by Eduardo Lalo
After a long struggle, she managed to persuade her family and, at the age of twenty, she enrolled in the Universidad de Puerto Rico. She somehow found a way to put herself through college, and in particular to pay her full tuition, by working at the restaurant. She submitted to unwritten rules: the restaurant owner’s family had gotten her out of China, and it was her obligation to work for him in exchange for a roof over her head and laughable wages over an indefinite period that might last her whole life. Now, Li said, she was working to purchase her freedom in the family’s best restaurant, the one where you earned the most. Apart from her fellow students, who always kept their distance from her, I was the first non-Chinese man she had taken the initiative to get to know.
After giving me this sparse outline of her life, she said I could now understand why she preferred books to men and why, of all possible men, she had felt curious about a man who was a writer.
— Hardly anybody reads me, I said.
— Hardly anybody sees me, Li replied, or if they see me, they see a Chinese woman. Not many can see anything more.
— We’re alike. Why don’t you write?
— Do you read Chinese?
— You could write in Spanish, you speak it so well.
— I couldn’t do it in Chinese either. I never learned to write in Chinese, and I speak it like an immigrant. I can say, “You rike big prate flied lice.” My problem isn’t the language but the impossibility everyone else has of imagining me. Is it possible to write when no one shares your identity, when the vast majority of people can’t even imagine you?
— Do you think it’s so different for me? Besides, I added, that can be a good literary space. Isn’t a writer already a species apart?
— But being a Chinese woman in Puerto Rico is much more extreme.
— That’s natural. It’s hard anywhere to be a writer, even harder to get yourself read with a minimum of attention. Your position here is extreme, but that’s not enough to convince me. There’s something else.
— You can’t write if you have no words, said Li. If the words have always belonged to others. That’s why I prefer to read, to take the words that others write and transform them. That’s what I’m familiar with. That’s what I’ve always done.
— Then it’s what you should do, I said.
— It’s what I did with you.
I’d go see her at ten, when few diners remained in the restaurant and the employees wrapping up their shifts were straightening the tables and leaving the place ready for the next day. We rarely talked in her room. I’d invite her to a pizza place or a restaurant with Puerto Rican cuisine; either way, she loved the food. I came to see from the way she ate that Li had never taken food for granted. She chewed conscientiously, with perfect concentration, and didn’t leave a bite on her plate.
— Do you remember China, from when you were a child?
— Of course. But my memory has more gaps than anything. I don’t remember the past so much as feel it. Maybe that’s hard to see, but for me, it’s been normal. The past is something I find in silence. I’ve spent my life surrounded by noise, first in China with my family and the neighbors who practically lived with us, then in Hong Kong among the refugees, later on in Arecibo, in San Juan, in the noisy racket of the kitchens and the traffic of the avenues reaching the rooms where I’ve lived day and night, but my life has been coming and going, if I can put it like this, to silence.
— Does it bother you?
— I’ve had no other option. This is the only world I’ve been in. The world of Li Chao; the planet whose total population is made up only of me: one Chinese woman among more than a billion Chinese, one Chinese woman on an island where there are no Chinese except in restaurants, one Chinese woman who doodles and reads.
After midnight, I’d drop her off in front of the restaurant. She lived in the rooftop apartment. Then I’d go home, which wasn’t far. It was the coolest part of the day and I felt fine. Things were better since Li was there.
I wouldn’t go straight to sleep. I’d put on music. Drink a glass of juice. Look for a notebook and write. For the first time in a long while I was content.
I’d get into bed and contemplate the shadows the trees made on the ceiling. I didn’t even know whether I wanted to sleep with Li, whether there was any need.
A couple of times I tried to get her out of her regular environment. She had been living in this country for more than twenty years and had hardly been outside of San Juan and Arecibo, the city on the north coast where she’d spent part of her childhood. It was difficult to believe, but she’d hardly ever gone swimming in the sea.
