The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  The fire had destroyed both Lai Jin’s appetite for the feasts offered by the new dispensation and his calling as a member of the society of New China aristocrats. Lai Jin had been late to the celebrations in the restaurant; he had been attending to a needy but wealthy likely investor in a commercial space launch scheme he had been dreaming up. When news of the explosion reached him by phone, he had headed for the site at once. Reaching it, he had crashed through the steel barrier around the steaming restaurant with superhuman strength. Ignoring the cloying smell of too many roasted things, he had dashed to and fro, turning over fire-charred objects, looking for Mei Xing. He had called out to her. He reminded her of thrusting needs, kaleidoscopic desire, ten thousand soft, soft touches, the enchantment of last night’s slow, sucking kisses. He had hunted through the crumbs and plotted to force Mei Xing back to him, now with words and then by will alone. He reminded her of their children, the ones that still needed to be born. He had ended up kneeling on ash and scratching the surface of the gutted space. Lai Jin had fallen into a soot puddle. Inside, he had seen a bleached skull. Reaching for it, he had touched his own reflection. Stygian water had scalded his skin, and Lai Jin buckled on smoldering steel. The fire had burned through his clothes, into flesh, and carbonized his spirit. The back of his left arm, half his back. Crackle and spark. Then he felt Mei Xing’s heart beating inside him. Then he heard himself cry, the voice of Mei Xing’s sadness. Two fire-stained men had dragged him out. Lai Jin had been mostly dead—eyes fixed, body limp.

  * * *

  —

  When Lai Jin had sufficiently recovered from second-degree burns and smoke inhalation, he returned to the site, three months later. He found repair works almost complete as if the fire had been a mere interlude. An overwhelming taste of meaninglessness filled him. Trying to escape the sensation, he sought and found members of his old clique. They had migrated to even shinier places, to party harder than before. “To be rich is to be glorious!” a voice intoned to him from the karaoke bar into which he had ventured. He had imagined he might just resume his life from where he had left it and shake off the despair. So he drank. And vomited. Drank. And vomited, and tried to sing with the friends, and wear the faces that suited their ceaseless nows, and tried to forget that not one of these, the gilded ones, had come to visit him in the hospital. Nausea. And the scene had tunneled into a horrific sewer in which the music turned into his wife’s howls and every glittering dream was ash. He recalled the communal grave where anything that was determined to be human content from the fire had been buried. And he looked around and realized he had become a life member of a noisome asylum that was, at its core, a void.

  Lai Jin had staggered home, stinking, sick, and lost. The next day, he went to his office and immediately offloaded the coveted prime land in Shenzhen where he and his wife had intended to design, build, and rent to rich foreigners compact luxury homes. He destroyed the blueprints for his rocket-assembly plant. He sold all the businesses and the apartment, along with most of everything these contained. Through Mei Xing’s party connections and her diligent festival “gifts” to the influential, they had acquired significant rights to one of the lesser-known of the many islands of distant Shengsi county, just south of Shanghai. Speculative purposes, they had imagined. Land banking. He would try to get rid of that, too—eventually. Lai Jin retained most of the artwork he had collected, all his Zao Wou-Ki collection, and loaned these out to a small gallery with an eccentric owner, without specifying a return date. Lai Jin then set out in the red Audi sports car he had bought for Mei Xing’s last birthday, intending to drive himself to death. But when he reached Xiamen’s Tong’an Qu two and a half months later, he had stalled.

  * * *

  —

  Now.

  * * *

  —

  Fifteen years later, landfall made his stomach heave. Almost a day away from Kilindini Harbor, Mombasa, aboard the merchant vessel Qingrui, its captain, Lai Jin, stood scowling at the black-and-chrome satellite phone. A Voice had co-opted the powers of politics, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and geography to commandeer his ship. The inflection-free Shanghai Accent was as delicately tuned as a four-string lute, and just as precise. Now it asked him, “How will you transport two pairs of giraffes?”

