The Cost of Hope Read Online Free PDF

create bean curd plants. To the west to consider cattle.
    Back in Beijing, his apartment is always full of strays. American students live in Chinese dorms, cold, with communal showers and toilets and little entertainment. I never know who I am going to find curled up in front of a movie eating his treats, or stepping out of the shower. On the street, he stops strangers, asking the proper pronunciation of odd words, trying out phrases on them. His American extension school experts are fond of down-home expressions. Terence is constantly looking for ways to translate. “He hit it out of the park.” “He’s a stand-up guy.”
    He pursues strange hobbies. One day I see him leave his room with a net, a jar, and a bizarre contraption with a mouthpiece and a double set of tubes.
    “What are you doing?” I ask.
    “I’m collecting bugs. Nobody has sent insect samples fromChina to the Smithsonian for decades.” He walks up to some bushes beside the hotel, points the funnel-shaped cone at the end of one tube at an unwary insect, and sucks sharply on the other tube. Bernoulli’s principle creates a swirling vacuum that whooshes the bug into the jar in the middle. When he has several samples, he preserves them and ships them off. “Terence is off sucking bugs,” I tell our friends.
    He makes me order evening gowns tailored at the Friendship Store, one a shimmering burgundy full-skirted silk, another an aquamarine fitted sheath with spaghetti straps.
    “Put on the burgundy dress,” he says one evening. “We’re going out.”
    He arrives at my apartment dressed in full white tie. A black tailcoat. White cummerbund and patent leather shoes. A cane with an engraved silver knob. A top hat. He takes my arm. A Japanese restaurant has just opened in an old courtyard house. We sit at the bar eating sushi and drinking beer. Then, looking just like Fred Astaire, he leads me regally past the other gaping diners, my silk dress sweeping the floor.
    He woos me with rabbits and song.
    I don’t remember how the business about the bunnies began. Maybe as an offhanded, sarcastic “none of your business” kind of comment. In any case, it becomes a truism between us that the reason my first husband, Philip, and I divorced was that I wanted a rabbit and he would never get me one. It becomes a mindless, repetitive joke that I mouth every time—and it is often—he speaks of marriage.
    “When are we going to get married?”
    “You haven’t given me my rabbit yet. After what I’ve been through how can I marry another man who won’t give me a bunny?”
    It feels particularly cold that December 1984. In Beijing in winter the wind whips down from Mongolia like a spear, bringingwith it the red dust of the Gobi Desert. When the wind blows you can’t see across the street. Cyclists don face masks. The office furniture grows a grainy patina of desert sand and coal dust that must be wiped twice a day. Outside it is freezing. Inside, the office is overheated. I have my office door half closed, trying desperately to hear a telephone call through the static. I hear a commotion in the hall. I rise up, intending to close the door fully, when it flings open. Terence is wearing a green People’s Liberation Army coat with the typical fake fur collar. The army hat with earflaps is pulled down low over his forehead. A scarf hides most of his face. He is carrying a cardboard box. He drops the box on my desk and stomps out.
    Inside is not one bunny, but two. The little creatures are no bigger than my fist, with tiny ears the size of my pinkies. I can tell they are white, but just barely, through the thick orange dust that cakes them. Terence has spent the morning riding his bicycle, his own top-of-the-line Flying Pigeon, through freezing Beijing, crisscrossing the narrow
hutong
s, stopping to shout into the courtyards: Anyone in here raise rabbits? The bunnies move to the enclosed patio outside my office, where they grow fat on vegetable scraps and