The Language of Solitude

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  “I cook a little,” Paul said modestly. He had understood her intention; he picked up a menu. “Would it be all right with you if I ordered for us?”

  Christine’s mother inclined her head in assent.

  Paul consulted with the waitress, perused the menu, and ordered steamed fish, stir-fried vegetables with sun-dried shrimp from Tai O, fresh oyster patties, tofu, and chicken feet.

  Wu Jie nodded her head approvingly.

  “When will you be marrying my daughter?”

  “But, Mama! That’s enough. I don’t even know . . .” But Christine received only a dismissive wave of the hand in response. She wondered if she should start an argument, but her mother would not understand that. They were not sitting here to have a pleasant and enjoyable evening together. Paul was being interrogated to see if he was up to scratch as a future son-in-law, and Christine was a mere extra in her mother’s drama. Of course Christine would decide for herself; she would have Paul’s child and live with him even if her mother was against it. But Wu Jie’s approval would make life easier. As long as she was alive, Christine was her daughter, with all the duties and restrictions that were part of the role.

  “As soon as I have consulted an astrologer and have been given an auspicious date,” Paul said, interrupting her thoughts. Christine cast him a look of gratitude, which he responded to with his wonderfully impish smile.

  “You believe in Chinese astrology?” Wu Jie asked, surprised.

  “Sometimes. But I think it can’t do any harm.”

  Christine’s mother laughed. That was the kind of pragmatic thinking that she liked. We Chinese, she liked to say, have four kinds of religion: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Pragmatism. The last was her favorite.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “I’m afraid they have both passed away.”

  “How often do you visit their graves?”

  “They are in New York, unfortunately. But of course I have a small altar in my house. I put fresh bananas and apples, my parents’ favorite fruits, in front of it every day. I light a couple of incense sticks in the morning.”

  “Good, good,” she murmured approvingly. “Did you have a good relationship with them?”

  “An excellent one. I loved them very much.”

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “Nieces? Nephews? Cousins?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Uncles? Aunts?” Wu Jie asked, staring at him in disbelief.

  “No, I’m sad to say.”

  Christine flinched once again. A man with no family. A lonely person. In her mother’s eyes there could hardly be a worse punishment. That would either make her feel deeply suspicious—what had Paul done to deserve such a fate?—or very sympathetic. The expression on her face did not betray which way she was leaning.

  “Do you play mahjong?” she asked, suddenly.

  “Yes, I enjoy it very much, but I’m not very good.”

  The waitress brought their fish; within a few seconds, Christine’s mother had put a large piece on Paul’s plate and taken a helping for herself. Some of her fish disappeared into her mouth with a slurp; she chewed at it with enjoyment and spat a few bones out on her plate. Two waiters brought the chicken feet, the tofu, and the vegetables to the table. Christine’s mother’s gaze rested contentedly on one dish after the other.

  Christine suspected that in her mother’s eyes, everything of importance had been said. She watched her helping herself to the food with astonishingly deft movements, sitting slightly hunched over her plate, finally silent, deep in thought, sucking at a chicken claw with smacking noises. Despite the embarrassing questions her mother had asked, she felt full of respect and affection for her. Christine was not sure if Paul understood that, or could ever understand that. She owed her life to this brusque old woman with so little charm, who ate so noisily. Twice over. At least. Wu Jie had given birth to her. She had dragged her to the border and jumped into the sea with her. She had let Christine cling to her shoulders in the water when she ran out of strength. She had worked at the factory in Kowloon until her hands bled and her eyes and back were ruined, in order for her daughter to go to a good school. She had paid for the college fees in Vancouver with her meager savings.

  Christine realized that it would be impossible for her to move to Lamma without her mother. The journey to Hang Hau was too long and troublesome. Her responsibilities as a daughter did not permit her to leave her mother there, not even for the sake of Paul and the child they were having together. He would understand. She hoped.

  And her mother? One of the few proverbs that she remembered her saying was, “Some catch fish; others only cloud the water.” She claimed that whether a person was one or the other was not to be decided by their words but by their deeds. And only time would tell on that count.

  If Christine was interpreting her mother’s behavior correctly, Paul had been granted that time.

  XV

  * * *

  You will give life.

  You will take life.

  You will lose life.

  The astrologer’s words. Three simple sentences that he did not want to believe. What could the stars know about us? The first prophecy had come true; Paul wished he could shout, “And what about it?” But Master Wong’s words went around and around in his head; they followed him no matter where his thoughts went. He had given life. Did that mean that he would also take life? Whose life? For what reason? It could be only by accident. Could he do anything to prevent it? And what did the third sentence mean? You will lose life? His own? The astrologer had not said that. Christine’s? Their child’s?

  Paul could not sit still any longer. He walked to the stern of the ferry and looked at the murky water of the harbor, in which the harsh sunlight was reflected. From the door to the engine room came the thud of the diesel motor. There were three schoolboys in front of him, totally absorbed in pressing their Game Boy buttons. The Lamma butcher was leaning against the opposite railing and greeted him with a nod; there was a frozen side of pork in a wheelbarrow next to him.

