The Language of Solitude

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  He pulled his tape recording of what the astrologer had said out of his bag, put it on the table, and wondered what to do with it.

  Mr. Leibovitz, I’m warning you.

  With regard to the future, Master Wong had at first spoken at length about what his Chinese clients were always most interested in: the financial outlook for the coming months. Paul’s prospects on this front were not bright, but there was also no cause for special concern, though he was strongly advised not to make any high-risk investments that year. What the astrologer said was not very relevant to him, for he had invested his money in secure fixed-interest bonds; the income they yielded was not high, but he lived modestly, and it covered his needs. He had not touched his backup account for extraordinary expenses and emergencies in three years.

  Wong had suddenly hesitated after that. He had made further calculations, flicked through two more volumes, and frowned as though he himself could not believe his own findings. He finally leaned back in his chair, peered over his glasses at Paul, crossed his arms across his chest, and said nothing for a long time.

  Mr. Leibovitz, I’m warning you.

  The principles of his profession forbade him to say everything that the constellations of stars told him. He would waive his fee under these special circumstances. Paul could go now.

  Paul hesitated for a few seconds that seemed endless to him. He thought about the story of Oedipus and the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy. But then he immediately felt annoyed by that thought; it meant that he was giving this man’s prophecy far too much importance. Of course he wanted to know everything—what he would do with the knowledge was another story altogether. He sat up straight in his chair and said that he had come to hear what the future held for him; he was a person who could deal with bad news—there had been enough of that in his life.

  Wong looked at him intently. No.

  In the end, it was Paul’s stubborn refusal to leave the office before he had heard everything, or, more important, the determination he was displaying, that changed the astrologer’s mind.

  Listen to these sentences that I am trusting you with. They are only meant for your ears. Be careful with what you are hearing.

  You will . . .

  Three short sentences. Nothing more. An oracle that Paul had no idea what to do with. He had not believed any other prophecies before, but now he could not deny that he felt unsettled, no matter how hard he tried.

  The biggest problem was Christine. She would ask questions. She would want to know what Master Wong had said, but she was not allowed to know. On no account. She would feel that her worst fears had been confirmed and reduce their contact to a minimum. He would have to calm her down with a plausible story. The prospect of having to lie to her made him feel even more uneasy.

  He picked up the cassette and fingered it. It was tiny; one stamp of the heel on it would suffice. Or should he keep it, the way Christine kept hers? What for? He would not forget what he had heard about his future. He drank a mouthful of beer, used a toothpick to pull the brown tape out of the cassette, and unspooled it all. He grabbed the bundle of tape, got up, and threw it all in the trash can with the remains of his meal.

  III

  * * *

  The letter lay between bills from PCCW Mobile and Hong Kong Electric. Christine marveled at the handwriting. Elegant, swooping script in black ink, written with a fine brush, more a piece of calligraphy than a mere address. No name or return address. She did not know anyone who could write such beautiful Chinese characters. The stamp: People’s Republic of China. She tensed. The first glimmering, which she ignored. She decided to open the envelope anyway.

  My dear Mei-mei,

  Little sister. Her hands trembled. She lowered the piece of paper.

  Her brother was dead. Had died forty years ago. Of starvation. Of thirst. Or had dropped dead in a paddy field. Because his young body had not been able to bear the hardships of the harvest any longer. A victim of the Cultural Revolution. One of millions. Sent to the countryside when he was fourteen to learn from the farmers. By the command of a paranoid Great Chairman, whom nobody had dared to contradict. A sickly, weak young boy, ordered to go to the mountains of Sichuan Province because his father was said to belong to the clique of intellectuals. He had disappeared after that. He had no chance. How often had Christine heard those words from her mother’s mouth when she was a child? Long Long is dead. He had no chance.

  Everything rushed back in an instant: The warm and humid fall day in 1968. The flurry of loud footsteps in the hallway. The hysterical voices. The splintering of the door kicked in by the Red Guards. The fear of death on her father’s face. Her brother, where was her brother? Why was he not with them? She did not see him in this picture. She saw her mother, the gaunt woman in her faded Mao suit. The terror on her face. She saw herself. Cowering under the table. The little girl who closed her eyes but opened them again, frightened and curious. Two, three quick, heavy steps. Her father perched on the windowsill. Like a big fat crow that was on the verge of spreading its wings. He jumped before she could grab him. The silence after.

  An accident. That was the official version. Until today.

  Soon after that, her brother was made to go to the countryside. A few months later, she and her mother escaped to Hong Kong. They swam until they had no more strength. Three of the people in their small group drowned. Coincidence saved them. Or fate, or the stars. Their time had not come yet, her mother later claimed. She had heard her pray in the water. She had not heard anything more about her brother since that time.

  Who dared address her as little sister? She turned the page. On the reverse was his name: Wu Da Long. Big Dragon.

  My dear Mei-mei,

  How should I begin this letter? After so many years. You probably thought I was dead. And I was, or as good as. A slow dying, witnessed by an entire village. No longer one of the living, not yet one of the dead. A young girl brought me back. She is still my wife today. But I don’t want to say too much about myself. I have started to chatter away like an old woman.