I took advantage of some of her Thursdays off to take her to Salinas or Cabo Rojo and eat fresh fish or to introduce her to a beach or a forest. I met with little success, as there were few people more urban than Li. For her, nature was to be found in a can of bamboo shoots or a large sack of rice. All the rest was a bad memory or something she had no intention of experiencing. She therefore preferred to go on short excursions where, instead of doing anything I might suggest, we’d wander around the city on foot or by car till very late, on more than one occasion getting to watch the sunrise from the sea shore in a park in El Condado.
We’d talk for hours, drinking a thermos of tea from the same cup, spinning the stories of our lives and of the books we’d read. For someone like her, culture wasn’t about privileges or entertainment. Instead, as she stole time from her sleep and work and put up with the incomprehension of those around her, she was using culture as a weapon for survival.
As the sun was rising, I’d rush her back to the restaurant, before the city’s avenues and express lanes became clogged with traffic. Li would sleep a few hours, work her shift, read in the afternoon if there were no diners in the restaurant, and wait for me to arrive every night.
During the day, I’d recall how she would speak with her face turned aside, eyes fixed on the horizon. I’d remember the stories she told in the nearly flawless Spanish that had earned her a promotion to waitress in the clan’s best restaurant and permitted her the rebellious act of going to college. Though an enormous gulf separated our origins, in the intonations of her voice and the stories behind them, I heard the deep rumbling of the city that had befallen us like a sickness.
On one occasion, Li had to sub for a fellow worker on a Thursday, so she got a rare Friday off.
— I’d like to show you something I’ve been working on, she told me over the phone. Take me out somewhere. Indoors, please.
— You want to have pizza, I suggested, knowing how much she liked it.
Friday night had just begun and a river of cars was slowly flowing out to the suburbs and shopping centers along Avenida Muñoz Rivera. When I got to the sushi bar, Li had been waiting on the corner for a while. She had her hair in a ponytail and wore a black skirt and a pale, vaguely Asian blouse. She carried her usual cloth bag on her shoulder.
I brought some bad news. I’d learned that afternoon that the editors of an anthology had decided to cut me from the project. I should have been brave enough to admit that there had always been a chance of my being cut, so I had nothing to gain from acting moody or listless. Still, I was irritated when they used the clumsy excuse of my books’ publication dates to justify excluding me. More likely they hadn’t even read my stuff. Once more, they’d rely on personal whims and the old boy’s network to bestow recognition. It wasn’t much of a consolation for me that Máximo Noreña was also spurned. In his case, the editors’ reasons had been even more awkward and baseless.
Creeping toward El Condado, trapped in traffic among hundreds of other cars, I found it hard to react to the enthusiasm with which Li was weaving her sentences. The bad news kept spinning in my mind and I couldn’t turn it off.
Streets and avenues were gridlocked, and there was no way to reach the highway entrance ramps. It took us more than half an hour to reach Santurce, and it was uncertain whether we could continue to El Condado on Avenida de Diego because of a co
ncert being held in Bellas Artes. I remembered a pizzeria nearby where I’d eaten with Diego. A lucha libre star I’d seen on TV as a child used to hang out there. His forehead, much darker than the rest of his face, was covered by a scar that looked like tree bark.
I parked in front of an exquisite house, probably built in the 1930s, that had been abandoned for years and was up for sale. We walked one block to the pizzeria, full of families and couples, and sat down in the only free booth.
I tried using the noise level inside the place as a cover for my silence. I hardly ate, letting Li devour the anchovy pizza. To talk about something, trying to disguise my reticence, I told her about the wrestler who used to be a regular at the restaurant. I was surprised to learn she knew perfectly well who I was talking about. For the Chinese who barely understood Spanish (also true of her at the time), The Stars of Lucha Libre was one of the few programs they could follow. The twenty inhabitants of the rooftop apartment would sit down in front of the TV set every Saturday, with a passion comparable only to what they felt watching martial arts films from Hong Kong.
