The Incendiaries_A Novel

by R. O. Kwon

  * * *

  –

  Before long, Phoebe was taking me to the airport, and it was too late to shift course. We parted at the curb, brusque: we’d argued that morning. I called when I landed in Beijing. She apologized, so I did, as well, both each other’s old selves again, and while we talked about schedules, plotting phone dates, I could almost believe Phoebe to be within reach and not, as she was, divided from me by miles of land and sea.

  The job at the fund turned out to be more tiring than I’d expected. I worked long hours. Often, I had to cancel phone calls with Phoebe. The first time I stayed the night at the office, napping thirty minutes beneath a desk in the morning, colleagues hailed me as if I’d been admitted to an exclusive club.

  It surprised me, how much I liked the work. I could be confident in the finance demimonde, with its upstart cowboy strut, its practitioners bloated with the hubris of men—and it was all men—paid well at high-profile jobs. The hum of competence filled the office, like air-conditioning. I built intricate, mazelike financial models, reveling in the fiction of a predictable world. The models multiplied, breeding hypothetical yuan.

  I found I enjoyed Beijing, as well. The last time I’d been here, striving to bring locals to Jesus, I hadn’t seen it for itself. Rubble had swirled beneath the crush of shoes. I’d thrust illicit Christian brochures into passing hands. I coughed more than I could preach. Now, I had something valid to contribute: I felt big, as if I mattered. In physical fact, I was tall in Beijing. My stride extended long and tireless, a champion’s pace, fit for taking spoils, sizing land. Even in bed, my feet hung off the edge. While my head butted the dollhouse ceiling, the city built new towers that pushed against the skies.

  There was also the food. In Beijing, I put on weight. I was fed at the office, but then, when I left, I kept eating. For the first time since I lived in Carmenita, I always had enough to eat. I glutted myself on roasted Peking duck and paper-wrapped trout, mapo tofu and thrice-cooked bacon. Boiled, succulent jiaozi. Lamb shish kebabs. Mouth-stinging Sichuan hotpots. Baozi. Jianbing. Spiced grass carp. I thought of the meals I skipped in Noxhurst. When my pants tightened, I undid a button. I ate more.

  But this calm had its limits. Beijing was hot, its inhabitants loud. Used as I was to the quiet of Noxhurst, I couldn’t stop noticing the Beijing traffic. In June, I came upon a five-vehicle logjam pileup. Paramedics hauled bloodstained bodies from twisted cars, and laid them on the asphalt. Blood swelled in slow blooms from splayed limbs. A girl in pale jeans sprawled in a dark pool so vast I had the senseless idea that all the fluids had been pressed out. Cars lunged past, horns wailing, heedless. A motorcyclist’s wheel flattened the dead girl’s shoe, and kept going.

  Then, a fund principal, Martin Phelps, a Brit, hosted an office-wide reception at his house. In spite of the heat, people drifted toward his backyard. His garden, he called it, though he hadn’t planted much: the sizable lawn, along with limp floral strands twining up a pergola. He’d placed urns on the grass; tall plinths, too, six of them. Waiters circled with goblet-sized cocktails. I drank fast. The outside lights flicked on. Paper-lantern strings pearled the lawn, like threads drawn tight to unite the crowd, but we all still stood apart. Each guest hovered on his own rising pedestal of late-afternoon shade. The men, in full suits, swabbed napkins across damp faces. Wives swayed in high heels. Thin bracelets tinkled. I listened to a woman cavil about the last trip she’d taken, to a Thai island.

  Since I’m, as you can tell, Asian, she said, while Matt, he’s white, Thai people kept mistaking me for a bargirl. It’s, well, a kind of prostitute. So, one night, the hotel night clerk tried to prohibit me from going in. He shouted at me in Thai. You should have heard Matt yell. It was hilarious.

  She laughed, uncertain, then inhaled from a cigarette. Its lit end flared. The tale had fallen flat. If I’d been Phoebe, I’d have replied with tactful questions to help the conversation along. With a light joke, a quick grace note, I’d put this woman, plus all the listeners, at ease. I lacked such skill; instead, I smiled, polite. I excused myself to find a cocktail. It was childish, but I started revising the night. The next time I talked to Phoebe, I’d retell it as the kind of outsize frolic she’d wish she hadn’t missed. I’d gild the event, adding the six-piece jazz band, a hired waltzing troupe. Pop champagne to spout, like liquid mirth, from jeroboam bottles. Twirl the partiers. Set them to dance beneath the jasmine, florets dangling like bells from white-limbed pergolas.

