“Ana,” I say.
“Oh,” she gasps. “I’m sorry… “
“Julian,” I prompt. “We met on a train.”
“Of course. Julian, what a surprise. These are my friends, Lian and Heather.”
I greet the two women without taking my eyes off Ana Manguella.
“Somehow,” she teases, “I didn’t figure you for a connoisseur of revolutionist art.”
“More of an aficionado.”
We were put together once, I was told on a southbound train. It can happen again.
“What has befallen your poor arm?” asks Ana.
“Newtonian physics. Meet my chaperon, Nancy Drew.”
Another round of introductions. The three women make much of the fact that they’d stopped at the museum on impulse after getting lost in Shenzhen traffic. Lian, the woman in the business suit, takes a high-heeled step toward me and announces, “Excuse me for asking, please, but what do you think of the war?”
Heather, the overtanner, tosses her mane and says, “That’s all I’ve heard all day. War, war, war. Nobody asked me if we should start a stupid war.”
Ana nods. “I’m getting it, too. Unfortunately we Brits are as deep in this business as anyone, and of course it’s utterly senseless.”
I gesture toward the nearest wall. “It’s like these paintings. Happy, healthy soldiers in neat rows, marching off somewhere to right the world’s wrongs. This war will end up being the same basic catastrophe as the Chinese Revolution.”
I glance at Lian, wondering whether I might have couched that a little differently.
Ana rescues me. “Mass bloodshed never has been much of a solution, has it? But I’d like to know what Nancy and her classmates think of all this.”
All eyes turn to Nancy Drew, who grins hugely, her eyes becoming slits. “I think is very excite. Everybody think this so good because USA spend all the money fight the wahhh become poor like Chinese.”
Lian speaks sharply in Mandarin to Nancy Drew, and the grin fades.
“Well,” says Ana, “that puts a dot at the end of it. Anyone want tea? I saw a little shop at the entrance.”
Moments later we’re seating ourselves at a lacquered black table covered by a split bamboo mat. When the waitress takes our order, she is wearing a gauze mask and a pair of clear surgical gloves.
“I hear they’ve brought in fifty doctors from somewhere,” says Heather. “The government won’t admit it, but this pneumonia thing’s way out of control. Way.”
Lian knits her brow. “My mother’s friend is work in Guangzhou, and she say all the hospitals have a big problem. The nurses get this atypical pneumonia, and now nobody want to come to work.”
“It has a new name,” I announce, and everyone turns to look. “The World Health Organization says it’s now SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.”
Ana says, “That solves the problem. Just give it a winning name. Like Operation Iraqi Freedom. Has such a nice ring, don’t you think?”
“To nice rings,” I say, lifting my teacup.
“To freedom,” says Ana, lifting hers.
Heather thinks for a moment. “To being atypical.”
“Cheers,” says Lian.
Nancy Drew, scanning her cell phone screen, misses the toast.
The black tea finds the ma huang. Suddenly I’m lecturing the table on Chinese art. “… And I’ve never seen color used quite this way. And the brushstrokes. The Chinese don’t load the brush like the Western Impressionists, but still there’s this—”
Everyone is staring.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t be allowed to drink tea.”
“I’m totally into Andrew Wyeth,” says Heather. “You can’t tell him from a photograph.”
“Please go on,” Ana encourages me, and I give her my most winning smile.
Ouch. Something just stirred that doesn’t have skin. My entire being cries out for this snowy woman with the trailing tresses. No matter the two-in-one schoolgirl waiting at home.
My sister is fond of telling me that I don’t have a prayer against a pair of tits. “All a woman has to do is inhale and she owns half your portfolio, and you don’t seem to be getting any smarter about it.” My sister meanwhile is still dating the lower-story accountant. The last time Lil dated someone who came to her shoulder—he was a ballroom dancer whose favorite move was to twirl his partner beneath his arm—the relationship lasted through about nine bars of “Mood Indigo.”
She doesn’t seem to be getting any smarter about it.
