Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

  “Sometimes it is easier to confide in a stranger.”

  Now my voice broke. “You are no stranger.” And, despite myself, a few tears escaped my eyes.

  Lukas took me in his arms then and I rested my head against his chest. He smelled of basil and ginseng and I felt the words his body said to mine: You are safe here. Everything will be all right. He whispered, “Why did you not come back to visit?”

  I sniffed and pulled away. I cocked my head toward the main house. “I was not welcome.”

  He didn’t meet my eyes, stared at the floor. “I—I wish I had someplace else you could have come back to.”

  For a moment, I was confused. Then I understood. “No. You did not choose an easy path and it made sense for you to stay with your parents. Jim’s parents gave us our apartment too, so it is not so different.”

  “I used to daydream about going to see you. I think that is what first made me want to travel,” he said in a low voice. “But by the time I was old enough, you were with Jim. I felt like I would be intruding on your life.”

  “That is ridiculous.” I shook my head, shedding the intimate, serious mood. “Come on, turn on the lights and show me around.”

  When he flicked on the track lighting, I was delighted to find the room arranged like a theater or movie set. There were no boring couches or oppressive sideboards. Long rolled-up backdrops leaned against the walls behind stacks of photography equipment. Lines of lights hung above us, angled in all directions like birds perched on a wire, covered with filters in yellow, blue, green. I picked up a small umbrella, opened it, and twirled like a girl in a black-and-white movie. “I love this.”

  I stepped over to a rack by the wall that was stuffed with silk scarves, Balinese sarongs, Indian saris, flapper dresses, and tuxedo jackets. I arched an eyebrow at him. “Cross-dress much?”

  He laughed. “All for photo shoots. I have to work, you know. He who sits on his butt must also sit on his blisters.” He led me to the back, where a wall had been erected next to the staircase, separating the last part of the garage space.

  “I built this myself.” As he stood by the doorway, I noticed that the two doors attached to either side of the wall had two separate sets of hinges. I swung one outward and the other inward. We entered and Lukas drew back a thick black curtain that ran across the length of the room, separating us from the inside.

  I made an appreciative noise in my throat. “A darkroom. I assume the second set of doors and curtains are so no one can walk inside and accidentally expose your film to the light. But who would come in here anyway?”

  “My parents, the cleaning lady. You.” He tossed a key chain at me. I caught it on reflex—the keys to the main house and to his place. “My spare set.”

  “I would not want to disturb your privacy.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Right. Who was it who never knocked when she came to my room? Who would not even let me go to the toilet without chatting away about something?” He mimicked in a high falsetto, “‘Pee later! This is important!’”

  I punched him in the arm. “I never did that. I am a very respectful person.”

  Lukas flicked on the red lightbulb attached to the ceiling. It turned him into a long ruby sculpture. The glow reminded me of the red light district in Amsterdam, where the lingerie-clad prostitutes stood lit up in windows. Suddenly, I was aware that the boy I had known had turned into a man and we were alone. I coughed, mortified by my thoughts. For goodness’ sake, he was my cousin. I could barely get out the words. “Could—could you please turn on the regular light?”

  He turned on the main lighting and then fanned his face. “Sorry, it stinks an hour in the wind here, heh?” Even though the windowless room was spotless, it still smelled of the strange and exotic chemicals stored inside the canisters and jugs that lined the shelves.

  I recovered quickly and moved away from him. “No, I sense invention and possibility.” How to change the subject? I gestured toward his long workbench and the three deep sinks. “I did not think anyone did darkroom work anymore. Is it not all digital these days?”

  Now a glow lit up his eyes. He ran his hand through his rumpled hair. “I am in love with imperfection. Some of my mistakes wind up being the most interesting work I have ever done. Come upstairs, I will show you.”

  We entered his living room and kitchen, which only consisted of a combination oven/microwave, a mini fridge, and a stovetop. A low coffee table that had lost one leg was propped up by thick art and photography books—Basquiat, Dorothea Lange, Mondrian, Jerry Uelsmann, Vermeer. There was a door at the other end of the room. I assumed it led to his bedroom and bathroom. Everything was as neat as Lukas’s room used to be. I was the one who had always rebelled against Helena by living as messily as possible.

