by David Gordon
We returned to New York, and that autumn, things began to change between Nina and me, as if the spell had been broken, although who had cast it on whom, I don’t know.
Maybe it was because we were so obviously ill suited that our breakup, while not without sadness, was bloodless, even friendly, and we kept in touch. Or she did, always being the one to call and suggest a meeting. But I always agreed. After all, she was extremely attractive, with big shiny eyes and the light bones of a dancer, small waist, compact torso, long arms and legs. Whenever we got together for coffee or a movie, I ended up trying to squeeze her and she usually acceded.
I’d agreed to meet Nina and discuss her research project, and was waiting in front of the Hungarian, my usual coffee shop, when she popped out of a Porsche SUV (I didn’t know they existed either) driven by a sleeveless muscleman in a ponytail.
“New bodyguard?” I asked.
“Music producer,” she said. “He likes my stuff.”
“I’ll bet.” I noticed that she didn’t mind kissing me on the mouth while he could see. “Hey,” I said as we went inside, “that’s my sweatshirt.” It was a gray hoodie, much too big, that made her look like a monk.
“I found it.” She sat cross-legged on the chair and shook her light hair from the hood. “Anyway, I can’t give it back right now. I’m not wearing anything underneath.”
This was enough to fill my mind with possible squeezings, so I let it go for the moment. We ordered and I asked, “Now what’s this about ex-lovers and a former life?”
It had all begun at her acting school. Of course. It turns out one of her teachers was a channeler on the side.
“Channeler? Like a medium or something?”
“It’s kind of like that,” she said. “She’s amazing. This girl in the school was auditioning for the Usher movie. So my teacher went into the future and cleaned the room where the auditions were going to be, and she got the part.”
“What’s Usher?”
“He’s only like the hugest pop star, but of course you wouldn’t know.”
Actually, it sounded familiar. The movie had tanked, and I’d seen it on sale at the video store.
“This lady is amazing,” Nina went on. “She’s really just one of those spiritually enlightened souls you meet sometimes.”
“I’ve never met any,” I said.
“That’s because you’re not open. If you’re open, they find you.”
“If she’s got such powers, how come she doesn’t just spend all day helping cancer kids or spreading world peace? How could she charge money? Or waste her talent helping some actress get a part in a crappy movie? Why is it more spiritual for her to get the part than another girl? Spiritual to me is Gandhi or Martin Luther King or something. Everything else is just a magic trick.”
She looked at me pityingly. “You’re such a hater,” she said. Then, spooning up hot cocoa, she told me about the weekend workshop this channeling teacher gave. It involved rolling on the floor to various kinds of music, African drumming, Balinese gamelan gonging, Sufi chanting, each associated with a different chakra. Also they would “call in” colors. I asked what that meant.
“You know, like you call in blue. Or you call in red.”
“Like you try to feel blueness or something?”
“Kind of.”
“Was this naked?” The whole thing sounded both ridiculous and perverse, but not in a good way, and I knew her acting classes occasionally involved running around naked and crying.
“No, of course not. It figures you would ask that.” She shook her head sadly. “It was transformative. And after the workshop, Betsy—that’s the teacher—said I had a lot of spirits around me, a lot of energy emanating.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s how they sucker you in.”
Nina ignored me. “Then she said that the images she was getting were Chinese. That I had been Chinese in a past life and that’s why I was drawn back to Taiwan. And she even mentioned this.” She reached into her collar and pulled a necklace out from under my sweatshirt. It was a small jade dragon curled on itself, with a yin-yang symbol in the center and little holes for eyes. “She said it was something I wore in my previous incarnation.”
“But I bought you that,” I pointed out.
“I know. I always said you should develop your psychic abilities. You have a lot of spiritual energy around you too. I bet you could see spirits if you were open to them. You’re just so closed off.”
“OK, OK,” I said. “Get to the part about the lover.”
