by Jess Row
Yes. Lewis forces himself to smile. You’re stuck with me.
And what will you say in the letter?
I’m going to tell her that it’s all right to fail, he says. That’s not very American, is it? I’m going to say, you don’t really want what you’re chasing after.
That sounds like good advice.
And then chances are she’ll leave me.
Don’t say that, Hae Wol says, a stricken look on his face. You have to have faith in her. Even if she doesn’t deserve it.
He sees her sitting at the tiny dining table in their apartment, opening the letter and scanning it intently, her forehead creased with fear. Her legs are curled up underneath her; she leans forward into the pool of dim light from the window, even though the switch for the lamp is right behind her. Part of her doesn’t notice, and part of her wants to stay there, crouched in the gloom, as if she doesn’t deserve anything better. It isn’t about sacrifice, he thinks, or mortgaging the present for the future. When did she come to believe that hating her own weakness was the only way to survive? Melinda, he wants to tell her, you can choose happiness, but you have to choose. And relief floods over him like cold rain.
I’ve been thinking about you, the teacher says, when Lewis enters the room and bows. Something’s changed. Your face looks better.
Does it?
I have a little speech I want to give you. But you don’t have to hear it if you don’t want to.
Of course I do.
Every day, the teacher says, we recite the four great vows: Sentientbeings are numberless. We vow to save them all. Delusions are endless. We vow to extinguish them all. The teachings are infinite. We vow to learn them all. The Buddha way is inconceivable. We vow to attain it.
So what does this mean? What does it mean to vow to do the impossible?
It means that we’re never finished.
Yes. But what else?
It means that the standard is impossibly high. Always out of reach.
Is that the way we practice?
No. I guess not.
Our great teacher says, try, try, try, for ten thousand years. Do you understand what that means?
Lewis starts to speak, and shakes his head.
This isn’t a game, the teacher says, leaning forward and staring at him. Lewis feels his eyes watering, and tries not to blink. You don’t figure these things out. The great work of life and death is happening all around us all the time. When do you have the chance to sit back and consider every possible option? You have to act.
And what if you’re wrong? What if it turns out to be a disaster?
The teacher reaches out with his stick and raps him on the knee.
It already is a disaster, he says. Don’t cling to some dream of a perfect world. Put down your fear and you can cut a path through the darkness.
Without thinking, Lewis bows, resting his head on the floor, raising his open palms in the air. I’m trying, he says. That’s all I can do.
Now you understand, the teacher says. This is love. Go home and take this mind with you.
Before climbing the stairs to the dharma room, he opens the outside door and steps out into the courtyard. It is just sunset, and the sky above the mountain is washed with orange and gold; but in the west a dark line of clouds throws the city into shadow, and the air tastes of snow. He is wearing only socks, and the cold sears his skin with every step. Is this what hope is like, he wonders. How long has it been? How would I know? He opens the door again and climbs the stairs slowly, staring at his feet, making no sound.
The Train to Lo Wu
Whenever I remember Lin I think of taxicabs. We spent so much of our time sitting in the back of one, somewhere in Shenzhen—speeding away from the border crossing station, or returning to it. In my memory it was always a bright morning, sun streaming through the dusty windows, or late at night, our bodies striped with the colors of the neon lights passing overhead. We sat on opposite sides of the seat, our hands folded, like brother and sister; she wouldn’t let me speak, or even touch her leg. If the driver heard my terrible Mandarin, she said, he and his friends would know exactly who she was: another country girl peddling herself to a Hong Kong man for easy money.
I obeyed her, of course. And that’s why I was so surprised the one time she broke her own rule. We had just turned the corner at the Kuroda hotel; we were five minutes away from Lo Wu, the border crossing to Hong Kong. She turned to me and said, If I don’t call you this week, what will you do?
I’ll call you, of course. Why do you ask?
No. That’s not what I mean. What if I never called you again?
