Katherine

by Anchee Min

  Katherine said that many times there was a voice screaming inside her that made her want to wipe herself out of this life. I said that it was true for me too.

  We talked like this till late at night. She walked me back to school to get my bicycle. After I said goodbye to her, I felt a great hunger.

  I went to visit Katherine nearly every night. We would sit around, sipping green tea. I taught her how to chew roasted melon seeds, how to use her tongue to split the seed in half, take in the sap, spit out the shell.

  “This is how the villagers chew their nights away,” I said.

  “I like this,” she said, concentrating on the act of chewing. “It feels like a kind of meditation.”

  “Are you really from the other side of the world?” I asked her.

  “Oh, stop it,” she said. “Would you just let me chew in peace?”

  Once in a while, she would put on her lipstick while we talked. She’d take a rosy pencil, outline her lips, then fill in the lips with lipstick. She would keep talking, pressing her lips together to even out the color. To me it was terribly enjoyable.

  She decorated her hut Chinese-style, using paper lamps, ink paintings, and old silk draperies she bought from the villagers. The villagers were curious at first. When Katherine was not around, they would come to peek through her lacy curtains. Soon they lost interest because Katherine was not as modern as they had expected.

  I would try to get Katherine to tell me about men. I would say, “Tell me about the Latin boyfriend you had. Or the African boyfriend. Tell me again and again.”

  “What do you mean ‘Latin boyfriend,’ ‘African boyfriend’? They weren’t really boyfriends!” she would protest in embarrassment.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I would say. “Just tell me everything I don’t know, or tell me what I like to hear. Make up a story, I wouldn’t know the difference anyway.”

  “You’re terrible,” Katherine would say.

  But this is how I picture you in America, Katherine, I would want to say. Because I think you are so gorgeous, in my head I like to envision you laying your fabulous body next to a man.

  * * *

  When I lay on my bed, I realized what I had been missing in my life. For twenty-nine years I had been “in love” with Communism. I served my God, Chairman Mao. Now I was in love with the idea of getting to know Katherine, through whom I wished to relive my life. She taught me that freedom lay in our fighting arms, to be free was to be able to love someone enough to forget about yourself for even one moment. Through Katherine I began groping out of the tunnels of my life toward the rays of the sun.

  “People usually end up telling on themselves,” Katherine said one night at her hut. I was putting a washed mosquito net back on its bamboo-stick supports. She was looking through her notes from the interviews.

  “I’m not sure if your ‘common knowledge’ applies here,” I said, “because in China, people play everybody else’s role but their own. I don’t think you have a clue about what makes a Chinese.”

  “What do you think of your people?” Katherine stopped turning pages.

  “I think I don’t like them.” I got off the bed. “I think I don’t like Chinese people, because I don’t like myself.”

  Katherine looked at me. She looked serious and sad.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe I am changing. Thanks to you.” I went to sit next to her on the wooden bench. Katherine said nothing. Slowly, she bent over and kissed my cheek.

  * * *

  Lion Head was extremely interested in my conversations with Katherine. His eyes would brighten every time I gave him a report. He said everything about America interested him. He decided that the place he wanted to escape to was America. He was just waiting for the chance. He asked me to keep this a secret. He said if the school authorities ever found out, he would lose everything he had worked for. He said he loved me because he could trust me. He asked me to ask Katherine if he could join us in our private conversations, to learn more about America. Although I didn’t want to have to share my intimacy with Katherine, I passed on Lion Head’s message. A week later Katherine invited him to her thirty-seventh birthday party, along with fifteen of her other students.

  For her birthday party Katherine planned a mountain-climbing trip on Sunday. She had gotten some information from a villager and learned that there was a famous platformlike place surrounded by the mists called the Shoulder of Beauty Tang. It was located midway up the Heavenly Peace Mountain, a four-hour train ride from Shanghai. Katherine bought train tickets for all fifteen of us in exchange for information. She wanted to learn the story of Beauty Tang.