  I snickered. “It is so bare here, a blind horse could do no damage.”

  Lukas barked out a laugh. “I do not have time to collect thingies.”

  I scanned his apartment again. “It feels more like a train station than a home. Like a stopping point before you arrive at your destination.”

  He sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled out a thick black portfolio, and started flipping through the photos. They were mostly in black and white. I plopped down beside him, looked over his shoulder, and stopped him at a page: the hands of a workingman, crusted with dirt, callused, cradling a tulip bulb. “I love this one.”

  He grimaced, rueful. “The client rejected it.” He tapped on the sheet beside it, which held a color photo of the farmer, cleaned and shaven, complete with a fake smile. “This is what they bought in the end. I keep this here to remind myself not to get too carried away when I am being paid by the client. I am a photojournalist. I should document, not dominate.”

  We paged through the warm-toned photos. They were almost three-dimensional with the depth of the developing he had done on them. I felt I could reach in and touch the images: a bat the size of a small dog hanging upside down with gleaming red eyes, a flamingo poised at sunrise, a child in rags peddling rice wrapped in leaves—and then his more commercial work: pouting models, tropical flowers and landscapes, all lush, colorful, filled with brilliance.

  “I do not know, Lukas,” I said. “You, the camera, the subject. They all become one in the photo. Maybe you need more of yourself in your work, not less.”

  Now his voice roughened, became more intimate. “I am fascinated by the way the process influences the result, the ways I can manipulate the images. A grain of dirt, a flash of light—I am crazy about the physicality of film. We are tangible beings. I revel in that.”

  On some, he had colored in the negatives or clipped out a little girl and transferred her so that her ghostly image floated above her father who had just tossed her in the air. From the girl’s angle, I could not tell if the man was poised to catch her in his arms again or if he had launched her into the great world. There were even a few shots of Lukas from his trip to South America last year. He stood knee-deep in water, wearing tall rubber boots, his teeth white in the midst of his unshaven face, holding a line with a fish with large teeth dangling from the end.

  I leaned closer to the image. “Is that a piranha?”

  “Our dinner that night. The river was filled with them.”

  “Bet you were glad for your boots. Who took the pictures of you?” I said, turning to another photo of him. Lukas smiling into the camera, a black spider monkey with one arm wound around his neck while licking its own fingers.

  “My guide wanted to try out my camera. I believe the monkey had found a flea in my hair and was very happy about eating it.”

  There was an old woman sitting in a ramshackle hut, her leathery skin illuminated by the weak flames in the tin can before her. A sheet filled with holes hung next to her and kept out the night, both serenity and struggle plain on her face. Then a faded Polaroid of me fell out. I took one look at my homely eight-year-old self and flipped it over. Some things I did not wish to remember.

  “What is this doing here?�
�

  “It was the first good portrait I ever took.”

  “You were always sneaking around with that Polaroid camera. Did you not get it for your birthday?” I had not been allowed to touch it. Even though Lukas did not mind, I had understood the difference between Lukas and me then, between blood and child companion. Film was expensive. I had never taken a single photo with it.

  He nodded. “Do you remember how the teacher made us sing that song for my birthday?”

  “It was horrible.” I still remembered the lyrics, sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You.”

  Hanky panky Shanghai

  Hanky panky Shanghai

  Hanky panky

  Hanky panky

  Hanky panky Shanghai

  How the Dutch people loved this song. They would stretch their eyes into long slits and move them back and forth as they sang. To make things worse: that teacher had been our favorite, a friendly woman with long red hair who fed us tea and caramel waffles when we behaved. In that moment, the gulf separating Lukas and me, the only nonwhite children in the group, from the rest of the class grew into an abyss. That space had always existed, I realized then, I had just not been aware of it. Lukas had scrunched his face into a scowl and looked at me. I had pressed my lips together, unsure what we could do to stop them.

  “Do not be shy,” the teacher said with her customary cheer. “Come up, sing along!”

