On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

by Lee, Chang-rae

  On the other hand, she may have had more particulars in mind than anyone knows. It’s perhaps the only way to explain how she decided to try to make contact with her eldest sibling, Liwei, the one who also left B-Mor, though many years prior and under very different circumstances. Again, we can’t be sure what Fan thought or planned from the beginning or decided along the way, except, of course, for the goal of reuniting with Reg, but she must have known all along that her brother was out there, beyond the walls, and most likely in a Charter village.

  Liwei, as we all know, was among the rare few from B-Mor who are promoted each year to join a Charter village, and if they succeed with their foster families and in school and, of course, engage a sustaining career, they can live there as fully fledged citizens. The determination is made solely by the results of the Exams, which the Charters take a grade-specific version of each year but that those B-Mor (and like settlements’) children interested in promotion take only at the age of twelve. It’s primarily a test of mathematical problem solving and logical reasoning, with multiple sections of number and word and spatial puzzles, all of it extremely difficult and not material that is fully covered in our schools. We have made light of Reg’s not even bothering with the test, but the fact is Fan did quite poorly on it, as did most everyone else who takes it. We’re all in a range, as they say. It’s best this way.

  For the Charters, it’s much more fraught a process, at least in their last year (when they’re eighteen), with the lowest-scoring decile put on a probationary list and given the chance to take the test once more, when they must score better than half their flagged peers or be slated for service jobs such as retail or teaching or firefighting, unless, of course, they inherit enough money to make a sizable contribution to the directorate as well as permanently sustain a Charter life. There’s always a path. Still, with the stakes so high, Charter parents will spend whatever they must to prepare for this, hiring developmental therapists and tutors when their children are as young as six months of age. For B-Mors, of course, it’s no big deal, for as previously noted, one of ours must score in the top 2 percent of Charter results to be eligible for promotion, this without any enrichment training or tutoring at all.

  No surprise that those who do attain that mark number in the handful each year, across all facilities; sometimes there are just two or three; and about a third of the time there is no one at all. This is not to say that there isn’t great excitement when someone does make the grade, as Liwei and a girl from West B-Mor did a few years before Fan was born. Their names along with the others are etched in a stone monument that graces one of our parks, this roster of the exceptional, and departed. Before they leave, their clan will typically host a massive block party that is something like a public festival and an important wedding combined, with long banquet tables of food and drink and loud popular music and booths where they run games of chance, the profits going to defray the costs of traveling to whatever Charter the gifted child has been accepted into, whether here or, very rarely, to a Charter abroad, as there’s a Charter association in pretty much every country, even if there is only one village, as in places such as Iceland and Laos.

  The party that Fan’s clan threw for Liwei was especially memorable, as they hired musical performers and had a dunking station with water stocked with some of our very own fish, swimming around clueless as the clan patriarch—a famously grumpy man who has since passed—sat on the plank in his pajamas, kids and adults alike taking their turn hurling a ball at the target beside him. Even he was giddy that day, making the funniest faces for the littlest ones, all the while gamely goading and taunting the long line of throwers. He got plenty wet but climbed back up each time with a smile, knowing that someone in his line would be attaining the heights.

  Fan was, of course, not yet present, but with all the stories she must have heard over the years, she must have felt she had been there herself, chanting her sibling’s name with the rest of the crowd at party’s end as he raised his fists over his head, which was donned with a customary crown of herbs and flowers grown in our facility. With tears in his eyes, he waved and bowed good-bye to us, and we shouted: Liwei is our champion! Fare thee well, Liwei!

  The understanding, of course, is that we’ll never see this person again, that he or she will not return, even for a visit. For what good would that do? What lasting joy would it bring, to us or to them? Isn’t it better that we send them off once and for all beneath the glow of carnival lights, with the taste of treats on our tongues, rather than invite the acrid tang of doubt, and undue longing, and the heart-stab of a freshly sundered bond? Isn’t it kinder to simply let them exit the gates, and for us to turn away, too, and let our thoughts instead draft up on their triumphs to come?

