Katherine (25 page)

L
ion Head finally made Jasmine a happy woman. He belonged to her. He stopped talking about Zen. He underwent a sudden and revolutionary change. He had come to a real relationship with the self, a mutuality in which he, the knower, no longer felt himself independent of the known; he no longer stood apart from experience. And experience had become absurd. He said that everything had become vividly clear. In concrete fact he had no self other than the totality of things of which he was aware. He said he had ordered his feelings to retire completely.

Three days after Katherine’s fate was determined, Lion Head’s name was posted on the campus bulletin board as the comrade selected to go to America to study on the United Nations scholarship. Flowers made of red wrinkled paper encircled his name. His smiling picture stared out at viewers. Underneath the picture a line read:
CONGRATULATIONS, COMRADE HEAVENLY LION, THE
PRIDE OF OUR GRADUATES
! Lion Head and Jasmine appeared hand in hand on campus. They were engaged. Jasmine could hardly keep herself composed. She attached herself to Lion Head like a leech. She wore a tight red-and-white-checkerboard nylon shirt and an above-the-knee green skirt. A pair of modern-looking brown plastic shoes. It was a sunny day and she had her black cotton umbrella up. The couple showed themselves off around campus. Jasmine would occasionally lower the umbrella so she could glue her head to his.

I didn’t know what was on Lion Head’s mind. I didn’t care to know. I was certain Jasmine was living an illusion of love. Lion Head had accomplished his goal. I did not feel sorry for Jasmine. She and Lion Head deserved each other.

*   *   *

I
went with my father to visit a ninety-year-old great-aunt. He said it could be our last chance before she passed away.

My great-aunt lived on the top floor of a four-story house. The staircase was narrow and as dark as a cave. We kept tripping over our own steps. My great-aunt had a small room off a sunny porch. She was such a feverish flower lover, she had made the porch into a garden. I used to come here to see the flowers bloom, but now I saw no flowers. The clay pots were either broken or laid sadly empty on the concrete. The bamboo trellises slanted off the brick wall. A couple of dry leaves of ivy dangled in the wind.

Aunt Golden Moon and Aunt Silver Moon, my great-aunt’s daughters, greeted us at the door. “Be sure to speak loudly,” my father said to me as he bowed to his cousins.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Aunt Silver Moon said. “Mother can hardly hear or see.”

I didn’t see my great-aunt in the room. I asked where she was. Aunt Golden Moon pointed at a pile of blankets. I turned my head
and was shocked to see my great-aunt had shrunk to the size of a small child.

I asked how Great-Aunt spent her days, whether she knew that death was approaching. Was she afraid? Had she had enough of the world? Did she talk about life after death? My father told me to stop asking such
“bu-ji-li”
questions that would bring bad luck, but I couldn’t help myself.

Aunt Silver Moon smiled and said that it seemed like Great-Aunt was having fun. She stayed in bed all the time. “Just like an infant,” she said. “She plays in bed, mumbling words and singing songs from her childhood. She pees and shits in diapers and hates to be washed.”

“Come and see what she’s playing now,” Aunt Golden Moon said, and she pulled over a chair. She sat me by the bed.

“Great-Aunt!” I called. No response. Aunt Golden Moon pulled the curtains aside. The light seemed to wake the little creature. She curled like a worm. The two daughters went to cuddle their mother, and she giggled with her eyes closed and her clawlike little hands waving in the air. My father propped Great-Aunt up with several pillows. Aunt Silver Moon passed her mother a box of candies.

Great-Aunt picked up a piece of candy and gave it to me. Before I could open the wrapper, Aunt Golden Moon came and took the candy away. She whispered to me that Great-Aunt had already opened and licked each candy. “It’s her toy,” she said. “She opens one, tastes it, and wraps it back up. Over and over again. She loves to explore things, just like a child. She doesn’t let anyone touch the box. It’s the only thing she remembers to ask for when she wakes up.”

I sat by the living mummy while my father and his cousins
went in the kitchen. I watched Great-Aunt suck each candy and throw it back in the box. What did living mean to this creature? I envied Great-Aunt’s brainlessness. She had no worries, no despair. A life without pain. Such a way of leaving the world seemed to be the kindest thing God in heaven could grant a person.