  Lai Jin clenched his jaws at these red-tape conversations. Although he was saying yes, yes, yes to Shanghai Accent, he was also sifting inner words for a self-preserving way to say “fuck off.” He found himself listening to the man, stunned. Shanghai Accent explained how Lai Jin’s present itinerary not only mirrored the year, season, and moment of an ancient calamitous journey, but also coincided with the discovery and salvaging of wreckage from a Ming master ship, one of the few that had broken up in a storm off the western ocean six hundred years ago. “When fate throws a dagger at you, there are only two ways to catch it: by blade, or by handle,” Shanghai Accent quoted to Lai Jin. He went on to congratulate him for the convenience of his ship’s presence and the wisdom of his employer, who, understanding destiny’s convergence, had agreed to the use of ship as a “bridge” for the realization of a symbolic journey-memorial for the blighted Western Ocean voyage of the once-again great Admiral Zheng He.

  “There have been findings of import,” Shanghai Accent added. Relics from the lost ship, timber, crockery, jade pieces. “Including”—quiet—“a representative houyi!”

  Pause.

  Lai Jin understood that Shanghai Accent had hoped to hear him gasp, reflect excitement. Instead, his head ached and his thoughts remained stuck with the vision of tall, thick-lashed, spotted brown animals galloping aboard his commodities-bearing ship. Shanghai Accent spoke again. Did Lai Jin realize the honor of being the one chosen to return fragmented portions of Admiral Zheng He’s expedition—broken Ming crockery taken from East Africa back to the people of China?

  Lai Jin’s migraine turned into a buffeting squall. He tore at his pockets, digging for painkillers, as he cleared his throat, attempting resistance. “Might this auspicious re-enactment, sir, not unfold in a vessel, sir, that is more suitably outfitted—given that we shall, as previously arranged, sir, be also”—he improvised—“traveling with passengers? Didn’t the employer explain this? No? Ah! Perhaps this prestigious undertaking belongs to a grander vessel, sir, and should involve a far worthier personage than myself, sir?”

  Shanghai Accent sounded cross. “Of course I will be in Xiamen to meet the ship Qingrui.” A pause. “Qingrui?” An irritated sound. “That is not an adequate name.”

  Lai Jin held his tongue, squirming. He could not depend on his employer for anything. They would sacrifice him to shrimp gods if it meant profit and prestige. He listened to Shanghai Accent lifting metaphors from vats of misty legend—dragons, mulberry trees, tigers, persimmon fruits, jade wheels, and nine drops of smoke. Lai Jin pinched his brows. Giraffes? His head throbbed. His ship juddered. What would he tell his crew? That history had called them? Would they merely snort, or would they topple over, consumed by guffaws?

  Lai Jin grunted. Now that he had lied about it, he was obliged to find passengers to present as evidence of the inconvenience of this proposition. What a mess. The MV Qingrui was a cargo ship, a bulk carrier. If he, Lai Jin, had wanted to carry passengers, he would have worked on a cruise ship. He hadn’t. He had needed to be left alone with his thoughts and his sea. He had fought to gain the sea: Shanghai Maritime University, a stint in Singapore, working his way up to ship captaincy. He liked his cargo. Cargo neither spoke nor required entertainment. Cargo was simple. He rubbed the band of sweat on his forehead. It stimulated a perverse impulse. “What’s the extra pay?” He already knew the answer. It was confirmed by the silence emanating from the other end of the phone, exuding disapproval and disappointment.

  Waiting. Which silence would outlast the other? Lai Jin, now a cog in a wheel, crumbled first. He asked about “the Descendant” and its expected needs.

&nb
sp; Her, corrected Shanghai Accent. Underlined. “Our houyi.”

  Lai Jin choked. Crushed, he asked, “The giraffes?”

  Shanghai Accent seemed to have forgotten about these. “The…giraffes?”

  A compromise to water deities. No giraffes, and he would take on the human. He thought of his ship and its layout. Spartan and steel. A solitary man’s stark realm. Where would he insert a “Descendant”?