  Because it’s known which Charter they’re headed for, it’s easy enough to picture, given the scads of material you can browse, spying the streets and fields and commercial areas of the village, its layout rarely rectilinear like ours, perhaps to heighten the sense of insularity, perhaps so that you don’t have to see the disheartening terminus of any path or lane. We don’t as a community much concern ourselves with Charter life except in this one regard, but ultimately our annual interest remains an abstraction, seeing the promoted child the same way we might imagine a friend on a foreign tour, say, climbing the steps of some postcard ruin or sampling a local delicacy, giving ourselves just enough detail for shape and color but not for any lingering anxieties, such as how he’ll be welcomed by his new family or accepted at school, which career he’ll pursue, or who will be his mate. You just see that he’s traveled to a kind of heaven, if that’s in your belief system, a place that is presumably better in every way than it is here, and surely never worse.

  Fan certainly could look up where Liwei had been accepted, a village named Seneca Hamlet. It’s a simple matter of record. And although Charters are indeed mobile, and can buy a seat on a global and pop in on other Charter villages around the world, and even have the right to live there if they can afford it, very few choose to leave their home village permanently, even for one within the region. Like everybody, they rely on their families and friends and associates for not just the practicalities but for moral support as well. So chances were good enough that Liwei was still in the same village. And probably she couldn’t help but wonder, too, as we would, whether he had successfully assimilated into the life of his adoptive family and community, and taken up a sustaining career, and, most of all, enjoyed the rarefied prosperity that his exceptional performance had surely promised him.

  That it might be the very Charter that she and Quig and Loreen were now again speeding toward after the encounter with the Nickelmans would be too coincidental. And yet, even before she was struck that very first night by Quig’s car, she must have had a northward heading in mind, and in this light her initially compelled and then willing residence at the Smokes can be seen as an instance of her singular patience, and faith. Again, we don’t speak of faith much in B-Mor, as there’s really no religious or spiritual practice to speak of, no worship of any kind either in public or within the households. It’s not clear what our people think of the existence of God, or the afterlife, or why we are here. What Fan’s position was on these questions will never be known. She simply had a faith—an amazing, profound faith—that like some great waterfall would not stint or diminish. Where it came from or how she nurtured it is a mystery, and what we can see is that she drew upon it in every episode of her quest, for fortitude and strength. It is thus partly faith, and solid reasoning, at least from Fan’s perspective, that her never-met sibling might be helpful in her aim of reuniting with Reg. Liwei was a Charter, after all, and by definition would have the necessary means or connections or maybe even some power.

  After narrowly escaping the lair of the Nickelmans and camping well off the road to pass the night, it took them another full day on the poor roads to reach their destination. Fan drove the entire way, whatever substance Loreen and Qui
g had been given still affecting their systems. Fan had to stop several times for each of them to vomit on the side of the road, Quig especially pale and sweaty and hardly able to support himself. Fan had to come around the car and help him, using all the strength in her legs to buttress and lift him up from his sickly crouch and push him into the rear seat, where Loreen lay back against her window. At the few service stations along the way, Fan had to buy criminally expensive water to slake their extreme thirst, and if they tried to eat anything, they soon felt sick again. At one point Loreen soiled herself and Fan helped clean her and get fresh clothes from her backpack, after which Loreen mumbled that she was sorry for what she had said, after which Fan simply nodded. She’d hardly registered the slur, given the extremity of the moment, though while driving she did note the epithet. She’d known only B-Mor and so had all the preceding generations of her clan, New China a most distant notion that was hardly ever mentioned, and if so, somewhat disparagingly, say, to point out someone’s haughty airs, such as That’s some N-C style! Yet in bloodlines it was where she came from, it was what she looked like, and when she mused about it now, she wondered whether the legacy should mean more to her, especially as she was carrying a child. It was a talisman that was hers but which she kept solely on a shelf, an object that might indeed be powerful but only if she brought it down and pressed it to her brow and asked something significant of it. But what was that? And how would she ever come to know?