  The Phelps’ house was also in Shichahai, less than a mile from my apartment. I left the party on foot, but I hadn’t walked much in Beijing. Within minutes, I was lost. I kept walking. It was a dense, hot night again, the slight wind blood-temperature. Girls on bicycles spun past, black triangle seats wedged between taut buttocks. No one knew where I was in the old, ill-lit alleys, the zigzag streets of the hutong, and not a soul could find me. It seemed the quiet the hermit seeks in the wild or the stylite on his post might be realized here, like this, amid Beijing’s chaos. I felt free, blameless: I’d have liked to be lost all night.

  Too soon, I happened upon the stalls of street-food hawkers. Steam coiled up in a haze from grills and open pots. I asked for directions at the last cart in my college Mandarin. The peddler replied, but I didn’t understand him. The couple waiting in line heard the exchange, and, laughing, said they’d help.

  While they sketched a map, I noticed a girl who stopped to purchase food. In the occult light of the hawker’s cart, I saw the upturned stub of a nose, a flat bob streaked peacock-blue. She held a translucent plastic backpack with nothing inside. Despite the childish bag, she looked about my age. She had excess baby fat, the kind of flesh a person can grab. Upon receiving the change for a scallion pancake, she inspected the coins, slanting them to the light. Then, she bit into the fried cake; broad front teeth tugged free a long, tantalizing shred of bright green. Inhaling, she sucked both lips clean of oil. She looked nothing like Phoebe, but in relishing the treat, the obvious appetite—it brought my absent girlfriend to mind. We’d fought, again. I hadn’t talked to Phoebe in almost a week. She left; I thanked the couple, then I followed the girl.

  Staying at half a block’s distance, on the opposite side of the street, I kept pace through walled alleys. In the dark, it wasn’t hard to keep the girl in sight, the backpack’s plastic bulge jolting ahead like a lamp. I tried to walk quietly. Pigeons flapped down, jingling bells tied to their legs. Cyclists passed. I tripped on a pile of bricks. The girl’s bob leaped along.

  The streets emptied: to keep up, I had to quicken my stride. She hurried—impatient to be home, I thought; then, turning right, she glanced back. The round face blazing, then gone. Despite the pains I’d taken, she looked afraid. I’d wanted to follow the girl for just a few minutes. But now, accused, I felt insulted.

  I saw something white, a sheet, flit from the girl’s hand. Thinking it might be a note, a signal, I paused to pick it up, but it was nothing: half the pancake, crumpled into its napkin. I resumed the chase. She doglegged left. I was losing breath. She halted, then bent down. I saw her adjust a sandal strap. She broke into a run, hobbling. Hey, I called. I wanted to explain, so I jogged. With a slam, she rushed into a small house, out of sight.

  * * *

  –

  It was late by the time I returned to the high-rise. I took a pill; I went to bed, but the sedative wasn’t working. In Noxhurst, Phoebe would have been next to me, her back displayed, intimate, the spine like rope. I felt tied to her as though by a physical line, its pull tightening with each night we spent apart. Upright again, I put the electric kettle on to boil. I tapped in the first third of Phoebe’s number before I set the phone down on the table.

  The last time we talked, she’d told me she wasn’t coming to Beijing. She’d begun spending time with John Leal again, I knew that much. I’d been right when I thought I glimpsed them in the dining hall. Then, while I was in Beijing, she’d gotten in the habit of
attending meetings at his house with the group we met last fall, the Christians. On an impulse, she said. She was bored. Noxhurst was so dull, she said. All this, I’d known; now, though, she was also telling me the group had strict rules about attendance. If she missed meetings to travel to China, she wouldn’t be allowed back in.

  But what are you even doing with these people? I asked.

  These people?

  I can’t believe this. Who is John Leal—what is he to you?

  He’s a friend.

  You don’t know the first thing about him.

  I do, though.

  Fine, I said. Tell me where he grew up.

  In India.

  India?

  His parents built a charitable hospital in Calcutta.

  . . . because they’re, what, aid workers?