  At our silence, she took us both by the arm and led us, humiliated, to the front of the room. “Okay, everyone together. Again.”

  The children obeyed. Lukas and I looked out over the classroom, surrounded by an ocean of singing pale heads.

  “You too,” she said, nodding at us. She clapped her hands in encouragement.

  Lukas wrapped his arms around his skinny frame and glowered. I burst into tears.

  “Oh, sweetie,” the teacher said. She felt my forehead. “Sit down, then. You must not be feeling well.” As Lukas and I slumped in our chairs, I heard her say to the student teacher with a shrug, “I thought they would enjoy it, something fun from their culture.”

  Now, Lukas said, “They still sing that song at children’s birthday parties, you know, to this very day. But a few years after you left, I went to the director and told her how racist it was and they never sang it at school again.”

  “You have changed, Lukas.” He had once been a quiet child, like me, and now he was this.

  “Yes and no. But I learned that if you do not speak, no one will ever hear you.”

  At that moment, my stomach rumbled so loudly we both jumped. Hiding a smile, Lukas said, “Okay, enough of this. Shall we go get you something to eat? You lied about the airplane food.” He stood and held out his hand to me.

  I let him drag me to my feet. “How did you know?” I stretched and groaned. It had been a long day.

  He was already headed for the doorway and said over his shoulder, “You paid for the ticket, right? You would never purchase first class for yourself. When we were little, I always ate all of my candy in five minutes, but you would still be munching away many days later. Despite your expensive clothing, you are frugal.”

  I used my haughty voice. “Oh? You are a fashion expert now?”

  He scratched his head. “Umm, no. But I saw your bag in a magazine I worked for. And your clothes seem very—” He was bounding down the stairs in front of me; his broad back barely fit in the narrow stairwell. He fluttered his arms in the air. “Fancy. But you buy them as a soldier collects weapons. In the end, you are practical. You would see flying first class as wasting money on yourself.”

  I flushed as red as a beet, happy his back was to me and he could not see it. He had it right. Indeed, I used those designer labels as armor, to communicate my status to my clients and colleagues, nothing more. I never indulged in extravagances just for myself.

  He continued, “Come on. We can go to the snack bar and stop by Estelle’s. She would love to see you. Maybe she has an old bicycle she can lend you.”

  We went outside and he wheeled a black bike out from underneath the carport. A gentle breeze tousled his hair.

  I whistled. “Now you are riding a lady’s bike?”

  “You are out of touch, Sylvie. It is hip for guys to be on grandma bikes nowadays. I am just being a modern man, although Estelle tells me I need to work on becoming more metrosexual.”

  I burst into a laugh as he climbed onto his bicycle and waited for me to hop onto the baggage rack behind him. It was just like old times. The metal was bumpier than I remembered but I held on, and as we swung off, Lukas pedaling hard, I leaned my shoulder against his strong back and breathed in the clear Dutch air.

  Chapter 11

  Amy

  Friday, May 6

  When my alarm clock rings the next morning, I am completely disoriented. Last night, sleep fell upon me like a concrete blanket. My body knows it is actually the middle of the night back home and fights my attempts to wake up; the weight of my limbs binds me to the coma-like darkness. I struggle and crack open my eyes. It takes a moment to realize I’m not in my own bed, or even my own country. This isn’t a nightmare. Sylvie’s missing. I grab my phone. Still no word. I close my eyes and clutch my cell to my chest. How can this be real?

  I haven’t seen Helena and Willem since they left for work yesterday. I understand they are generally home in the mornings and gone until late in the night, returning after their restaurant has closed. They work through the weekends and their free days are Monday and Tuesday. For dinners, I was told to help myself to the restaurant food they bring home every day. Their enormous fridge is packed with spicy beef in black bean sauce, grilled shrimp, and pork skewers in hot peanut sauce. Normally, I would have been beside myself. I love to cook and to eat.