Our little group decides to leave a tip for surgical-waitress, hiding it beneath a saucer and scurrying away before she notices. Outside, dusk has set in and we’re rewarded with a hint of pink at the farthest edge of the sky. I bid the three women farewell, saving my warmest handshake for Ana Manguella.
“We’ve been put together a second time,” I tell her. “Surely you won’t deny me your email address now.”
“You can give me yours,” says Ana. “I’m terribly busy just now, but I might show you around Kowloon when I’ve the time.”
After the women depart, Nancy Drew and I decide it’s a nice evening for a walk. Though we’re well into spring, a cool snap seems to have appeared from nowhere, adding a little zip to everyone’s gait. It’s as though something very good waits at home.
Which happily should be the case. If only I possessed the requisite epidermal sheath. During the long stroll back to campus, Nancy Drew babbles nonstop and I ignore her, enjoying instead the pleasant tugs of simultaneous yearnings, one itsy golden hand pulling tauntingly at one ear, a cool white hand teasing the other. I’d love nothing more than to take those two hands into mine—and place them on each other.
That would be a party.
Nancy Drew and I approach a corner where an old man with a stringy beard squats in front of an open-face shop, lighting an upright tobacco pipe cut from giant bamboo. Behind him, a whole family gnaws lengths of sugar cane amid the general clutter of bicycle repair. Nancy Drew and I pass one after another of the voracious and encyclopedic shops that line every Chinese sidewalk, everything open to view, families wielding chopsticks, men sitting at cards, children poring over homework, faces inclined to upper-shelf TVs and lofty altars to Guan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Rapid Skin Regeneration.
Suddenly, my eyes register something unexpected. I stop walking.
Nancy Drew stops as well. “What do you see?”
I see an untended spot of ground between two buildings where an exuberant eruption of plant life has welcomed itself to thrive. Bamboo specifically. A lot of it.
“A premolar crown retrieval device,” I reply.
“Oh,” says Nancy Drew, studying her phone again.
The longer canes I judge to be some four meters in length. More than enough. I turn to follow Nancy Drew. All I’d need is a reasonably sharp machete—readily available, I’m quite sure, at the neighborhood hardware and prophylactic emporium—and a nice wad of pink bubblegum, preferably not of North Korean origin. And the phone number of a reliable bail bondsman, depending on the exact wording of Chinese environmental statutes.
It’s wonderful how everything’s coming together for me just now. Not only have I discovered bamboo, Ana Manguella has re-appeared in my life, and an amber sixteen-year-old awaits me at Lil’s apartment in nothing but an unbuttoned dress shirt from Lil’s closet and a dangerous cock-eyed smirk.
I think I may have grown a little skin at the art museum.
Earlier this afternoon, I returned from a shopping trip loaded down with booze and steaming carry-out. Rui Long didn’t give me a chance to get out of my shoes. The moment the door closed behind me, she fell onto her knees on the mattress, threw her hair behind her shoulders, unbuttoned the dress shirt, and summoned me with a forefinger.
I’ve always said you gotta have one to know how to do one.
“Thanks for the museum,” I tell Nancy Drew at the stoop of her dormitory.
“You vaawy waalcome,” s
he says toothily. “Goo night.”
The white-over-blue uniform trots the stairs.
I return to Lil’s dorm a bit more eagerly than usual. But when I unlock the steel door, no one greets me. I turn on the light to discover that the room has been straightened. At the center of the mattress is a note beneath a small pink box.
Dearest Doo,
I decided to go before it’s dark. Don’t worry. I’m an expert at blending in, remember?? I really don’t know how to thank you for last night and also today. I can’t believe it was less than 24 hrs can you??? Anyway I am leaving you this tokin [sic] of my thanks, and I hope you will except [sic] it.
Love always and always,
Your Doo.
P.S. Did you know there’s a big rat in here!?!!
