Every time I think that my novels aren’t relevant, something happens to persuade me otherwise.
No sooner had I discussed the East-versus-West, battle-of-the-sexes theme of the opera “Turandot,” which forms the centerpiece of my new historical thriller “Riddle Me This,” in a spirited seminar at the Greenburgh Public Library on Saturday, March 25, than The New York Times published this story about the bride prices that men in China are paying to families in order to secure one of the fewer women of marriageable age — the result of China’s disastrous one-child policy in the 1980s that selected for boy babies. (In Chinese families, the oldest son is the built-in caretaker for aged parents. So if you could only have one child, it had to be a boy. Girls were aborted or put up for adoption.)
The minute I heard about this some 40 years ago I thought: This is going to bite the Chinese in the butt. And sure enough. the country is now holding events to try to discourage bride prices — reverse dowries in which the groom and his family pay another family to secure one of those rare birds, single Chinese women.
China’s past policy has put its present women — not so quick to wed — in the driver’s seat. One such woman is the fictional Chinese cultural attaché Tamara Chen, the Turandot figure in the futuristic tale of international espionage that makes up one of three interwoven, alternating arcs in “Riddle.” The American tennis star Alex Darlington, whom she has enlisted to help her stage a One World Festival in Beijing at a time when the United States and China are attempting a new rapprochement, quickly becomes besotted with her. But like the self-protective Turandot, Tamara isn’t about to give her heart so easily, as in this exchange:
“Why build a whole festival around Turandot?” Alex asked. “I mean, isn’t it something of an Uncle Tom—a stereotype, as it were—of the Chinese?”
“I prefer to think of it as a reclamation,” she said. “Everything is narrative, Alex.”
“And that narrative seems to be ‘Boy meets girl. Girl tests Boy. Boy is found wanting.’ I mean, demanding you solve life-threatening riddles to win a woman’s love—pretty extreme, isn’t it? It always seems—even in the animal kingdom—that the male has to prove himself over and over again, often to a capricious female who may reject that proof and him.”
“But the female in turn has to relinquish so much, the very citadel of herself, which becomes the vessel for future life,” Tamara countered. “Sometimes her body isn’t even hers to relinquish. In Turandot’s case, her famous aria, ‘In questa reggia,’ ‘In This Palace,’ is all about the great ancestress who reigned in peace and joy until she was torn from the palace by a foreign invader and then ripped from the citadel of herself. I don’t see Turandot as some monster to be tamed by a man. I see her as a princess protecting the sanctity of all women, of womanhood itself.”
“By playing a stacked game that no man can hope to win?” Alex asked. He was warming to the serve and volley of the conversation, his cheeks growing flushed. Or was it the Champagne?
“By assuring that she at least—or any other woman—can’t lose on an uneven playing field.”
Later as their professional partnership in the festival – and what he hopes will become a personal one – becomes more complicated by industrial espionage involving the “trivalry” of the United States, China and Russia, the extent of the tensions between East and West, woman and man, become more apparent:
“I don’t think we want to consider which nation has been the more deluded in its flaws. It’s not something that would make either of us proud. Your country’s one-child policy, for instance, has no doubt allowed you to pick and choose among the greater number of men in and around your age group. It undoubtedly accounts for the haughty attitude and mixed signals that you send out in your dealings with men.”
“Excuse me? First off, my relationship with men is none of your business. But I will say my dealings with you and every other man have been nothing less than professional. If you found my professional behavior wanting because you expected more, that is entirely your affair. Simply because you or any other man is interested in me or any other woman doesn’t mean we women must return that interest. That is the whole basis for the free society that you Americans espouse. As for policies like one-child, I’ll admit it was a mistake. Would you be willing to admit as much about your own country’s apartheid of the indigenous peoples, enslavement of Africans, continued segregation of their descendants, violence toward Asians and other immigrants and minorities, violence in general, and control of women’s rights?”
Clearly, Tamara is more than a match for Alex. I think she’d be more than match for China’s policies as well.