  Will, they’re missionaries.

  In the pause that followed, hiding I wasn’t sure what, I stood in front of the kitchen glass, watching street-level laborers dig. Jackhammers drilled into asphalt. Taxicabs jostled past the ruins, and then they pulled free. I knew that, at some point, I’d left Phoebe with the impression I was hostile to Christians. But what I hadn’t explained was that, if I went on a jog, I still heard Leviticus like a song to beat out the rhythm of each stride. If I walked out to a bare street, I panicked—afraid again, until I relearned not to be, that the God in whom I’d stopped believing had lifted His faithful up to His side, leaving the rest of us, who’d declined His pledge, to die. Toward the end, when I felt faith slip from me like the last remnants of a loved, radiant dream, I looked around during church services at all the believing fools, and I grieved with envying them. I used to think I valued truth more than I did the Lord, but I wasn’t so heroic. If I could have stayed, I would. It’s as though, when I tried to learn His lines by heart, I turned literal. I inked the Word in flesh; I tattooed atrial muscles. It stained the cells, His print indelible. I wasn’t hostile, Phoebe. It was longing, and I should have made that plain. Instead, I asked if she’d known all along he’d be in Noxhurst.

  What are you implying?

  Tell me if that’s why you gave up attending classes, I said. If you did this on purpose.

  She asked if I heard how I sounded. When had she lied to me? Well, all right, I thought, as the kettle pinged. I pulled down a tea bag. Oh, I’d noticed occasional mild deceptions, the milk lies of love, but I hadn’t known Phoebe to be dishonest, not like this. But I’d lied so long, I’d found how natural it could be. I let the tea soak. I took a second pill, then I called Phoebe, giving in.

  17.

  JOHN LEAL

  Each time he saw Phoebe, he asked if she could talk to him about the mother who’d died. You’re in pain because someone you love has stopped existing, he said. But the love itself is still with you. It’s the more abiding gift. She’s stayed in this world as she could, through absence. If you can find delight in this lack as you did with presence, you’ll gain what you think is lost. But it’s hard, he said. Phoebe, it’ll take time. He’d lost his mother, too: he’d lived with the resulting isolation. He’d had to learn how it felt to watch others avert their eyes, trying to believe all was well. Is it, though, he asked, until, halting, tearful, she started telling him.

  18.

  PHOEBE

  The wind drifts behind me, Phoebe said. Trash shifts, then I’ll find I’m listening to a light footstep, one I almost recognize. Since I don’t want to dispel the hope, I’ll wait as long as possible before I look back. The truth is, it still feels as though, if I wait long enough, she’ll return. I’ve wondered if I’ve stopped being able to want, but maybe it’s just that what I most wish to have again is not, at this point, available.

  19.

  WILL

  When I finished the job, I returned from Beijing to Noxhurst. In the first flush of reunion with Phoebe, it seemed possible we’d only fought because we’d had to be apart too long. The previous spring, we’d decided to split an apartment; in August, she’d signed the lease on a small place above Café Azul. In bed, in the dining hall, we resisted even short-lived separation. I opened my eyes each morning to find a naked leg thrown across mine, my arm fixed tight across her stomach. I sat through movies I could tell I wouldn’t like, just to be at Phoebe’s side. While we strolled through campus, she kept a hand tucked in the back pocket of my jeans. The line between us relaxed its hold, the slack winding, like an exhausted snake, at our adjoined feet.

  So brazen, Julian said. He raised his full glass to me, then to Phoebe, who leaned into my arm. Did you learn nothing in China, Will? It’s such bad luck, flaunting what you’ve been given. Sensible parents used to insult their own children, calling them idle, stupid—

  But less than a month into the term, Liesl took a leave of absence from school. She returned to St. Paul again. The rape allegation had become front-page national news. More Edwards girls had stories to tell of sexual assault. Editorials followed; public outrage. Phoebe helped organize a candlelit vigil, which almost half the school attended. Still, there were students who criticized Liesl, small-minded gossips who prattled about which illegal pills she liked best, how reliable she might be. The possibility she’d lied. Others, less spiteful, said they didn’t know what to think. It felt hard to judge Neil outright. In his version, he hadn’t touched Liesl. Even friends wanted facts, details. Phoebe, livid, picked late-night quarrels. No one lies about this, she said. Look at what it’s cost Liesl, then tell me she’s lying.