“Fine,” she said, emptying her mug and starting on my cheesecake. Here’s more or less what she said: In a prior existence, back before the Second World War, Nina had been a courtesan named Su Li-Zhen, renowned in the pleasure quarter of Taipei for her singing and dancing as well as her great beauty. Su Li-Zhen fell in love with Liu Ping, the son of a wealthy merchant, but his parents refused to even consider a marriage with a fallen woman. The young lovers fled to New York, but Liu Ping’s family hired detectives who tracked them to a cheap hotel in Chinatown. In despair, they committed suicide, swearing to meet in the next life. It was in finding this reincarnated love that Nina wanted my assistance.
“But wouldn’t he be in Taiwan?” I asked.
“No. Betsy said he’s been reborn in New York. That’s why there’s so much energy around it. But he could be anyone.”
“Maybe that’s him,” I said. A very fat, very furry fellow in very short shorts was strolling by the window, singing along with his headphones. In New York, traditionally, that’s one of the first signs of spring. “Or him.” I pointed to a pigeon that was pecking at some filth on the curb. “Look, he’s trying to signal you. Hi, Nina!”
“Are you jealous?” she asked. “Is that why you’re so resistant to this? Because it’s not like a romantic thing for me. It’s a spiritual connection. I have to find this person so that Su Li-Zhen’s spirit can rest in peace.”
“I thought you were Su Li-Zhen. Her spirit is in you.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“OK, OK. I’ll help.”
And so the hunt began. We placed personal ads in the newspapers, including the Chinese ones, and posted messages on Craigslist: “Su Li-Zhen Seeks Liu Ping,” “Searching for Lost Love,” and so forth. She got a fair number of responses, ranging from the innocuous (people looking for old schoolmates) to the creepy (an Asian-themed porn peddler), but none relevant. We wandered Chinatown, going into any old buildings that we thought might once have been hotels, visiting fortune-tellers, and lighting incense in little storefront temples. I even came up with an idea: We placed the dragon amulet on a copy machine and then taped its picture all over town with a phone number underneath. But everyone who called thought it was for kung fu lessons or an underground rave club. The whole thing was inane, I know, but it was fun. We ate lots of dumplings, and I found a store that sold rare kung fu films and Hong Kong gangster movies that hadn’t been released in the United States. It rained interminably, and we spent a lot of time under my umbrella or staring out restaurant windows, past glazed ducks on hooks, watching the traffic and drinking tea. Sometimes, in a doorway, we’d kiss. I even wondered, briefly, if Nina hadn’t just cooked up this whole story as a way of getting back with me. But that wasn’t her style. When we were a couple, she had always been pretty direct. Once she asked me straight out if I was in love with her yet. I couldn’t say that I was. For some reason, at the time, my honesty seemed more important than her happiness. Now I wonder if that was just arrogance. Or fear. What harm could a little yes have done? Another time she called me the Tin Man.
“Is he the one with no brain?” I asked. “No, wait, hey! The Tin Man has no heart. That’s mean.”
She blushed. “I didn’t mean heartless. It’s just that you’re so armored. There’s no way to get inside.” I forgave her with a kiss, but I knew what she meant. She meant what she said, like everyone does, whether they know it or not.
Finally, I did
the obvious thing: I looked Liu Ping up in the phone book. I would never have occurred to me to search for a dead man’s phone number, but I was looking for something else, a knife sharpener, I think, and on a whim I flipped to P, hoping to find a relative, and there it was, a single listing. It even gave an address, not in Chinatown but on the Upper West Side, a few blocks from the coffee shop.
I called. The phone was picked up on the first ring, but whoever it was said nothing. I heard only labored breathing.
“Hello?” I said. “Is this Mr. Liu Ping?”
I sensed it was a man’s breath, but for all I knew, it might have been a dog. It just continued, a plaintive wheeze, without any waver or rise that could be taken as recognition. Then he hung up. I looked at the phone in my hand, at the spoon and coffee mug before me, at the bodies passing by outside the window, watery and quivering in the warped glass, and for no good reason, a chill went through me and I was brushed by an intimation of the truth: One day none of this will remain.