  Do you remember me at all? They used to call me Long Long. But you were not even born yet. Later on you learned to walk holding my hand. You were so little. But healthy. I was always sick. A nimble girl with a parting in your hair, straight as a bamboo rod, two braids, right and left. That is how I picture you. What do you look like now? Would we recognize each other if we were face to face?

  What has happened to you? Are you married?

  Do you have a child? You wanted to be a doctor when you were a little girl. A barefoot doctor. They used to walk from village to village in the countryside back then, helping the sick. You admired them very much. I’m sure you have fulfilled your dream though perhaps not visiting your patients barefoot.

  You are probably asking yourself why so many years had to pass before I wrote you this letter. And you are right to do so. There are, I assure you, many reasons. I will explain them to you when, if, we meet again. For that is the request that this letter brings: I would like to see you. As soon as possible. I am lucky to be in good health now but who knows how much time anyone has left? Apart from that, I now also—and I do not want to hide that from you in this letter—find myself in the most serious difficulty, through no fault of my own. To be clear: I need help, urgently. Time is not on my side. You wish to know what this is all about? I understand. Unfortunately the situation is so complicated that I cannot explain it to you in a letter or on the phone. Since it is impossible for me to travel, I must ask you, though I do so reluctantly, to come to me. I live about three hours away from Shanghai. I have a son, Xiao Hu, and a daughter, Yin-Yin, in Shanghai. Yin-Yin will meet you at the airport and bring you to us. She knows about this letter, and she will be very happy, I need hardly say, to get to know her aunt. She is a good girl. She is studying music at the conservatory and will soon sit for her final exams. I know that this must all come as a great surprise to you. I am asking a lot. I can do no more at the moment than to ask for y
our understanding.

  A final question: Is Mother still alive? If she is, which I of course hope with all my heart, then I beg you not to tell her about this letter. The joy at the news that I am alive would be clouded by worries about my plight.

  I very much hope that this letter has not given you a shock.

  Will I hear from you soon?

  Ge-Ge

  Da Long

  Then came an address and Yin-Yin’s phone number.

  Ge-ge. Big brother. Christine put the letter to one side. She picked up the envelope again, opened it once more, sniffed it, and ran her fingers over it. As though the folded paper could do what the words could not: bring her brother closer to her. While reading the letter, her agitation had given way to a strange feeling of inner peace. She was not sure if she could trust it.

  Who was the man who had written these lines? Her brother? Probably, for who else in China could know the details of her childhood? But who was this person? What bound him to her?

  She searched herself for an emotion. Was she happy? Touched? Feeling affectionate? What she found instead was a jumble of thoughts.

  I need help, urgently. Her first thought was that he needed money. He was turning to his family after forty years because he needed money. Since it is impossible for me to travel. What did he expect from her? That she would take the next plane to Shanghai and hand him a briefcase full of banknotes? Why had she and her mother not heard from him for years? Why had he left them to believe that he was dead? Christine felt herself becoming angry. He would explain everything to her. She did not know if she wanted to hear his reasons.

  Did she have a choice? To ignore the letter would be impossible. She could reply and ask him to explain himself. She could put him off. Or write to him and tell him that she was not a doctor, not living in a villa with an ocean view, but the manager of a pathetic little travel agency and did not know how she would pay the interest on her mortgage some months. Christine sensed that she had no feeling for how much obligation she had toward him.

  She had no experience of sisterly love. It had been a long time since she had thought about him at all. He had become a stranger. In order to make up her mind, she had to meet him, and there was only one place in Hong Kong where that was possible: the Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate.

  * * *

  The MTR station was full of people. All of them seemed to have a destination in mind, and were rushing toward the exits or the trains. Christine hesitated. When had she last been here? It must have been years ago. She had sometimes felt the desire to show her son this place, but had not been able to bring herself to do it. She looked across the platform and the train tracks to the apartment blocks. From here, they looked harmless, if not inviting. A dozen fifteen-story buildings, clad in blue-green concrete rather than multicolored tiles, with small windows. A housing project built in the early 1960s for the never-ending stream of refugees from China.

  She took the stairs, not the escalator. It was important that she relive every moment.

  She walked through an alley crowded with shops and restaurants and was soon at the bottom of one of the apartment blocks. Bare gray concrete walls, white fluorescent strip lighting on the ceiling, and wide stairs.

  She climbed up to the fourth floor slowly. The corridors to the apartments led off to the left and right of the stairs, where the front doors were. She wanted to visit a small girl who had lived here for six years with her mother. In apartment number 444. An unlucky number that no one else had wanted. Mother had lacked the strength or the courage to ask for another.

  Six years. In one hundred square feet. Four of them. Mother, daughter, a fat black crow that could not fly, and a ghost.