  The next time I went out for the night, she refused to come along. It’s fine, go, she insisted. It was a Prohibition costume party; the host, a Phi Epsilon. In ostrich quills, top-hatted, hands chilled from tall glasses clicking ice, people high-fived me, asking about Phoebe.

  Where’s she hiding? they hollered.

  She’s staying in.

  Is she all right?

  Yes.

  I told Phoebe she’d been missed, that people had asked if she felt ill. I don’t care, she said. I fell asleep on the futon, anesthetized with alcohol, but I woke to see her sitting in the open windowsill. Night sounds flowed in while she looked out as if listening for a faint echo—how is Phoebe, how is she—tell us—how is Phoebe. Sometimes, I still imagine I’m in that room again. I watch the girl I love, a silhouette waiting upon what I haven’t thought to give. Outside, revelers stumble, laugh. The floral scent of gin drifts into the apartment; a drunk’s baritone swells, then falls silent.

  Julian aside, she put a halt to spending time with old friends. Each morning, she went to the college pool, looping back and forth in fast, obsessive laps. Phoebe’s ass tightened. Thighs expanded. Unexpected muscles jutted against pale skin: a new Phoebe, fresh-hewn, more powerful than the original. In direct light, her head looked as if she’d tinted it sea-witch-green. It brought to mind the bronze statues on the central lawn, stone-eyed heroes oxidized to verdigris.

  She also kept going to John Leal’s house, meeting with his group. Jejah, he called it, in tribute to the new life he’d started since the gulag. They talked, ate, rolled out the piano. Explored Bible passages. I asked if that meant anything, Jejah. If it translated.

  It means “disciple,” in Korean, she said.

  Oh, I said. I’d changed my approach. I joked; I asked occasional questions, but I tried to hide what I felt. I still hoped this experiment, Phoebe’s flirtation with belief, might lose its appeal. I’ll admit I found Phoebe’s notion of faith childish. It was a whim, I thought, a foolish hope she hinged on His alleged promises, the old, beguiling lies. He’d lift us up, rescind all death. In short, she wished to love the Lord because.

  But I loved Phoebe, period. I had no rationale behind prizing, for instance, Phoebe’s pointed chin. The full-blown mouth. I treasured for its own sake Phoebe’s tongue sliding between my lips, its salt taste the daily host. Minute dots flecked ticklish legs. I’d licked the spots; I traced snail-lines while she shivered, laughing. Enough,
she said. But I persisted. I baptized private constellations. If I hadn’t counted the individual hairs, I’d still claimed each inch of Phoebe’s skin. She wasn’t even a Christian, she told me, one night, as we walked to Gibb Hall for a Phi Epsilon’s choral recital. Wind blew silk around Phoebe’s thighs. She’d been reading the Davenport translation of sayings attributed to Christ. Though she found His ideas compelling, she wasn’t at all sure she believed in God. I’d like to, she said. It isn’t enough. Well, you know how it is.

  * * *

  –

  I’d saved enough in Beijing that I could plan a short trip. Driving us north in Phoebe’s coupe, I kept the destination, Cape Cod, a surprise. It’s Maine, she said.

  No.

  Ohio.

  I shook my head. Phoebe’s guesses leaped east, south, flouting logic. Istanbul, she tried. Delhi. Beirut. I said yes to Nairobi, yes to Taipei. If I had the cash, I thought, but I would. In time, if she’d wait, I’d be able to take us where she liked. We’d watch the lights of alien cities rush beneath the plane, strewn pearls we’d reach down to grab.

  I drove until the beach house, a clapboard one-bedroom with a potbellied stove. I carried in the bags. I tore newsprint, then I crumpled it into long ropes. I snapped kindling. Bundled logs had been left at the stove’s burned mouth. In minutes, I had the fire going. Wine bottles clanged as Phoebe lined them along the wall. I pan-fried trout; we split a cold Friuli. Pants rolled, we walked across the beach. The sea hissed, stinging exposed skin. It sucked the wet earth from beneath our feet. The next morning, we had Bellinis with toast, then we lolled on the sun porch, reading from old, salt-bloated magazines. Light spilled through closed eyelids, and I was turning into gold.