Old Lovers Don't Die by Anderson Paul G

Author:Anderson, Paul G [Anderson, Paul G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Australia, South Africa
Published: 2015-03-08T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The phone rang in Kim’s Yao’s office, the green light indicating it was Lee Kaiping from the embassy in Kigali. The meeting at the orphanage had gone well, Kim thought; Lee would be ringing with further instructions. There were never any congratulations; lack of condemnation was the highest form of Chinese political praise. Kim picked up the phone, listening as she heard the embassy secretary quietly say,

“Kim Yao is on the phone sir.”

“You have failed in your responsibilities.” Lee Kaiping screamed down the phone.

“The party doesn’t tolerate incompetence or failure. There is an iPad missing from the secure briefcase. I told Beijing not to send me another stupid woman. You have one hour to find it and call the embassy or you get sent home.”

“One of the Rwandan businessmen at the meeting might have mistakenly taken it,” Kim interjected.

“Don’t insult my intelligence. Our security people scan all guests before they get back in their cars. Either it is in the room and you have missed it or someone else has taken it. You now have fifty-five minutes to find it.”

Kim listened as the line went dead. The information on that iPad in the wrong hands could lead to an international incident. It would embarrass both the Rwandan and Chinese governments. In addition, she would be sent home in disgrace.

Kim hated the thought that she might have failed. Her whole life in China had been shaped by the fact that she had born a woman. Being a female in China made being a success almost impossible, unless subservience was regarded as the highest achievement. Her father had been desperate for a boy to help him work in their fields around Laoshan. He had never attempted to hide his disappointment that she was, he said, an inferior girl.

When she was five years of age, she tried to help him in the fields; however, he had just looked her up and down disparagingly and told her to go home. At six years of age, her cousin had informed her that her father had tried to give her up for adoption, but no one had wanted her because she was such a puny girl. Kim remembered that she cried herself to sleep for over a year and then resolved that she had to prove that she was better than any male. After school, she went for walks through the village. Initially she would walk to the hills and then take her sandals in one hand and tuck her dress into her underwear so that she could run up the hills. In a glade, close to the top of one of the hills, surrounded by chinaberry and tallow trees, she would do sit-ups and push-ups until she started shaking from near exhaustion. Some days she would just lie on the ground wishing that she had been born a boy, oblivious of the beauty of the red and gold tallow trees and the chinaberry dropping its yellow seeds around her.

Exercising as hard as she did meant that she was always hungry.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.