The small pink box is wrapped with a ribbon cut from a sheet of printer paper. Inside the box is Rui Long’s deck of Barbie runes. There’s an inscription on the cover of the box, written in the same loopy, feminine hand:
Light will someday split you open
Even if your life is now a cage,
For a divine seed, the crown of destiny
Is hidden and sown on an ancient
And fertile plain you hold title to.
— Rumi
I close the box once more and toss it onto the mattress. Rumi. I’ll bet he’s a big hit in Westmont. I walk into the kitchen and begin to wash China off my hands, challenge enough even without a plaster cast. Gazing at the bell-pepper plant on the windowsill, I ask myself which of Ana Manguella’s eyes is my favorite. The green one has a kind of cool, playful sparkle that summons early May and the year’s first tall glass of iced tea topped with a sprig of mint. But the blue.
Oh definitely the blue.
Drying my hands, I notice a nasty crack running along the top of the bell-pepper thing. Guiltily, I pour a little tap water into the pot. What was it Nancy Drew called this thing? Kai xin gou? She said it symbolizes the heart. Before, she’d told me it represents the world. I turn the pot a little, and the bulb takes on a definite heart shape. I turn it a little more, and there’s the world. Tossing the hand towel, I ask myself whether we’re looking at a world splitting wide open, or one lumpy green heart just about to break.
Chapter Thirty
“The people who were big and strong,” says Bobby, “were the first ones to die.”
Bobby and I are alone in the English faculty office. His voice is muted. No Peking Opera just now.
“Everyone was given the same amount of food, you see,” says Bobby. “If you were very small, very thin, you could survive. That’s all, just survive. Everyone had a very difficult time.”
I squirm in my chair. I love Chinese-y as much as the next guy, but this is my first day back.
“All the books say the Great Famine was caused by drought,” continues Bobby, “but that’s not true. Those people starved because of Mao Zedong. My father was one of those people. I dug the hole to bury him.”
I know already that Bobby’s was a family of semi-literate Gansu Province farmers who’d never had much of anything. They’d always managed, but that changed dramatically when Mao decided to inflate rice production numbers so he could go down in history as an all-around genius. He did go down in history, having put to needless death more of his own people than Stalin ever thought about.
“There was a lot of pressure,” says Bobby, “to have very big harvests. There was no reason for it, but you had no choice. If the soil and the weather in your area only make so much rice for every wu, well, that’s all it can make. People know because they have been on that land for many generations. But now you were expected to double or triple that amount.”
Farmers were forced to use their rice reserves as seeds planted very close together. The result was a lot of weak plants that couldn’t hold their heads above water. At the same moment, Mao was pressuring farmers to neglect their fields in favor of producing crap-quality pig iron, to inflate iron production numbers. Mao’s ego tantrum, called the Great Leap Forward, starved thirty million people.
“In my own family,” says Bobby, pushing his glasses higher on his nose, “my mother gave up some of her food for the children. Some days she couldn’t get out of the bed. My father was a big man, so he could never get enough to eat. He became very sick.”
I squirm a little more, but Bobby continues with accounts of people dying from colds and minor infections. No one wanted to use the word starvation, least of all the local officials held accountable by Beijing. The extent of the catastrophe was severely undersold.
“Finally the government had to do something, so they said that every family could have a small garden just for themselves. That made a very big difference for us. Really, that is what saved us.”
Eighteen-year-old Bobby, head of household now, eagerly planted turnips and pumpkins and cabbage and other vegetables from the family’s secret store of seeds, plus a small plot of rice that he worked every evening after laboring in the common fields. The garden thrived and Bobby’s remaining family eked by. After several hard years, they were able to store a small cache of grain.
“This was so important to our minds,” he says. “It gave us a little feeling of control. One year later, we began to think about having a pig. That was a very frightening idea for us because that pig would eat a lot of our food. We could not imagine giving our food every day to a pig.” He laughs at the recollection. “After years with no meat, you couldn’t really believe that it would ever be on your plate again. When you are in a time, your thinking is just limited to that time.”