  Before they got onto the stretch of well-kept toll road that would take them to the Charter village, Quig took the wheel. They didn’t want to be turned away as diseased so he tried to clean himself up but he still looked ghoulish, his eyes weary and bloodshot, his hair greasy-looking and matted in a lopsided fashion. Loreen appeared no better, crystals of sweat and dried spit clinging to the corners of her mouth. But when he pulled up to the guardhouse of the Charter village, he gave their names and the guard checked them against his screen and scanned their eyes, not bothering with Fan at all, assuming she was either theirs or on offer.

  The village sign read Seneca, simply Seneca, and it was the first Charter village Fan had ever visited in person. Was it the same? It was not exactly the name she had looked up, but it was familiar. The village didn’t look totally strange to her, perhaps for the viewing she’d done of other villages, many of which were similarly laid out by one of the two major construction firms. From a satellite view, everything looks crisp and tailored, the curves of the streets and sidewalks arcing out in equal increments from a central open space, like ripples in a lake. Whenever she browsed, and it was not often, she liked to peer in close with the ultrazoom, inspecting the waxed finishes on the cars and ruler-straight joints of the sidewalks (never any renegade cracks) and the tiles of the roofs, which were not plastic or asphalt shingles like those of our free-standing houses but made, incredibly, from a piece of natural stone, each one with a distinct pattern and hand and its own earthy or flinty shade.

  But this Charter was even better. In fact, it was hard to believe. It was the last gasp of the afternoon as they slowly drove, the sunlight angling through the voluminous hardwood trees, their broad leaves tittering and waving with a coolish breeze, the stately houses and sleek, jazzy condos set well back from the road rather than built right on top of it like our airless, chockablock row houses. There were tallish, attractive people of various races and ethnicities going about (no pets, of course), some striding quickly in fancy exercise clothing, arms a-rowing, some smartly dressed for office work, others carrying little shopping bags full of goodies one couldn’t see. There were nannies, generally darker skinned and squatter, either pushing prams or leading a pack of colorfully jumpsuited toddlers, but they, too, seemed somehow light of heart and tender and happy enough in their mobile sphere of cry and babble. Where the shops were more concentrated it was busier but no less tidy, the windows of the businesses sparkling enough that you had to look twice to see the exquisite displays of women’s bags and dresses or elaborately iced cakes or the mock-up of a luxurious bathroom festooned with speckled soaps looking good enough to eat and towels so fluffed and white they made you want to bathe. It was still too early for dinner but the all-black-clad waiters of the restaurants were setting the outdoor tables with splendid burnished cutlery and massive wine goblets and tastefully spare bouquets of tiny wildflowers, the plush-lined bars within already mirthful with the cocktail hour. She saw the same around every curve, this unbroken continuum of soft, prosperous light and richly textural detail and the unerring sensation that this would be a moment lovely and eternal.

  In a word, it was beautiful. A bit unusual, yes, with the living and shopping so fully integrated, but beautiful nonetheless. She hadn’t been hoping for it to be any particular way but she hadn’t been expecting this. It almost made her feel nauseous, but it wasn’t illness so much as an upending awe, neither exactly good nor bad, a state of being she realized she had never experienced back in B-Mor, where routine is the method, and the reason, and the reward.

  If Quig and Loreen did not appear to be impressed—they’d seen plenty of Charters before—their lackadaisical attitude was likely due more to their still miserable condition; Quig was driving tentatively enough that he was attracting attention, people on the sidewalk staring at the dusty old-model car with a mismatched wheel that squeaked at low speed, one of them, Fan was certain, now making a dour-faced call to village security. Quig soon turned off the main street and drove through a clearly special neighborhood of single-family homes, all very large but in differing styles (if perhaps designed in the same way behind the façades, with prominent center halls and matching wings for bedrooms and vehicles) and with front lawns completely cleared of trees to afford the fullest view of the homes from the street. There were no fences or walls or gates, everything wide open save for the side yards between the properties, which were left densely wooded.