  Wong had told Christine that a man would enter her life. And that this man would not survive this year. If she were to give birth to a son, would he . . . How absurd; how ridiculous speculative thoughts like these sounded. He was embarrassed by them; he would never dare to speak these conjectures aloud. But still, they occupied his thoughts and made him feel uncertain.

  The ferry docked at Yung Shue Wan with a hefty shudder; the wooden bollards creaked loudly with the pressure from the vessel. He walked slowly down the pier and bought fruit, vegetables, rice, and fresh tofu from Mrs. Ma, a bottle of wine from Mr. Li, and made his way toward Tai Peng. After a few steps he heard nothing apart from the twitter of birds, the rasp of the cicadas, a child’s voice now and then, and the clatter of pots and pans every so often.

  At home, he attended to his garden first of all. Since his return from Shanghai, he had not been able to spend time on it. The terrace was strewn with small twigs, leaves, and wilted petals. He had to prune the bougainvillea urgently, and pull a couple of dead stems away from the bamboo, as well as pluck the mottled brown leaves from the potted plants. He started to work, hoping that the sweeping, plucking, and cutting would distract him.

  When he had finished his work in the garden, he cleaned the house thoroughly, had a simple dinner of soup, and went online to read the news and to check his emails.

  Subject: testing

  Received: 11:25

  He did not recognize the sender. He wondered if he should delete the message without reading it, but after a moment’s hesitation, he opened it.

  testing!

  hi paul,

  just checking if our email connection works. have you arrived safely in hong kong?

  would be glad to hear from you.

  greetings from changle lu,

  yin-yin

  Paul had left Shanghai four days ago; he had to admit that he had not given Yin
-Yin, Da Long, or Min Fang much thought since then. Christine’s pregnancy left very little room for other thoughts. Paul felt too exhausted to write a long email. His reply consisted of a few pleasantries and a promise to write more soon.

  The next morning he went up to Justin’s room after breakfast. He opened the door carefully, as though he were afraid of waking someone from his sleep. Paul had kept the room all white: the wooden floor, the walls, the ceiling. There was a white bed in the middle with a white mosquito net over it; the net was swaying gently in the breeze. The sun cast the shadows of bamboo leaves on the walls. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. Silence. He noticed a fine layer of dust on the floor and the shelves. Would he be able to bear seeing another child playing between these four walls? Hearing it laugh? What to do with Justin’s rubber boots and jacket in the hall? With the door frame which he had dismantled from the previous apartment and installed here, because the many markings on it showed how his son had grown?

  To follow beauty into its hiding place, even when it was only a recollection that lay deep in the labyrinth of his memory, was so painful that he could hardly bear it. To forget would be betrayal. Forgetting was tantamount to death.

  Paul suddenly doubted his own words.

  Was there enough room inside him? Could a child grow up with a brother who was always present but also never there?

  Paul did not have the answer, neither to this question nor to the many others that had presented themselves to him since he had found out that he was expecting a child. Was he too old to become a father once more, at fifty-three? Probably. How was it all to work on a practical level? He hadn’t the faintest idea. Where were they to live? In Hang Hau, with four or five of them living in five hundred square feet on the twelfth floor? Unimaginable. Was there enough space in his house for the four of them, at least?

  * * *

  We are old enough to trust our intuition.

  What had his inner voice replied? That he wanted this child; that it was a gift that he could not refuse. Not for anything. Despite everything. He had heard it immediately, loud and impossible to misunderstand: an irrational, passionate yes that stood in the face of all doubts and considerations.

  When he went online that evening to read the New York Times, he saw a new message from Yin-Yin in his mailbox. Paul scanned the email.

  Subject: ???

  Received: 9:48

  hi paul,

  thank you for the quick reply. glad you are well :-)

  i’m not too good, though. sleeping badly. playing badly. my mind is elsewhere. mozart and mendelssohn aren’t taking it too well, nor is johann sebastian by the way (not bach! ;-))

  went to see chen the lawyer again yesterday. couldn’t get what he said about the internet out of my head. he encouraged me. the internet, he said, was like david’s sling in the twenty-first century. no idea what he means by that, but it sounded good. he thinks that the risk to me is minimal if i go to a small internet café and make sure i stay anonymous. i mustn’t tell anyone at all about it. no one should be able to tell from the posting who wrote it. what do you think? will it work? of course there’s always a risk, there’s no guarantee. tomorrow my brother returns from hangzhou. i’ll wait and see what he says. will be in touch then.

  yin-yin

  The brevity of electronic messages was anathema to him. He printed out the email, read it thoroughly one more time, and wrote a short reply.

  Subject: Encouragement

  Hi Yin-Yin,

  Thank you for your message. I agree with Chen that the Internet is your best chance. (Do you really not know the story of David versus Goliath?)

  It shouldn’t be a problem to keep what you write on the Internet anonymous. I’ll help you with that, if you like. You can send it to me anytime and I would be happy to revise it, if that were even necessary.

  I wouldn’t hope for much from the discussions in Hangzhou. Don’t let your brother put you off!

  Look forward to hearing from you.