I nod. I never throw any of my food to a pig.
“Finally,” says Bobby, “in 1972, the universities opened again. There were no examinations because no one was able to pass. There had been no schools for many years, you see, except for studying Mao Zedong’s writings or singing some patriotic songs. So everything had to begin from nothing. Some officials came around and interviewed young people in every village. I was selected for university and my life completely changed. I was sent to Gansu Foreign Language School to study English. Then I was given a teaching job for one dollar a day. That meant my family would survive. I took care of my sisters and brothers, all five of them, for half of my life.”
Bobby leans back in his chair, removes his glasses, and massages his thick eyebrows. “I can’t believe it, really. Soon I will retire, and I have enough money to do whatever I want. I remember how to farm. I can hold some earth in my hand and know exactly what to do with it. Maybe I will buy some piece of land in the United States and be a farmer again.”
I nod, picturing Bobby somewhere outside Des Moines in a John Deere cap, singing falsetto through his nose as he throws some of his food to a pig. Hey, if I can be a Chinese schoolteacher…
Bobby has promised me a personal translation of Li Bai’s poem, “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight,” which has never been properly rendered in English, says he. Every Chinese character has multiple meanings, thus every Chinese poem has multiple threads running through it, and all but one are lost in translation. Not to worry, though. Bobby’s on it.
After the final class of the day, I labor up the stairs to Lil’s apartment. My first day back on the job went well enough. The kids all stared at me, but at least they were paying attention for once. For my own part, I had trouble not staring at Itsy, who kept those spooky eyes of hers demurely down. Once I thought I saw a sly smile at the edges of her pout, or so I congratulated myself. It was the smile of a cat who’d just passed a wonderful night with the canary.
“How’d it go with your father?” I asked her after class.
Rui Long shrugged her bird-like shoulders. “I think I’m grounded. That auntie woman walked me to school this morning. I guess she’ll be walking me home, too.”
That could actually be a good arrangement. Not only does my body need a little rehab, but this is China, where the top three national pastimes are gossiping over rice, gossiping over noodles, and gossiping over Twice Cook Pork. No one keeps
this kind of nugget secret for long here, if indeed it’s a secret now.
At the top of the stairs, I pant my way beneath and around the neighbors’ wash. Never walk beneath a pair of trousers, I’m told. Especially if you’re wearing them. I push open the door of the apartment and hear a scraping sound. Looking down, I find that a manila envelope was slipped beneath the door while I was away.
Inside the envelope is a fresh raggedy page from Tree’s dream journal. This would be page two of Chapter Thirteen. I decide to make myself a drink before reading it. Dropping the page next to the computer, I hit the on button and walk into the postage-stamp kitchen.
Ah. As I roll up my one shirt sleeve to wash, I’m pleased to see the tiny beginnings of a forest of mushrooms erupting from the vermiculite in the aquarium. Their color, a menacing dark red, is beginning to show. The kai xin gou, on the other hand, could be in a spot of trouble. That nasty crack has grown in size, all but cutting the bell-pepper thing in half. As I wash my hands, I give it a bit more toxic Chinese tap water. That’ll help.
I lean forward over the kitchen sink to check the status of my gold maxillary first premolar crown out on the ledge. It’s still there, dotting the third eye of Immortal Korean Chocolate Buddha. He’s still laughing. At me, I think.
As I wash my hands, I wonder what that little nugget of gold might actually bring. I also wonder how, in the middle of a city of eleven million Chinese, a six-foot-four near-albino with a machete might go about harvesting a three-meter length of bamboo without being noticed. But a helicopter and rope-ladder seems out of the question.
Tree phoned me this morning to crow about the new pages, and of course I said I was gratified. She apologized for not delivering them herself, but she and her Mr. Xu are up to their mmmm’s just now. “Julian,” she said on the phone, “this Fibonacci stuff is the most exciting information I’ve ever encountered. I’m doing my whole show on it this week.”
The Year of the Hydra Page 29