  Yesterday, we all sat around the table for lunch. They served an Indonesian rijsttafel, composed of fried rice and Indonesian yellow rice and forty smaller dishes: hard-boiled eggs in chili sauce, chicken coconut curry, duck roasted in banana leaves, aromatic caramelized beef in spicy coconut milk, and more. Although I didn’t have much of an appetite, it was one of the best meals I’d ever tasted. Maybe later, after Sylvie was safely home, I would ask them for the recipes. When I told Helena I’d never had Indonesian food before, she said, “We need to serve every type of Asian cuisine here. The Dutch cannot tell us apart, so when they come to a Chinese restaurant, they expect Indonesian and Japanese food too.” I spent the afternoon unpacking and then attempted to make up for my restless night on the airplane by going to bed early.

  I check the time. It’s almost nine in the morning and the police family liaison officers are supposed to arrive at ten. There’s a bathroom attached to my room, so small I can barely squeeze between the toilet and the sink to brush my teeth. A radiator in the shape of a towel rack hangs beside the tiny shower, draped neatly with two white towels. Before I step into the shower, I realize I’ve forgotten to pack shower gel. There’s a huge green bottle labeled douche gel but I’m afraid of it for obvious reasons. I grab the antibiotic hand soap from the sink instead. I close my eyes and wash off the stink of the airplane, which has somehow clung to me all these hours. The disorienting feeling of jet lag remains, as if my brain has been packed in wool.

  I dry off with a warm towel and pull on jeans, a plain long-sleeved black shirt, and my glasses and head downstairs. I hang on to the railing to ensure my feet don’t slip off the shallow steps.

  Couscous, the stripy cat I met last night, is rubbing herself against Helena’s legs. Helena is dressed for work in a fluffy black outfit but she isn’t wearing any shoes. As she fries some fresh fish in the wok (for breakfast?), she scolds Couscous in Chinese for being too greedy. Lukas is sitting at the dining room table, drinking what smells like coffee from a traditional Mun Shou Chinese mug, the type where the ceramic looks like it’s been embroidered with blue lotus flowers. Behind him, the morning light, clear and merciless, streams in through the windows of the large double doors, illuminating his unshaven face and sh
adowed eyes. I can see the back garden, the lawn pierced by sharp white stones.

  Helena blows on the fish fillet to cool it, then cuts it into little pieces. She arranges them on a plate, first feeling them to make sure there aren’t any bones, and sets the dish on the floor. So the fish is for Couscous.

  “She is getting fat, Ma,” Lukas says. “You should stop spoiling her.”

  “How can you say that about a lady?” says Helena, indignant. She bends to stroke the cat, now gobbling the fish. “She just has big fur.”

  I jump as Willem comes up behind me, passing me on his way to the kitchen counter. Does he need to come so close?

  “Good morning, Amy. Would you like some tea or coffee?” he asks.

  “T-tea, please.” I sit at the table across from Lukas. There’s a loaf of bread, boxes of what appear to be cupcake sprinkles, butter not in sticks but shaped into a block, a large wedge of uncut cheese, and various jams and other condiments. No cereal. No toast. No oatmeal.

  Willem sets my mug of tea before me. “Sugar?”

  “Yes, with milk, please.” I notice Willem raises his eyebrows when I say this, though he gets the carton out of the refrigerator for me. “Don’t p-people drink tea with milk here?”

  “Umm, no. Only very small children.” Willem gestures at the sprinkles. “As you can see from the things on the table, we practice being Dutch in the mornings. Would you like to try some hagelslag? Sylvie used to love it. You butter your bread and shake it on. We have fresh tijgerbrood from the bakery—that is the bread over there.”

  I relax a bit. Finally, a comment about Sylvie that isn’t laced with aggression.

  Willem passes the loaf to me. It’s light brown, with a crisp puffy top, and smells delicious. He asks, “How is your mother doing?”

  “She’s fine, working hard as always.” I try the hagelslag and butter like he suggested on a corner of my untoasted slice. The sprinkles are bright orange and yellow and taste exactly as they look—like sugar on bread. I recognize a jar of peanut butter with relief. After I’ve spread it over the rest, I spoon some strawberry jelly on top, then realize they’re all staring at me.