  Warmest good wishes from Lamma,

  Paul

  Shortly after he had sent the email off, Christine rang to tell him once more how unpleasant she had found her mother’s behavior and questions at dinner, and how sorry she was about it all.

  He had found her mother neither rude nor hostile. He had seen a woman whom life had taken a lot from and given very little to, who was too old to bother with pleasantries. A mother who was concerned for her daughter and her grandchildren; he had found nothing to dislike in her brusque but honest manner. But under no circumstances did he want to share a home with her. She couldn’t stay on in Hang Hau though; Christine wouldn’t allow that. But to live under one roof with her? That would work for a couple of weeks. At most. She would have to move into a small apartment nearby or, better still, to Yung Shue Wan, at the bottom of the hill. It was a fifteen-minute walk to them from there. Uphill.

  At the dinner, he had been astounded by Christine more than by her mother. The woman whom he loved, the forty-three-year-old single mother who owned a travel agency and supported her family, had turned in the blink of an eye into a good Chinese daughter who found it difficult to disagree with anything. He had seen from her eyes and her body language how embarrassing she had found her mother’s questions, but the respect she had for her mother had stopped her from protesting, let alone asking her mother to be silent. Not in public. Not in front of someone who was not yet part of the family. A stranger. That was all he was that evening. The way the conversation had developed had reminded him of a fact that he had successfully pushed aside in the last few days: with the birth of their child he would become part of a Chinese family, regardless of whether he and Christine got married. He would be giving himself over to a dense tangle of duties and responsibilities, rules, and rituals from which it would be difficult to extricate himself. His happiness would depend on whether he was able to do that.

  Two days later he found two emails from Yin-Yin in his inbox.

  Subject: ???

  Received: 0:59

  hi paul,

  just a quick email before i go to bed. my brother has returned from his party conference. he didn’t accomplish anything regarding our case. apparently a few cases are being investigated at the sanlitun factories. he is annoyed and disappointed. he says we must be patient. we cannot do anything while there are still no results from the investigations. he still doesn’t think it’s a good idea to file a lawsuit or to put something on the internet. he says we can’t win against the party. i say it’s not that i want to win against the party. i’m not fighting the party at all, politics don’t interest me. have never interested me. papa and i just want the people who poisoned the lake and who are responsible for mama’s illness and the sickness of others in the village to be punished. he’s always talking about the “new” china, i said to him, surely that can’t just be about new buildings, new bridges, new highways, and new factories, can it? in the “new” china it must surely be possible for those who are guilty of crimes to be brought to justice. otherwise all this “new” stuff means nothing to me because it is so miserably similar to the “old.” he grew quite subdued. i had never seen him that way before. i was right, he said (i have no idea when i last heard him say that), but we were not at that stage yet. at some point in the future it would happen, he was sure of it. did i really hear that? at some point in the future!!! justice is either important or it is not. if it is not, then i won’t need it at some point in the future either; if it is, then why not today, here and now? he said he thought i had spent too much time with you, which infuriated me as though i couldn’t have those opinions myself.

  i’m going to sit down now and simply write down everything that we know, saw or heard and found out. then i’ll send you what i’ve written and maybe you can add to it. as soon as it is ready i’ll put it online.

  by the way, I have postponed an audition for the symphony orchestra. i’m not in the right state of mind for it at the moment and i wouldn’t get a thir
d chance.

  would be great to hear from you or see you in shanghai again.

  feeling alone.

  yours,

  yin-yin

  Subject: sanlitun text

  Received: 3:44

  hi paul,

  i’m attaching what i’ve written about my mother, our village, and sanlitun. took longer than i thought, even writing it was painful. i’m so angry that it does me good to write it all down. showed it to my roommate lu. she is so horrified that she wishes she could send an email to sanlitun straightaway, to the mayor of yiwu too, and most of all to our prime minister wen jiabao or the whole politburo at once. please correct or add to the document as you see fit.

  i am a bit nervous. i’m not a hero, definitely not. i just want to help my father. I say to myself: what could happen?

  Yin-Yin

  Paul sat on the terrace with a pot of tea and a bowl of lychees. He opened the attached document with a sense of misgiving, skimmed through it, and was reassured immediately. It was fantastic. All the facts and descriptions were correct and it was written in a matter-of-fact tone, yet the story of Min Fang’s illness was so movingly told that even he was filled with rage all over again, even at this distance. He could not imagine anyone reading it being unmoved. He read it a second time, looking for places where Yin-Yin might have given clues to her identity; here too, she had done excellent work. It was clear to see that the writer of the piece knew the village well, but nothing else was evident. Yin-Yin’s transformation since the first conversation he had had with her about the cause of her mother’s illness was astounding. He marveled at the perseverance and persistence with which she was now driving things forward.

  Paul went into the house, printed out the document, made a few changes, and replied to Yin-Yin.

  Subject: Sanlitun crimes

  Hi Yin-yin,

  Congratulations. Your piece works, it more than works. it cannot fail to be effective. I’ve suggested some changes, which I’m sending you in the attached document. Even though you don’t want to be a hero, you definitely have my respect. I find what you are doing remarkable.