“Him? The weird guy in the red hat?”
“No, that is his son. Him is lying down because Daddy beat him up.” They started to question him again, but he silenced them. “Listen. Okay, so I start thinking about the land in China because I know that last year China pass a law, pass in October, saying it okay for some private ownership.”
“So whoever else is behind that curtain, he bought it?”
“No! He steal it and then he lose it. Listen, listen, so my father, your grandfather, have a friend, since they are very small boys—”
“And he’s the guy behind the curtain?”
“No, no, quiet! I already tell you, this is a very long story. So my father have a very old friend, from Guang family, from when they were young. Very old friend. Good friend. The Wang family go to Taiwan, but his friend stay in China, and Communist send him to camp. But very hard camp, a work camp, not a fun camp like Camp Hess Kramer that you go to.”
“Dad! You remember that?”
“Of course. You all so excited to go. So Guang was send to camp for fifteen years, and when he is in camp, he is force to change his mind and become Communist. And finally they let him go, and then he come back to same place where he grow up, and now they make him head of the local council because he is a good Communist. So then worst part happen. Zwei bu ying gai de.” Charles had been almost enjoying telling this tale, but the closer he got to the pivotal moment, the less he could pretend to himself that this was just a bit of old-world gossip. To have everything slip away, to have someone step into his story and disrupt it so completely, it was too much. He had weathered too much. “Gong fei! Tsao ni ma de!” he shouted. The old curses felt good, so much more satisfying than an insipid fuck.
“Qu si!” was lobbed back over the wall.
“Did you hear what he say? Andrew, you go in there and tell him he can’t talk like that.”
“Dad! I’m not going to go bully some guy who’s in a hospital bed,” said Andrew.
Grace jumped in. “I’ll do it!”
Andrew huffed. “Just ignore him and tell us what happened already.”
“No, no, no, Gracie. You stay. Okay, I tell you. So hear some story, sometimes, about family going back to old house, or maybe share land with yi qian gen di de ren, uh, with old peasant, old employee. So Daddy hire a lawyer to see if maybe I can do same thing. But we find out instead that he”—Charles pointed again, violently, at the divider wall—“pretend to be me. And everybody believe.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He pretend to be me! Me. He fool Guang, my father’s friend, and make him think that he is me!” When Charles had first understood the full extent of his treacherous cousin’s misdeeds, he’d thought that there would turn out to be some honorable explanation. It was not implausible to hope that the cousin was holding the property in Charles’s name, so that he, the eldest son of the eldest son, could return and assume proper ownership. But as they’d spoken in the dingy, cigarette-smoke-filled office of the travel agency where his cousin, Wu Jong Fei—not even a Wang!—was employed, Charles had felt his anger expand and take shape in his chest until it had become a sentient thing that willed itself into shape with feathers and claws, a ripping, tearing beast no longer under his control. It wasn’t just the betrayal. It was the man himself, who had stolen Charles’s past and his future, who sat there in a thin, cheap shirt and didn’t even attempt to conceal his misdeeds. He’d confessed it all without shame, and now Charles opened his mouth and spewed out the truth.
“Okay, I tell you the worst part. So he trick my father’s friend and he pretend to be me. But why do you think he does this? Because he have some big plan for land? No! This is the very worst part. It is because he love to go gamble.
“Go gamble like doing drug to him. Every weekend he go with travel group to Macao, some special gambling group to go bet. Bet, bet, bet. All day long bet. He lose all his own money, so he need to go find more money. He look everywhere, xiao zang lang, like little cockroach, and then he get scared. So scared. He owe so much money that he don’t know what will happen.
“The main person who give him gambling stake is big house builder, and so Wu Jong Fei he think, Okay, what do builder need most? Builder need land! So as soon as he hear about the law that pass last year that say that some private ownership of land is okay, he go to lao Guang and he show a newspaper article about my business to pretend that he have money, that he will build school, build good house, bring job to people in the town. Lao Guang believe him, because lao Guang will believe me. But instead he just give land to developer so he can have no debt and more money to gamble and now they build a whole ugly apartment city over Wang?jia de land. Wo men wan le. Mei le.”