"You will be returning with my brother to the United States, the land he made his nation. Many people will ask about his death. I will tell you, so you may tell them."

"I would like to know."

"Let me start with life, Professor Stratton. That is where all death begins, does it not? In life? Once we had been close, my brother and I, close in that special way that only brothers know. I can still see the cobblestone courtyard in Shanghai where we would play.

"We took our piano lessons and studied our math and our English and when no one was looking we would sneak away to play by the river. We loved the river. So much life, excitement. Once we saw a knife fight between two sailors. Then came the day for my brother to leave. Back to the river, but this time in rickshas with trunks and my brother in a Western suit. We tried not to cry, but we cried and my father was angry. At first my brother wrote every week. After my parents had done with them, I would take those letters and read them until they entered my memory. But already the Revolution was beginning, Professor Stratton, and the letters became more infrequent. Soon I left with my mother to join the people's struggle. I heard no more from my American brother for many, many years. Some good years, and a few that were very bad. For several years my job was to collect night soil in a big barrel that I pushed on a cart. Do you know what night soil is?"

"Human excrement, collected for fertilizer."

"Yes, I am glad to see that you have done your lessons, Professor. Human excrement, to be collected by leaders in punishment when the Revolution is betrayed by fools. I know you have read of the Cultural Revolution, Professor, but it was worse than anything that is written about it. Much worse. Then came some good years, and now… who knows?" Wang Bin slipped some tea and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old. "My brother… one may lose touch with a brother, but one never forgets him. Brothers are part of you, like parents. I have heard that when parents go to visit their grown children in America, they are asked to pay for their meals, Professor Stratton. Is that true?"

"Certainly not."

"I thought not. It is a lie then, published in our newspapers to make people less envious of America. Revolutions require many lies, you know." Wang Bin smiled without mirth.

"One day, I decided to write my brother. I cannot tell you why, exactly, except that he was my brother and we are-were-old men. That must have been three years ago; a friend in our embassy in Washington got me the address. At first, the letters were respectful, distant, like the opening moves in a game of chess.

But, eventually, they became letters between two brothers. I invited David to come for a visit. Hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese have returned for visits to their families in the past few years, from America, Canada, Europe, everywhere. Did you know that?"

"It must have been very emotional, your reunion with David."

"Oh, yes, it was. A wonderful experience, happy and sad. Last week, when I saw my brother for the first time in nearly fifty years, I wept. So did he, although Chinese do not display their emotions publicly. Americans are much more open about that, aren't they?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"As David-that was not my brother's given name, but that is what he asked me to call him-as David may have told you, I was unfortunately not in Peking when he arrived, but in Xian, a city in the west. Do you know it?"

Stratton shook his head.

"A beautiful city where the emperors lived when Peking was still just a village.

So David flew to Xian and there we reunited. We wept, and laughed, and at night after dinner we would go to his room, drink tea and remember; be little boys again."

"Did he show any signs of being sick?" Stratton asked.

"Only the excitement, at first. But then, perhaps it was the day before we returned to Peking, he complained of pains in his chest. We sat for a while and then continued our walk; we were in a park. He took a little pill, I think, and when I asked him if something was wrong, he laughed and said he had some trouble with his heart, but that it was not serious. His doctor had joked, David said, that the problem was just grave enough for him to take two or three little pills a day for the next forty years."

"I hadn't known that," Stratton said.

"Well, he tried to do too much, you see. He was so excited about being in China again and being with me. He tried to do too much, rushing everywhere. I tried to slow him down, but you know how David was… "

"Yes. Were you with him the last night?"

"At the beginning. Some of my colleagues here had arranged a special banquet for us in honor of my brother-a Peking duck banquet. You will forgive my patriotism, Professor Stratton, but I am assured by men who know that Peking duck is the single finest dish in the world. It is also, for Chinese people, quite expensive. My brother and I were both moved by my colleagues' gesture. It was a wonderful meal, one I shall remember always. Afterwards, I went with David back to his hotel, but I did not join him for tea. I had a meeting."

Wang Bin's eyes again strayed to the ceiling.

"Someone came for me there to say that David had been stricken. I rushed to the hospital, but the comrade doctors said he was dead when he arrived. Heart, they said."

"I'm sorry," said Stratton.

"Your embassy has inquired about David's passport. The comrades at the hospital told me that intravenous solution had spilled on the passport during the attempt to save David. An apprentice, not knowing what it was, threw it away. He will be punished."

Stratton sipped some of his own tea. He had the overwhelming sensation that he was being lied to, fed a carefully contrived script. But what was the lie? And, more important, why?

"Tell me about America, Professor Stratton."

The request caught Stratton off guard.

"Well, how-I mean-what would you like to know?"

"I would like to know something of the truth, something between the lies of the Revolution and the lies of the American Embassy. It is not often that a senior Chinese official may speak frankly with an American without someone present to listen."

Better natural access than any of us will ever get, Linda Greer had said. Well, why not?

"I am partial, of course, Comrade Minister, but it is one of the few places on earth where a man is actually free. Think what you like. Do what you like. Which is not to say that it is a nation without problems. Many people never think at all, and even more talk without having anything to say. It is a beautiful and powerful and vigorous and violent country."

"Yes, I have always admired the vigor without understanding the violence."

"You must come to visit."

"I would like that, but my duties here and"-his hand waved at the window, toward the Communist Party headquarters across the massive square-"elsewhere do not permit it. But tell me about my brother's America. Tell me about the special place he will be buried."

"The Arbor," Stratton said. David's pride.

Soon after he had appeared at St. Edward's as a young assistant professor, David Wang had bought an abandoned dairy farm on the outskirts of Pittsville. When he hadn't been teaching, he'd begun to work the land. Not to farm it, or forest it exactly, but to manicure it, to build it into a place of beauty according to his own orderly view. David had planted stands of pine and maple, birches and oak, as well as exotic trees he grew from seed. A clear stream bubbled through the Arbor into an exquisite formal lake on the lee side of a gentle hill. David Wang had done most of the work himself, with simple tools. When he hadn't been in the classroom, he could be found on his land or deep in an armchair in the old white clapboard farmhouse that had no locks on the doors.