  * * *

  —

  The MV Qingrui was an even ship. White with red stripes, fifty-four meters, her name painted in black. Today she was also flying the Kenyan flag, a tribute to her target harbor. She was the main reason he stayed on this job. She was his lucky ship, a container-carrying box with a single-decker hold. With her hard-coated bottom tanks, she had been imagined by the ocean and for the ocean. Since the advent of slow steaming—lower fuel costs—she traveled at twenty-three knots at her fastest. Lai Jin preferred slow travel. His employers did not. Though he was not a man subject to fantasies, Lai Jin was sure that his ship was imbued with a playful and courageous spirit. She met colossal waves by anticipating the ocean’s next moves. She protected her crew and cargo. She always made her destination. If Lai Jin could love anything now in this world, it was the MV Qingrui.

  * * *

  —

  Foghorns at dawn. Mombasa presented itself as a gold-orange sprawl, witness to the long history of human arrivals and exits. Lai Jin slowed down his approach. Trepidation swirled inside him. His memories suffered on land; his nightmares were elemental and more defined. They revealed a Lai Jin who was a prisoner to unending longing. They emerged from abysses that lured him with illusions of a still-living Mei Xing, so that waking also ripped open old scars of anguish. In most ports, if he did not remain on his ship, he would wander the streets at night, hunting for the other shapes of solitude, drinks and food. With the light, he repaired to whatever lodgings he had in time for breakfast. Later, he would lie still in bed waiting for dusk. The night blurred everything. At night, he could dissolve into breath.

  [ 34 ]

  A tugboat that would escort the MV Qingrui to harbor offloaded a pilot whose eyes were half closed as he led the MV Qingrui into Kilindini Harbor. When the ship had anchored, her gangway and ladder were lowered to the quay on the starboard side. Soon a group of men—immigration officials, as well as bureaucrats from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Republic of Kenya—stepped on board with the ship’s agent, a monosyllabic man whom Lai Jin recognized from his previous year. His crew were in good hands.

  * * *

  —

  Lai Jin breathed in. Each port had a distinctive smell, as if the sea distilled the climate, hopes, and experiences of each place into a unique essence. Kilindini. Top note, earth, fire, moon flowers, and blood; middle note, salt, putrefying seaweed, and rust; bottom note, wood, twilight’s sun warmth, sweat. Fresh cadences, whirling emotions, a temple bell sprinkling high sounds, laughter from somewhere, and the call and response of at least seven different bird species. Containers, cranes, ships. The voices of stevedores. Lai Jin looked past these as the old burn wounds on his body stung like clotted memories being poked at. He looked to the cloud patterns. Mombasa’s heat seeped into him. Even though there was a salty, cooling breeze, Lai Jin was already sweating. He straightened his back and prepared to meet his hosts and exchange courtesies.

  Movement.

  Clang and clash of heavy cargo moving. Screamed-out warnings—“Kaa chonjo!” Exhortations—“Shime wenzangu!” Chant. A day and a half later, the wheat aboard the MV Qingrui was offloaded. Lai Jin waited for the consignment of tea and scrap iron that would much later be loaded for his return trip. Perhaps he might venture out in the day to slurp and savor black pekoe, the best of which formed the bulk of his return load. Curiosity. His country, the home of tea, sought tea’s great-great-grandchildren from distant places. He tasted teas to test how the flavor evolved after it left China.

  * * *

  —

  By two o’clock the next afternoon, an all-Chinese work team, supervised by an embassy official and a construction-company owner who was fluent in Kiswahili, took over the MV Qingrui. Lai Jin packed an attaché case and a clothes bag and slunk out of sight. In his anxiety to limit contact with the bureaucrats and builders, he only just remembered to let an officer in the harbor master’s office know that he urgently needed passengers.

  “How many?”

  “Four, five. What they pay—keep fifty percent. No questions.”

  The man’s smile—when it emerged, it glowed.

  * * *

  —

  Lai Jin resurfaced at the Nyali Beach Hotel. With a fountain pen filled with thick black ink, he attempted to summon the essence of Mei Xing, his beloved. On rice paper, lines, words, ink smudges, and tears. He waiting for a feeling, an image, a signpost to the chasm into which his wife and life had fallen. Sweat drops in in-between spaces. She had been the second person in life not to treat him as an aberration from the unspoken Han ideal. The first had been his mother, the ceramicist Nara, who had then given herself over to madness.