  It had grown quiet. She heard a television and a radio, nothing else. She took a couple of steps toward the darkness. The doors had metal grilles in front of them. The stillness was unnerving. Christine inhaled and exhaled deeply. She walked farther into the darkness. The corridor must be six hundred feet long. Six hundred steps for a small child. She felt nausea rising. That was then. This is now. She repeated those words like a mantra until she was standing in front of apartment number 444. Someone had installed an iron grille in front of the door. It was ajar.

  “Hello?” The silence swallowed her voice.

  She knocked. No reply.

  Christine opened the door gingerly. The room was unoccupied. Swept clean. Light cast by the streetlamps shone dimly through the window. The emptiness of the space made it even more unsettling—it made room for images she did not want to see.

  A bunk bed fit in there. A foldaway table, on which she always caught her fingers, two collapsible stools, a couple of cardboard boxes. Their things were in plastic bags that hung from two washing lines strung across the room.

  They were never on their own. They heard their neighbors’ every word. Every quarrel, every crude expression, every mean word. Every tender one.

  Her mother did not say much. It was as though she had left her voice in China. And her laugh. All of them had left something behind, and none of them spoke about it.

  Sometimes she heard her mother sigh. She did not know why. Initially she thought it was because of her. She tried her best. The sighing grew more infrequent with time, but it never stopped completely.

  Once she found a photo of her brother under her mother’s pillow. Then she knew.

  Most of the neighbors’ rooms were bigger: 130, 160, or 200 square feet. Families with many children lived in them. The corridors were crammed with closets, chests of drawers, and boxes. Next to them sat children doing their homework while the elderly huddled in the rooms and played mahjong. It was often unbearably hot and humid. The air stayed still in the buildings even when all the windows and doors were open.

  She had never heard anyone complain. People who had never known running water were happy to have a faucet, even if they had to share it with a dozen other families. People who had come from shacks and huts had no expectations. The refugees were the ones who had gotten off lightly; they needed very little.

  Suddenly she remembered the candy man. Apartment 411. His blue shorts, on which you could see every stain. Especially the white ones. His pale legs and his sweat-soaked undershirt. One of the fingers on his left hand was missing, and he had a few teeth missing as well, though he wasn’t old. Sometimes he gave the children candy. Wonderfully sweet, chewy candy that stuck to your teeth. But they still didn’t like him. He was always in the places you didn’t expect him to be. Especially in the dark. Buildings with too many nooks and crannies. Stairwells that were too dark for children’s eyes. Corridors too long for kids’ legs.

  Once he came into her room with a bag of candy in his hand. He smiled. The gaps in his teeth looked like little caves. He was wearing his sweaty undershirt.

  Where is your mother? he asked.

  She’s at work.

  So late?

  She works even later. It was the truth, and it was the wrong answer. She saw it in his eyes. They shone in a way that was wrong, totally wrong.

  He bolted the door and switched off the light. He asked if she was frightened.

  No, she lied.

  He walked up to her and stood next to her. She could smell his undershirt and hear him breathing above her. A hot, excited breath that stank of cigarette smoke and, though she did not know it at the time, lust.

  Open your mouth, he said, and she opened her mouth. A wonderfully sweet and chewy piece of candy slid in.

  He was silent and she sucked the candy.

  He took her hand and put something in it. A piece of flesh, soft and heavy. He moved her hand. It grew. In her hand. It grew hard and hot and moist.

  He had a paper tissue with him and he wiped her hand clean. When he went, he put three candies on the table. These are for you, she heard him say in the darkness.

  She threw up only after he had gone.

  The stink and the stains. Her mother would not fail to notice them both. She must never find out what had happened. She wiped the ta
ble and mopped the floor in the whole room and crept into bed behind the cardboard boxes.

  She lay mute in bed when her mother came home. Waited for her scream. She would see what had happened. As though the candy man were still standing next to her. As though his hot, excited breath that stank of cigarette smoke and lust still filled the room.

  But the sounds were the same as usual. Her mother’s sighs of exhaustion. Water boiling, the clatter of a teacup. Then she heard the sound of candy being sucked, and she retched again.

  Her mother worked as a seamstress in a factory in Kowloon Bay. In the weeks that followed, whenever her mother was working the late shift or overtime, Christine found it more and more intolerable to have to go to bed on her own, so she walked to the big factory gate and waited there. Hearing the hum of four hundred sewing machines on the other side of the wall, she settled into a squatting position under the streetlamp. Streetlights were bright and kept away bad dreams. And sweating men. In the glare of the lights she fell asleep. She woke to the sound of her mother scolding her. What was she thinking? Sleeping on the street. Much too dangerous.

  They had lived a nonlife. Mother and daughter, almost suffocated by unshed tears. Unspoken words. Unlived grief.

  She had yearned for a big brother then. So much that it hurt. Not one who lay under her mother’s pillow as a photograph. She had imagined how he would turn up at the door one day and say: Hello, Mei-mei, I’m here again. A strong and powerful young man, someone the blue shorts would be afraid of.

  He had been a constant presence with them for the first few years. But not after that. The memories faded like a scrap of cloth in the sun. The stretches of time when she no longer thought about him grew longer and longer. Weeks, months, years. He disappeared without leaving any traces. As though she had never had a brother.