I tried calling back later and again the next day, but no one answered, and finally, I just walked by. It was a run-down residential hotel, once a common sight, back before the neighborhood went over the top. It had a saggy awning and a few bedraggled tenants sitting on folding chairs out front. The bulletproof-glassed reception desk was unmanned, so I went straight to the elevator. As it shut, I caught, from somewhere down the hall, the unmistakable perfume of cooking heroin.
I found 7402. It had a dented metal door, with the number just painted on. Paint drooped from the hinges, and there was a painted-over mezuzah on the frame. I hesitated a moment before knocking. Till now, this had all been a lark, to me at least, or at most a courtship game, a reason to eat noodles and hold hands with Nina. But once I knocked, things would change, one way or the other. The moment I found Liu Ping in the phone book, I had a clue, and the romantic comedy became a mystery, and mysteries demand to be solved. I knocked.
A young black man opened the door.
“Hello? Can I help you?” He was soft-spoken and strong, dressed in a white ribbed T-shirt and tight jeans. Liu Ping’s lover?
“I was looking for Liu Ping. Is this his residence?”
“It is.”
“Could I possibly speak with him?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible, but it’s not likely. That man hasn’t said a word in years. What do you want with him?”
“I’m a detective,” I said, to the surprise of us both.
“A cop?”
“No, no. More just like a researcher. I’m helping someone who thinks she may be—may have—a common relative. Maybe his uncle or grandfather.”
“I don’t know about that, but this man has no family. And any father or grandfather is long gone. He’s eighty-nine years old himself. And he’s got Alzheimer’s and lung cancer and cirrhosis, and that’s just the highlights.”
“Eighty-nine?” Seeing the confusion on my face, as I tried to add and then subtract in my head, he stepped aside and let me enter the dim kitchenette. The counters were covered with prescription bottles, and there was a pyramid of toilet paper rolls stacked on the little table.
“I’m his home health aide Durel,” he said. “I’ve been taking care of Mr. Ping a year now, and you’re the first visit he’s had.” In the room behind him, I could see ratty flowered carpeting and faded wallpaper with a different, clashing bloom. There was a broken-down easy chair pulled up to a TV, and in a dark alcove beyond that, I saw part of a hospital bed. I could hear that same breathing as on the phone. Even up close it sounded like it had come from far away, like a faint breeze off the river that just barely brushes your curtains.
“What about family back in Taiwan?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. No mail, no phone calls. Excuse me.” Durel grabbed a roll of paper and what looked like a plastic bicycle pump and hurried around the corner into the alcove. I realized that the breeze had stopped. He’s dead, I thought, and held my own breath for a few agonizing seconds. Then Liu Ping started up again, exactly like before. His breathing had a wistful air, as if he were merely sighing. Relieved, I started nosing around the kitchenette. It was painted the same beige as the door, and the linoleum was yet another horrendous floral print. I saw a file beside the sink and opened it up. I don’t know where I got the nerve. Maybe from pretending to be a detective.
I flipped past the medical information to a section entitled “Personal.” By “DOB” it said only “1915?” The place of birth was “Taipei, Formosa.” Then it said, “Arrive US Customs: December 19, 1935.” I heard Durel approaching and shut the file.
“Sorry,” he said, walking in. “His lungs fill with mucus.” I stepped aside sprightly as he put the spattered pump in the sink.
“And he never talks?”
“I don’t think he speaks English. Anyway, if he did, he forgot it. Just like he forgot everything. Even his name. Now he can’t even remember how to swallow.”
I left the apartment in a state of somber excitement, or perhaps melancholy elation: I had found Liu Ping. What that meant, I didn’t know, but whoever Liu Ping was, that was him. Plus I’d found another clue. I went to the library to track it.