  We decided to meet on the mountain platform by two o’clock in the afternoon. So excited, I steamed three pots of bread and packed two jars of sweet-and-sour cabbage to take along. I took a bus to the train and approached the mountain on foot.

  I read Selected Readings from Ancient China on the train. I discovered that Beauty Tang was a dancer, poet, and concubine of Prince Bian of the Han Dynasty, around 220 A.D.

  After the death of the emperor, Prince Bian, who was eighteen years old, was brought forth to be the new emperor. There was a coup d’état, and General Tung Chou took the palace by force and held Prince Bian prisoner, forcing him to step down. The general staged a farewell party during which he intended to murder the prince by offering him a bronze bowl of poisoned wine.

  Prince Bian knew death was approaching as he took the bowl. Before he toasted the new ruler, he asked that his favorite concubine, Beauty Tang, be allowed to recite a poem together with him and dance for him:

  Prince Bian:

  The road to heaven at this moment seems so difficult,

  I must give up your warmth and embrace loneliness.

  The nest is destroyed,

  Will any egg be unbroken?

  Leaving you, I will have no spirit.

  Beauty Tang:

  Without the sun there will forever be darkness.

  The collapse of your empire makes me no longer a concubine.

  Will there be any life after you have gone?

  Dance with me and let me be yours for the last time.

  It was said that Beauty Tang then showed her shoulder in the daylight for the first and last time. She knifed herself in honor of Prince Bian as she danced.

  * * *

  The trees were getting bigger and thicker. The leaves brushed my clothes and left strong minty smells. As I climbed, I thought of how Beauty Tang’s story was so like the lives of Chinese women. Since ancient times we have lived lives of no choice. The only choice was self-sacrifice—in Beauty Tang’s case, she killed herself at passion’s highest moment, whereas I placed my soul in a cage.

  Recently I had been ordered by my boss at the factory to withdraw from some classes and to become even more of a part-time student. As always, there was no explanation. “The assembly line needs more workers” was the automatic reason given. I had to work afternoons, and some night shifts, which meant that I would not be able to see Katherine as often.

  As much as I resented it, I had no choice but to obey the Party’s decision. I knew I would have to go back to my routine life once Katherine finished her teaching and left for America. She never told me how long she was allowed to stay in this country. I dared not ask her. I always had trouble accepting my fate. I tried to prepare myself for having nothing to do with her once she was gone. I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working on an assembly line. I was asking for more than Chinese life could offer.

  I felt stifled and Katherine was my oxygen. She would let go of China, but could I ever let go of America? Katherine’s creation, America—was it just the product of a lonely Chinese’s imagination?

  Would my secret affair with Lion Head save me, I wondered. That he was not my type was the only thing I knew for sure. I had no expectations, but the act of rebellion stimulated me. It was his body, his lion hair, his flesh I touched, but it was my fear I was trying to conquer.

  My yo
uth was waving its hand in farewell but I wanted no more pity for myself. Taming my wild heart was the challenge I sought. Still, I was disgusted when I slept with Lion Head, with him and myself, always afterward, when we got up from his bed. I was ashamed of my lust. I could never look at him. I asked him not to look at me. But he always would when I asked him not to. He would look at me with strange eyes. Maybe he didn’t know what to say or do, like me. He would tell me to sleep a while longer and close the door apologetically, leaving me to put on my clothes as he left without a goodbye.

  Lion Head and I were obsessed with each other because of our fear of emptiness. I felt like I hardly knew him. I didn’t care enough to know. Or maybe I was afraid of knowing because deep down I knew that we were together for the wrong reasons.

  I went to his little room every other day to satisfy my flesh. We did not talk much. I told him I was sick of hearing Chinese philosophy, and he stopped talking. We let our bodies talk instead. Lion Head was in love with himself. It was obvious. He was not with me at Wolf Teeth. He watched himself when he lay on top of me. He made love to himself. Was I any better? One pair of cold hearts, two sides of ice. We shared the same hopelessness, the same faithlessness. Loneliness made us afraid of being alone.