Li knew what was going on with me since I had told her about it on the slow drive to the restaurant. I supposed my bad mood would dry up like a puddle, leaving a dry, brittle scab like the wrestler’s forehead. That’s how I was treating Li’s first Friday off, overwhelmed by negativity, no desire to do anything.
— Here, she said. It’s for you.
She had pulled from her bag a roll of paper no more than eight inches wide. I took it and started unrolling it. I soon realized it would be almost impossible to finish the job there since it was more than six feet long.
— I used up three ballpoint pens making it, she said when she saw in my face that my mood had lifted.
From top to bottom, except for the narrow natural margins, Li had covered the long sheet in one labyrinthine line, creating a black mass that looked alive, as if it might be vibrating a millimeter above the surface. It was an epic feat of determination and patience, both the tireless cycling of a machine and the unique mark of a hand.
— Do you like it? she asked.
— It’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.
I wasn’t lying. Her drawing stood out against the works of many artists that were nothing but parodies of international fashions.
— But it’s ridiculous, she said. Three ballpoint pens’ worth of ink, on two meters of the paper that comes on rolls for the restrooms in the restaurant, drawn by a Chinese woman with no title who works like a dog in a country where chinitos aren’t supposed to be good for anything but selling egg drop soup and egg rolls. In other words, the work of a nobody. I suppose I ought to do like you, spoil the night and cry in a corner.
— But it’s so good, I said. You should use better paper. And not ballpoints.
— That wouldn’t change anything. It would even reduce its impact. You don’t realize, you’re looking at an anonymous work. Li Chao doesn’t exist. She’s just one Chinese woman from among 1,300,000,000 Chinese, not counting those who’ve emigrated and are living overseas, and from among 4,000,000 Puerto Ricans who don’t even look at themselves. A lesbian who took to using the words of others to pursue a writer whose failure is eating away at him today.
She rarely talked about herself. Her efforts to contact me had been a very effective way to avoid confessions. She armored herself in other people’s words and, at the same time, used them to express herself elliptically. Her lesbianism didn’t come as a surprise, but her decision to tell me about it did. She was trying to draw me out of my shell and force me to see her. She didn’t want our relationship to be a failure. Neither did I. I wanted something from her, and despite her confession, I felt I wasn’t far away.
I took her hand, and we gazed eye to eye until we both looked down at the same moment. A man and a woman are transformed when they look straight at each other and for the first time the silence doesn’t weigh on them. After that they’d be fooling themselves if they pretended nothing was going to happen. A new story begins then, and there’s no backing away.
I asked for the check.
— I want to show you something now, I said.
The avenues had freed up. I went down Ponce de León to the bridge that connected with the islet of San Juan, turned around, and drove to San Patricio. We felt a peace and calm in the confines of the car that we hadn’t shared till then.
In front of the shopping center where we had first met, I made a U-turn and took Avenida Kennedy toward San Juan. On a Friday at that hour, in this area lined by dealerships where they sold every model of car on the country’s roads, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. As I held the gear shift, Li rested her hand on mine and brought her head close until it rested on my shoulder. I turned toward her and, for a second, held the warmth of her lips on mine.
— Now look at the lights on the bridge, I said.
We looked ahead at the streetlight poles. Constitution Bridge was a kilometer and a half away. Crossing it, we would have Hato Rey on our right and on our left San Juan Bay. I was going exactly fifty miles an hour. I had it all calculated: I had done it countless times. The streetlight poles created the illusion of rising up until, for a few seconds, with the magical precision of optical illusions they formed two gigantic question marks on either side of the avenue. Realizing what she saw, Li squeezed my hand, and I heard her speak so close that her voice seemed to be coming from inside me.
— I’m sorry. I must have filled your head with questions. If it’s any consolation to you, you don’t know how many questions you’ve raised for me.
— Tonight is full of the hardest questions.
— I know, and perhaps they have no answers.
A little later, we were back in Santurce and once again were driving along sections of Avenida Ponce de León. The city seemed to constrict us with its limited circuits. It wasn’t worth repeating the same trip. Undecided and fearful, I asked:
— What do you want to do?