She had put on a new shade of lipstick that morning, one I had bought for her; against her skin it looked like fresh blood. It made me shiver.
Then I would come and find you. One way or another.
But you couldn’t, she said. If you never called me, I could find your number in the Hong Kong directory. I could find your family and where you worked. But what could you do? China is too big. If I disappear, that’s it. China will swallow me up.
She was right about the driver: he turned his head toward us as he drove, to hear better, and when we came to a traffic light he turned and gave me a salacious grin. I wanted to curse at him. But all the curses I know are Cantonese, and he wouldn’t have understood.
Lin, what do you want me to say? I said. You’re right, of course. If you want to disappear, you can. One way or the other, it’s in your power.
Her eyes widened, as if my answer had made her suddenly angry. What makes you so sure of that? she said. What makes you so confident?
I didn’t know what to say. We were pulling into the long line of taxis in front of the station; the street was filled with people hurrying toward the entrance. My legs itched. I’ll see you next week, I wanted to say, but I knew, without wanting to know, that the words didn’t matter. The driver turned around in his seat and looked from my face to hers, eager to hear the last line. I took out a wad of hundred-yuan bills and gave him the dirtiest one.
When you get on the train, she said, it’s like a dream, isn’t it? As if none of this ever really happened. That’s good. You should keep it that way. Sometimes dreams happen over and over again, sometimes they don’t.
Lin, I said, that’s the most ridiculous—
She opened the door and strode away quickly, pushing through the crowd, like a fish fighting its way upstream.
If it were not for Little Brother I would never have thought about China. I live in the New Territories, not far from the border, and the train to Lo Wu passes through the station I use every day, but I had never once considered taking it there. I don’t have any relatives in China—my family has lived in Hong Kong for five generations—and I don’t like to travel. I’ve never had that kind of curiosity. And I suppose I still remember the stories my parents’ friends told, about the Communists and the Second World War—stories that gave me nightmares as a child. Rows of bodies and babies impaled on bayonets. You could say that for me China was a place that existed only in the past, but not my past, a memory that wasn’t mine to have.
My own life is really very simple. My parents died years ago, when I was in college; I was an only child, and they left me a portfolio of real estate holdings, and their apartment in Tai Wo. During the day I manage the accounts at an oil trader in Kwai Hing, and in the afternoon, every afternoon, I take the bus to the Shek O Sailboard Club, at the far southeastern tip of Hong Kong Island. If you’ve ever taken a ferry or a junk trip around the island you’ve probably seen me in the distance, crossing your path: a tiny, dark figure attached to a bright triangle of sail, hurtling across the waves like a pebble from a slingshot. This is Big Wave Bay, where the typhoons come ashore, where the world speed record was once set. My nickname is fei yu, flying fish, and it’s true. Two days out of the water is a lifetime to me.
It’ll take two hours, Little Brother told us one Friday night, in the back room of the Sha Tin Bar. Cross the border, change some money,
take a taxi, pick up some boxes, and go back home. What could be easier than that?
We looked at him skeptically. Little Brother is the youngest of five friends I’ve had since primary school—the Five Brothers, we call ourselves—and like a real little brother, he’s the wild one: he dyed his hair blond and started racing motorcycles in Form Three, when he was only fourteen. Now he owns his own repair shop in Mong Kok and takes his grandmother to play mah-jongg every Sunday.
What’s in the boxes? Siu Wong asked him.
Parts. Honda parts.
Are they stolen?
How should I know? All I heard is that they’re there. Half the price I pay for them to come from Japan.
Why do you need all five of us? I asked.
You never know what’s going to happen, he said. It’s Shenzhen, isn’t it? And I thought we might explore a little bit, since we’re there. You know, Hong Kong people live like kings in China. The best of everything. He winked.
I hesitated: it wasn’t my idea of a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon in April. But if he wanted my help, how could I refuse? It sounded so easy—all I had to do was bring my passport.