  * * *

  The mountain air became fresher and lighter. I kept climbing. The sign said that I had arrived at the Shoulder of Beauty Tang, yet I saw no “shoulder.” I couldn’t figure out which part my feet were standing on—Beauty’s neck, shoulder, or bosom? The near peaks looked like green dolphins shooting toward the sky from the ocean of mountains. I found a giant smooth stone under a pine tree. I lay down on the cool stone and felt peace. It was almost two. The sky was low—one moment it filled with thick clouds; the next, the sun broke through. There was no one else around. I breathed the air, dreaming about how Beauty Tang moved as she danced before her lover. At least she knew that the last thought the prince would have before he kissed death was of her. Wasn’t that all an ancient concubine hoped for?

  I closed my eyes. I could feel my thoughts calm down, slowly swimming between the veins of my brain. Time stopped. The Han Dynasty drum music faded from my head. I could hear my own sizzling thoughts crawling toward the shore of the brain’s river. I heard a sudden laugh break through the quietness. It was familiar. I heard it again. I was not daydreaming. I opened my eyes.

  Across a deep valley, over on the opposite peak, about one hundred yards away, Lion Head and Katherine hung from a vine of ivy, lowering themselves toward a narrow rocky ledge. Lion Head was in control. He held Katherine on his lap, locking his arms around her waist. Bit by bit they swayed down.

  I got up and hid myself behind a pine tree.

  The valley was deep. They would fall if they were not careful. The mountain echoed with Katherine’s laughter and screams.

  I was surprised but not shocked. I knew there was an attraction between Katherine and Lion Head. I had admitted to her that I didn’t love Lion Head and maybe I even encouraged her to seduce him. I didn’t know why, but I always pictured the two of them together. I liked discussing Katherine with Lion Head. I once asked him to imagine how Katherine would moan when she made love. We both had fantasies about it. My desire to learn how Katherine made love to a man was stronger than my desire for Lion Head.

  Was Lion Head different from her other men? He was showing her risk, adventure, filling her ear with Chinese philosophy, Lion Head–style. A vinegar jar broke inside me, bitter and sour.

  Lion Head was taking his time with Katherine. His body was glued to hers. I did know him well. He enjoyed the “sweet torture.” He wanted her to feel his maleness, his determination, his heavy breath. I imagined her eyes closed, doing what he instructed. Was she trying to resist him? He would play with her by telling her to let go. He would tell her what ancient Chinese lovers did on ivy swings, rubbing and teasing their bodies. He would flood her with his storming knowledge of history. He would tell her that the process of rebirth was from moment to moment. He would explain his theory of the impermanence of the world and tell her to resist the effort of trying to grasp things. He would suggest she listen to her body, and she would, and then he would make her his . . .

  I felt admiration for Lion Head as much as jealousy. I remembered the way he seduced me. He did not have to touch me to get me excited. He was doing the same thing to this American woman. I was curious about her reaction to his touch, the touch of a Chinese man. My jealousy became insignificant for the moment. If this was a betrayal, I deserved it because I was never sincere with Lion Head. I now realized how little I cared about him. My thoughts went to Katherine. I knew she couldn’t love Lion Head. She told me more than once the image she had of Chinese men when she was growing up, how even the idea of being with a Chinese man seemed ridiculous. She told me that in America, Chinese men looked to her like “funny-looking little eunuchs.” In a way, I wanted Lion Head to show her a Chinese man’s muscle. I wanted to have him torture Katherine, mistreat her, beat the eunuch idea out of her head. I knew Lion Head would be good for the job, I knew he could make her beg.

  I smelled the needles of the pine tree. Katherine once said that in America people feared passion, they laughed at those who loved too much. And still people longed to feel. What was she feeling now? Animal passion? Did the Chinese landscape make her bolder and her desire stronger? I felt her shivering and excitement.

  They lowered themselves onto the small stone ledge. The space barely fit two. I saw Lion Head begin to unbutton Katherine’s shirt.