I felt her search for the answer, hold it in her mind for a second, and dare to say it.
— Take me to your place. All I ask you is not to penetrate me.
I had never made love under such a severe restriction, but as in so many other things, Li led me through unexplored territory. Her full breasts, the graceful curve of her belly, the skin of her shoulders, which seemed covered by a film of wax, the matchless warmth and skill of her tongue, her ability to be present even in the slightest movements, made it so that the impossibility of consummating the act forced me to discover the delights of holding back.
The prohibition heightened our yearning. Our sessions were oblivious of time, lacking an obvious ending. Our movements stretched out endlessly and effortlessly. The act was unfulfillable, at least it was for me, and the energy traveled through my body without ever running out. In joining our bodies, we were creating an uncharted territory where past experience was no guide, and the wide field before us defied all assumptions. It was impossible to know what we’d find in it and what was expected of us.
The loneliness and suffering that had accumulated for years, the weight of an entire lifetime, had brought us here. We were castaways sharing a single raft in the ocean of San Juan’s streets and it was clear that if we hadn’t been so deprived we would never have met. What we were doing, to be honest, was unworkable. In the impossible place where we were making love like cripples, we were blind people at the edge of an abyss. We would fall on each other, biting, sliding tongues over nipples and navels, obsessed with slowly examining the forbidden orifice, observing it, circling it, tensing it, without blinking, without looking away. We surrendered to each other with no rules but the one we were testing, discovering our next movement only at the moment of making it. Her breasts struck against my chest, I grabbed her arms tight, pulled on her ponytail, then went down again to her groin until the irresistible power of a great wave made her arch her back again and again. We would go on without resting and throw ourselves upon each other, wordlessly, somet
imes looking at one another with a gaze harder than an erect member, and more memorable. After hours, when we were on the verge of collapse, Li would take me in her mouth, with the total devotion that she reserved for her drawings, until a graceful and solemn overspilling came almost from beyond my body. My semen would fall, sprinkling on lips and neck and then running down to the belly or dripping from her chin like a teardrop, dense and enormous.
Then, arms and legs entwined, our bodies would begin to come back to life: we’d rediscover that our limbs were each our own and that they marked the difference and distance between us. There was no need for a concrete event to come along and undo us. It had already happened; not in the history we were making, but in what came before us. Since Li lost her father; since she crossed half a world and came here; since I resolved to survive, disgusted with everything but clinging to my disgust; since we began, we were condemned to fail.
Silence would descend upon us like a membrane, solidifying until it undid our embrace. We’d remain beside each other for a while, in growing and indefinable unease. Our thoughts lingered on the sweat-dampened sheets, the semen crystalizing on skin, the hunger, the thirst, or the embarrassment of a newfound modesty. The battle to build a citadel with our two bodies, to find some answer or security, was over. Li would stand up and disappear into the shower without saying a word, eager to erase the marks of our relations with soap and water. I would watch her clumsily cross the room, getting tangled up in shoes and pieces of clothing tossed to the floor, and my spirit would quickly go from tenderness to something that could be called many things and that was nothing but affliction. It was a hard, stubborn grief I had known since I was first aware of time, of loneliness, and of grief itself.
Li had conquered me with the brilliance of her messages, and she didn’t conceal from me that behind them lurked an ambition of control. A lesbian had fallen in love with a man, and he returned her love, but she was the one who decided on the rules of the game. I wasn’t happy with the role I’d been assigned, and the prohibition seemed a constant threat. I had never imagined keeping up a relationship of this nature. If I had ventured to try, it was because Li was a mystery. I didn’t know, beyond the obvious reasons (and even those were not all that obvious), why she had sought me out, why she had confronted herself and confronted me with a love (is that what it really was, or was I completely deceived?) that might at any moment prove impossible. Where was Li’s body and where was mine when I was with her? Didn’t I have the absurd absence of her body before me, a distance that would forever be unbridgeable and incomprehensible? Could I live with a woman with whom, as I traveled toward her, I always lost myself?