None of the five of us is married. I should have mentioned that.
When you step out of the border-crossing into Shenzhen, at first it seems that the air is full of dust, but actually it’s the pollution that gives the light a milky quality, even on the clearest of days. Everything seems oversized: wide, empty sidewalks and six-lane avenues, a train station that stretches across four city blocks, skyscrapers whose tops disappear in the haze. Even the policemen’s uniforms are baggy and loose, as if they were children playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes. All around you are things for sale—Nikes, North Face jackets, Tissot watches, new movies on VCD—and only when you move closer can you see the badly photocopied labels peeling off, the zippers hanging loose, the image blurred on the package. If you stop anywhere for too long somebody will push you from behind and snap a few harsh syllables you recognize, but only barely. I studied Mandarin in school, and speak it passably, but still I always remember what my mother used to say, that she could never trust anyone whose voice reminded her of a squeaking rodent, a rat caught in a trap.
All through that first taxi ride I kept my face close to the window, ignoring the conversation, trying to absorb everything I saw. Buildings made of white tile, the kind used for bathrooms, with windows of blue-tinted glass; a woman in a soldier’s jacket riding a bicycle, her daughter balanced precariously on the crossbar; a man in an ill-fitting suit and loafers, shoveling coal into a wicker basket. Little Brother standing on a sidewalk, smoking cigarette after cigarette and arguing with the shop owner in fractured Cantonese. It did no good: the parts had already been sold. I remember looking at my watch and realizing that four hours had already gone by, and thinking that when we arrived back at the border it would feel as if no time had passed at all.
I tell you what, Little Brother said at some point. Let’s not make this trip a total failure. I’ll take you guys to Club Nikko. It’s in the Radisson—we can walk to the border from there.
There’s a Radisson here?
Of course, he said impatiently. This is Shenzhen. They have everything.
Later I used to tease Lin about how she looked the first time we met: dressed in a white and baby-blue miniskirt, knee-high boots, and a Löwenbräu hat, a living commercial. She was a bar girl, who swooped down on tables before the waitress arrived, gave out free lighters and coasters, and offered Löwenbräu at a “special price,” and she was terrible at it. Her voice was high-pitched and squeaked with nervousness, and she mangled the Cantonese tones; the customers’ laughter sent her bouncing from table to table like a pinball. Little Brother was telling a long story about the first time he visited the Guangzhou racetrack, and eventually I lost the thread of it, and leaned back from the table. By that time it was late, and no new customers coming in; she was standing against the wall in back, by the bathroom door, and even across that darkened room I could see her cheeks burning.
Going to the toilet, I said, setting down my beer. Siu Wong, sitting next to me, slapped me on the back. As I passed I glanced at her, and she looked away; tracks of mascara were beginning to run from the corners of her eyes.
Here, take this, I said abruptly, taking a packet of tissues from my jacket and thrusting it at her. She accepted it silently. I went into the bathroom, used the toilet, and washed my hands several times over. When I looked into the mirror my own face was red.
Thanks, she said, as soon as I opened the door, and handed me back the packet of tissues. Where she had wiped around her eyes was now blue-black, and she looked like a panda bear. I feel better now, she said. Everything’s OK.
It’s not your fault, I said awkwardly, trying to remember the Mandarin words. It isn’t your language. Maybe next time try a bar without so many Hong Kong people.
Hong Kong people tip.
I must have looked bewildered, because she laughed in my face, with a harsh sound. Aiya, she said, you really are one of them, aren’t you? Haven’t you ever been to China before?
Never.
Well, let me tell you something you don’t know. I have a college degree. You won’t catch me working in some bar for lowlifes. This is good money.
What was your degree?
Primary school education.
She crossed her arms and turned her head away, glancing at me sideways. She’s waiting for me to laugh, I realized, and pursed my lips and nodded, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. You couldn’t find a teaching job here? I asked.