I found nothing in the major dailies of the day, the Times, the Tribune, the Daily News, but after hours in front of a microfilm machine, I dug down to a layer of long-defunct tabloids focused on celebrity gossip and the police blotter. One weekly, the New York Speculator, seemed in the winter of 1935 to be particularly obsessed with ethnic crime. I slid through page after page of black-and-white drama, knifings in Harlem nightclubs and mafiosi with their hats over their faces, and then I saw it: The headline read, “Chinatown’s Poisonous Den: Deadly Love Pact or Harlot’s Shocking Revenge?” The photo showed a broken-down hotel with a Chinese sign, maybe even one we’d passed before. The story related how, in the middle of the night, hotel guests heard one Mr. Liu Ping, age 20, moaning for help in the hall, where he was discovered crawling on his hands and knees. Miss Su Li-Zhen, 19, was found dead in the room. She had overdosed on raw opium and cut her wrists. Mr. Liu Ping had also eaten opium, but had thrown it up and managed to survive. Witnesses and cops figured this had been a suicide pact that only one party had the guts to go through with. But Liu Ping’s family attorney offered a different take: Liu Ping had broken off his affair with Su Li-Zhen, a prostitute, and told her of his intention to return home. She had then poisoned him with opium-laced wine before taking her own life.
I left the library and called Nina. We had a date to meet back downtown, but I asked her to come to the coffee shop instead: I did it, I told her. Case closed.
“What?” Nina was outraged. “He’s alive? In his own body?”
“Sort of.”
“He didn’t kill himself? Bastard!” She snatched the printout of the article from my hand and ferociously scanned it. She smacked the table and waved the paper at me. “First of all, I’m not a prostitute.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I was a courtesan.”
“Right.”
She read the rest and slammed the table again. “And I did not try to murder him. We were supposed to die together, for love. That coward. That asshole. I can’t believe he let me die. And here I am looking for him in the next life, like a fool.”
“Well . . .” I decided to keep silent. She stood up.
“I have to see him.”
“No, Nina, wait.” I followed her out. “It’s no use, I told you. He can’t even swallow. He’s dying.”
“Good,” Nina said, hailing a taxi. “He should have died sixty-nine years ago. With me.”
I tried reasoning with her in the cab, but she just worked herself up even more, eventually turning on me, if only because I was there: I was, she declared, secretly pleased at this outcome. I had never believed her and had been snidely playing along, mocking her the whole time in my pompous, bookish way. I was completely closed off to spiritual ideas and emotionally shut down as well. I did think she was a prostitute. I had
never loved her at all.
“Who do you think you are anyway?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. No one.”
It must have been Durel’s day off because when we got to 7402 and Nina banged on the door, a small, round Latina lady answered.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Liu Ping!” Nina shouted and ran past her.
“Sorry,” I said, “she’s family,” which was ludicrous. Nina looked like the pep squad captain in a cable movie about All-American cheerleaders. We followed to the alcove where Liu Ping lay dying. He was definitely dying—that anyone could see. His shriveled head seemed no bigger than my palm, the features all folded into each other, like a fist. His body was just sticks and plaid pajamas. There was really almost nothing left of him, some skin, a few white hairs, two stunningly beautiful brown hands, and that slow breath like a wind from the other side. Instinctively we all stopped, Nina, the lady, and I. We stopped and stared, in awe, at the dark majesty of death. Then Nina started to berate Liu Ping in fluent Mandarin, screeching and waving her arms. And the lady started yelling in Spanish. So I yelled too, in English, for everyone to stop yelling.
That’s when Liu Ping awoke. Just like that, two of the crumples in his face parted, revealing two wet brown stones. We all shut up and went back to staring, while his eyes swam around, as if landing from outer space. When they focused on Nina, they widened crazily, showing their whites. Suddenly, he sat up, pointing a tremulous finger. Nina froze. The nurse gasped. Liu Ping began to speak, in a rasping, dust-choked voice, unused and abandoned for years.
“Su Li-Zhen,” he croaked. “Su Li-Zhen.”
Then he died. Or he started to anyway. He started to finish dying. He fell back into the pillow, and his eyes rolled back, and his throat began to gurgle. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911, but the nurse was on the phone already, talking while she loaded a syringe. That’s when I realized Nina was gone. The nurse squeezed my arm.