  Clouds began to obscure the sun, and the color of the mountain darkened. I felt a raindrop fall on my hot face. I rubbed my eyes, held my breath. Lion Head buried his face in Katherine’s bosom. Gradually she stopped pushing him away. He started to explore her. Her invitation was silent. I could hear Lion Head groan. Katherine dared not move too much. If she did, they would fall into the valley.

  He kissed her madly. He locked her fingers in his hands. His arms were strong. She seemed drunk with pleasure and frightened at the same time. She arched her chest, exposing her breasts. She raised one of her legs, slowly, and wrapped it around his hip as he devoured her.

  She kissed him back, then stopped. She pushed him away. He insisted. He bit to open her shirt. She gave in. She began stroking his hair with her fingers. She was mothering him. Her swanlike neck bent back, her face toward the sky, and he entered her.

  I could feel Lion Head move inside me. I knew what Katherine was feeling. Her shiver of pleasure, her madness of wanting more. I entered Katherine through Lion Head. I could hear her moan, exactly as I had imagined.

  He watched her, her swelling breasts, her milky skin and flaming eyes.

  With the echo of Lion Head’s groan, the mountain became enclosed in a white curtain of rain. The curtain grew thicker and finally blocked my sight.

  The wildness disappeared from my mind’s eye.

  Before long the shower stopped. The sun came out and mocked the naughty rain. A rainbow began to form between the peaks. All of a sudden, I saw the outline of a shoulder-shaped peak in the sunshine—the Shoulder of Beauty Tang. It was a fresh green and the rainbow looked like a lacy sleeve. I envied the ancient woman because she had known a perfect passion.

  * * *

  Jasmine and I ran into each other on our way to the “shoulder.” She was in a talkative mood. For the first time, I felt like talking to her a little. I hoped the conversation could stop my running thoughts. Jasmine portrayed herself as a victim of love. She wore a light yellow shirt and a matching knit skirt. She said that she kept getting eye infections because she couldn’t help crying whenever she saw Lion Head. She said that she only ate six pieces of noodle a day and could hardly sleep. She was lovesick. She would die for him. She believed that she had already begun to die. I noticed that her flying eyebrows were now the shape of two dropping geese shot by gunfire. Her cheeks were streaked with the trail of tears.

  “You can believe it or not, but I will die soon,” she said. She sp
oke about death with such nobility in her voice. She said she wasn’t complaining. “I shall never resent him. He can have his freedom once I am dead.”

  I had nothing to say. She didn’t seem to need my comfort. She needed only an audience for her performance. She had secretly written a letter to Lion Head, she said. She hoped that he would find out about it and read it after her death. “He will realize what great love he missed, but by then it will be too late,” she said. “Too late for him to cry over me.”

  Jasmine waited for me to offer to tell Lion Head about the letter waiting for him.

  I looked at Jasmine; I was not going to fulfill her wish.

  “Nobody dies from lovesickness,” I said. “Not in our time. Not anymore.”

  * * *

  Finally the birthday party took place in the mist. All fifteen of us arrived. Laying out food and drink, we began singing and playing traditional music with harmonicas. Jim brought a cassette player and played Katherine a piece of music by a friend of his who was an underground composer. The music was based on the Ming Dynasty play The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xian-zu, a playwright compared with Shakespeare, Jim explained. It was the story of a romance between a poor scholar and the daughter of a rich lord, and it had a happy ending. Katherine was greatly pleased. She sat apart from Lion Head, as if nothing had happened between them just an hour ago. Lion Head looked unusually serious.

  Clouds sat above our heads. Wind brushed through the leaves. Although it was late autumn, the mountain held the noon heat. It felt like summer. Squirrels tried to get closer and steal our food.

  Katherine did not know that she held power over our future. If she told the school authority that this or that one was a linguistically gifted student, then that person would have a great chance at an important post, such as being appointed a secretary in the Department of International Relations, or a clerk in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs. A post unlike one any of us now held. A dream.