Are you crazy? A country girl like me, from Anhui?
Maybe I can help. I took a business card from my wallet and gave it to her, and she accepted it formally, with both hands. I have some friends who work in Shenzhen, I said. Maybe they could find you something better. Have you ever worked as a secretary?
She wasn’t listening; she was still reading the card, her lips moving silently. Hah vay, she said. That’s your name?
It’s pronounced Harvey.
Well, listen, Harvey, she said, turning to face me, her arms still crossed. I won’t embarrass you by giving your card back in front of your friends, but I’m not interested in your kind of help.
But I was just—
Are you deaf? Leave me alone!
When I returned to the table Little Brother had already told them the punchline, and everyone was reeling with laughter, clinking their bottles for another round. Siu Wong leaned over into my ear.
You can do much better than that, he said. Why play around in the trash? Just ask Little Brother to take you to Second Wives Village sometime.
It was all I could do not to turn and smack him across the face.
I don’t think I was as naïve as I must have seemed to her that day. I knew how many men go over the border on “business trips,” and how many Chinese women stay in Shenzhen for years, waiting to be allowed into Hong Kong to join men they think are their husbands. But I’m not the kind of person to connect a face with something I saw on the TV news. And I’d never imagined that someone could look at me that way: as a predator, a slippery eel, as Hong Kong people say. For weeks I thought about her, rewording our conversation over and over, wondering if I could have done anything differently.
I was out sailing the first time she called. When I returned to my locker and checked my pager there was a strange, garbled message: Club Nikko girl returning best time before 20:00, and a Shenzhen telephone number. When I called I could barely hear her voice over the blaring music and strange banging sounds in the background.
Where are you?
Never mind, she said. I want to meet you again. I’ll be in the lobby of the Shangri-La at four on Friday.
I thought you would throw away the card. After what you said.
I think I might have made a mistake, she said. Did I?
Of course you did.
Just so you know, she said, I don’t expect anything from you. And you sh
ouldn’t either. We’re starting off equal.
What do you mean?
You’ll see, she said. See you there. And she hung up.
I’d only been to the Shangri-La in Hong Kong once, for an awards ceremony, but as I remembered it the one in Shenzhen was an exact copy: chandeliers, marble, lots of mirrors, and thick carpet that swallowed the sound of your footsteps. Fancy hotels make me nervous; I always avoid them if I can. Being in one of those places makes me feel like someone has handed me something fragile—a glass bowl, an antique vase—and won’t let me put it down.
She was waiting for me at a low table in the lobby, drinking coffee. I’d wondered if I would recognize her again, without the clothes, but even through the outside windows I picked her out immediately. Her hair was piled into a tight bun, and she was wearing a dark green jacket; even without the makeup her skin was as white as chalk. Nothing she did suggested she was waiting for someone. Her eyes rested on the floor; she brought the cup to her lips slowly, as if she had hours to finish it. I’d never met anyone so beautiful in that way, so severe and composed and self-contained.
When I walked up to her she barely smiled.
I’m sorry about the phone call, she said. It was a bad line. I couldn’t talk long.
It’s all right. As soon as I sat down, a waiter appeared. Coffee, I said. What she’s having.
Did it take you long to get here?
No. My apartment is only half an hour from the border. In Tai Wo.
She nodded politely. She has no idea where that is, I thought. Don’t be rude. I feel awkward about this, I said. I don’t even know your name.
Bai Ming is my name, she said. But everyone calls me Lin.
Like Lin in the book, right?
She gave me a puzzled look and shook her head.
Lin Dai-yu, I said. From the Dream of the Red Chamber?
Lin was my elder sister, she whispered. She died when I was twelve.
I took a sip of coffee and looked around the lobby; in various mirrors, from a distance, I could see ten different reflections of our two heads together. As if we were man and wife, or brother and sister, or a boss and his secretary; as if there were one good reason for us to be sitting at the same table.