  * * *

  —

  Lai Jin was born in Tianjin, after two aborted girls. His father had wanted a son: it would boost his name and party standing. A son would compensate for an artistic wife who could neither serve the party diligently as a worker in its numerous agricultural schemes nor cook well. For Lai Jin, growing up meant living in the shadow company of his dead sisters and their devastated nonlives—ghosts to whom his mother increasingly deferred as she illicitly wove exquisite clay vessels to contain their always spilling souls. Until, one day, when he returned home from school, his mother was not there, and his father’s only comment to him was “Now she is gone.” Within a year, another woman, so much younger than his mother, entered their household. A skittish and dazzling being, she was kind to Lai Jin in public, but pinched him when they were alone. She inserted herself between Lai Jin and his father, so that she became the primary interpreter between them. To survive her, Lai Jin immersed himself in his studies, choosing to excel when he was not losing himself in imagining another life inside the ruins of his vanished mother’s clay-making kingdom—a creaking wheel, its crumbling kiln, half-done pottery. There he could retreat to a bright-blue imaginary sea of goodness, love, and beauty. When Lai Jin was twelve, to his dismay, the family moved to Guangzhou in Guangdong. His stepmother let him know often that his father’s promotion to a higher party position was blocked because he, Lai Jin—an interloper, like his mother—existed. She called him “Nikkei.” It wounded his heart: because of his looks and height, his identity was often questioned. The woman told him to return to Japan by jumping from a bridge. “Kamikaze, save your father,” she goaded. He focused on doing really well in his exams. His father sent him first to Hong Kong, to acquire English and an initial degree, and then to Montreal, Canada, to secure the world and a Western passport. But he was so homesick that he returned after only four months. On his plane home, he met Mei Xing, who would, in the space of three weeks, become his wife. She was from Beijing, but had lived in Canada for seven years with her mother, who had fled there on the tail end of a scandal. This, the imagined dishonor such an alliance brought to the Lai name, coupled with the fact of a new three-year-old son positioned as heir by the stepmother, broke the already fragile filial cords between Lai Jin and his parental home.

  * * *

  —

  Now.

  * * *

  —

  Sweat drops on a page, and a wild orange dusk in Mombasa. Three black crows cawing at his window peered at him as if they were relatives he should recognize. He watched them and they watched him. He blinked first.

  [ 35 ]

  Eleven days after his Mombasa arrival, Lai Jin returned dockside and made his way along the quay. He halted, and stared at the hulk in front of him for a long, long time.
There was his ship. Slowly, his fingers rose to prop his chin. He was unaware that his skin had reddened and his eyes glowed. Perhaps half an hour later, the harbor master’s deputy sidled up to study the vessel with him. After five minutes, the man cleared his throat. “Captain, sir, pardon me.”

  Lai Jin turned and bowed to the short, round brown man. “Captain,” the man said in a confiding tone and tapped a finger at pictograms on an official seeming stamped sheet of paper, “is 清瑞 the same as 国龙?”

  Lai Jin glanced at the paper, and back at his ship. What could he say? He reread his ship’s new name. 国龙, Guolong: Dragon of the Nation, framed against dark clouds. He reflected on the man’s question, flirted with the truth. Retreated. He could take refuge in dissembling—I do not understand, he might say. For harmony’s sake, to reduce the bureaucratic quibbling, he would slash and burn a version of English. Code-switch camouflage—when convenient, conform to others’ uncertainties about you.

  Lai Jin answered, “Many names, same names, same heart, same emotion.” He looked at the man and nodded. “Same ship.” But he sighed inwardly. Guolong? Really? Was there no other stereotype of China to amplify? Dragon of the Nation? His light-spirited ship? A tic pulsed above Lai Jin’s eye. He hoped the idiots involved had also taken care of the paperwork.

  Golden sun-fringed storm clouds spread over the harbor. “Rain,” noted the harbor master’s deputy.