  They found the right house number on the mailbox and went up the driveway, Quig parking before the triple garage doors. It was a Mediterranean-style villa, beige-stuccoed and topped not by stone but terra-cotta tiles, and as they stood before the front door, they realized music was being faintly broadcast from speakers hidden in the eaves—a famous aria from an ancient Italian opera, Quig noted. When the door opened, a petite middle-aged woman in a light gray service uniform greeted them. She was clearly expecting them and led them to a suite of bedrooms on the second floor. Quig and Loreen took one room and Fan, to her surprise, was given the other, equally large, which was furnished with a king-sized bed and an overstuffed reading chair and antique writing desk and a bathroom with two washbasins and both a shower and a tub. The soaps and shampoos were arrayed just like in the shop displays, along with cotton balls and swabs and a packaged toothbrush on the vanity, and the thick towels on the tub surround were stacked three high, a child-sized robe splayed out beside them. The helper, named Mala, invited them to wash up and rest before having dinner with Mister Leo and Miss Cathy at eight o’clock.

  Fan ran the tub right away, pouring some of the bubble soap into the water, as she’d never tried that before. She stripped off her dirty clothes and looked at herself in the mirror, especially her belly, to see if there was a change. Was there the tiniest bulge? The light was different from when she’d peed on the road, and in the mirror it was evident. She sucked in her stomach and it didn’t go away. Still, she looked mostly like she always did, nothing too out of the ordinary. She was going to brush her teeth—it had been before the Nickelmans when she last did—but a funny feeling crept over her and she quickly slipped into the bubbly water, despite how hot it was. She scanned the ceiling, the seams in the molding, even the artwork on the walls, to see if there was an eye of a vid cam, but she couldn’t find one. When she was done scrubbing and washing her hair under the cover of the bubbles, she plucked the robe while sitting in the water and quickly stood up and put it on.

  After cleaning her teeth and brushing her hair, she tried the bed. She was shocke
d how pillowy-soft it was, so unlike her firm cotton-batting mattress back in B-Mor and about five times as large. She lay down in various orientations and parts of the bed until she got back to the appropriate position, and she was going to shut her eyes for just a minute when suddenly she was slowly floating down a river, past a burning Who Falls Inn, before going over the lip of an artificial ledge into a deep pool, where Trish and Glynnis were swimming. They were splashing and gay, and it was all fine and easy with Fan showing Trish how to stay vertical underwater while keeping her feet above the surface. Quig was not present but for some reason Loreen was, complaining as usual about something from the water’s edge. But the three of them were ignoring her and Fan was on to showing Trish another trick, this one for twirling underwater, when the girl began to sink deeper and deeper. Fan couldn’t understand what was happening but she was sinking herself, or more like being drawn toward the bottom with greater and greater force, just like what happened to Joseph. Fan was a strong swimmer and could just escape the flow, but Trish couldn’t resist and dropped away into the depths. Fan let herself get drawn down right after her, and when she neared the bottom, she saw Glynnis pressed against a very wide metal grate, already drowned. Trish was stuck against the grate, too, fiercely struggling, and Fan kept trying to pull her from the main drag of the flow but it was no use. The poor girl couldn’t hold her breath any longer and opened her mouth, her body instantly rebelling against the water filling her lungs. She relented; then she was gone. Fan let herself get drawn in, too, and though she knew she could hold her breath a while longer, she was thinking maybe she should just give up, let the water cool the burning inside her lungs, when the flow suddenly ceased and she floated upward to the surface, Loreen’s voice coming clearer.