch of dry grass, he wiped them off, liking the feeling of nature on his bare skin. Out of breath, sweat pooling under his armpits, he labored upward, scrunching his toes to get purchase on the slope.
By the time he got to the top, he was light-headed. He leaned over to take a full breath, and when he straightened, everything went white for a moment. Eyes closed, Charles let the blood drain downwards from his head and took several deep breaths. He opened his eyes. Everything was still a pulsing white. Was this it? The big stroke that he feared? He blinked. Shook his head. Bit down on his tongue to make sure that he could still feel things. And then he realized that it was the land itself.
Everything glowed. The fields were incandescent. The last of the morning dew caught the rising sun and sparkled, a tiny drop on the tip of each blade of grass, each drop a world in miniature. A slow breeze kicked up, rustling the leaves on the trees with their dark, elegant trunks that stood nearby. Pure beauty had never really moved Charles. He liked drama, he liked mischief, he liked luxury that bred desire.
But this, this was beauty.
Beauty.