*   *   *

L
eaves began to drop from the tree of my spirit. I could only lie in torment. I could only let the dead leaves brush my stone-cold face. In the far reaches of my mind the leaves sang sad songs as they were swept away by the bitter wind.

It was two days before Katherine’s departure. In the afternoon I received a letter from her. When the mailman handed me the letter, my hands trembled.

Inside was a card made of straw paper with a poem written in black ink.

In her P.S. she asked me to meet her on her last afternoon in China. She said that besides saying goodbye she needed a favor from me and would let me know what it was when we met.

*   *   *

T
he address she had given me was a brick façade located next to a smelly food market on the south side of the city. Behind the façade, ramshackle apartment houses rose on either side. The alley was dark. The air smelled like hen shit. I heard babies crying. The sound of someone scrubbing a chamberpot. As I made my way through the passageway, I bumped my head on an aluminum pot that hung overhead. Wet towels brushed my face. I almost stumbled over a smoking stove. The long, deep cough of an old lady came from the opposite window. After the cough came the old lady’s cursing: “You are tightening the strap on a hanging ghost! No need to, you hear me?” Kids’ screaming came from streets. A mother was spanking her child. She called him a preserved cucumber and threatened to break him in two. A flying broom crossed my path. The child ran by and shot down a narrow staircase.

I came to the courtyard and ran into the mother who was chasing her boy.

“Who are you?” she asked me, irritated.

“I am looking for room number nine.”

The woman pointed her finger up high and said that it was the attic. She hurried off after the boy.

Before I could knock, the attic door opened a crack, and Katherine’s face appeared. She quickly let me in and closed the door behind me.

“Jim lent me this room,” Katherine explained. “It was his uncle’s room. His uncle died about a month ago and the government hasn’t reclaimed the room yet.”

There was no light in the room. Daylight came in through broken shutters. There was no furniture. Katherine sat down on the floor. She gestured for me to sit beside her.

“How are you?” she asked.

I nodded. It felt difficult to speak.

“I need your help.” She looked anxious.

I nodded again.

“Please help raise Little Rabbit when I’m gone. Here is all the money I have. One thousand U.S. dollars. I’d like you to take over the adoption, use the money to buy off the authorities if necessary. I’ll send you more money through Jim. He’ll let us use his mailbox. He will change the dollars to Chinese money for you. Will you help me?”

I saw tears glittering in her eyes. I wanted to tell her that I would do anything for her. I took her money and placed it carefully in my inner pocket.

She took my hands and put her head in my palms. Her tears wet my sleeves. I bent to embrace her. Lifting her chin, I looked at this face. I remembered the first day I saw her in class.

She smiled. I asked what time her flight was.

“Early tomorrow morning,” she replied. Her voice carried no energy. “I can’t believe I’m not allowed to enter China again. You were right, I was too naive about this country.”

We went silent. The sunshine slowly moved toward the west. Noises came from the food market below. The afternoon shopping time had begun. People were screaming and yelling to get ahead of each other in line. A vendor swore, calling her customer “Pig Brains.” I could hear the sound of tin scales.

What images would Katherine take back with her from China?

“You must tell me about Elephant Fields,” said Katherine. “I
know it’s going to be extremely difficult for you. I’m ashamed that I couldn’t help. But I am going to try. In any case, we must, must keep in touch.”

I nodded and then asked what time we had to leave this place and whether she would have time to have dinner with me. She said we had to be out in fifteen minutes. She had to go to the library to return all her books before it closed. I realized that this was my last time to be with her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You are welcome,” I said, my words stuck.

We didn’t know what else to say to each other.

“Thanks for everything you shared with me, I mean everything . . .” She lost her words. She tried to smile. Failed. She sighed and turned away. I looked at her remarkable lynx eyes. She entered my memory moment by moment.

Despair overwhelmed me. I didn’t know what would happen to me at Elephant Fields, didn’t know who from my wretched past I would find there. I did not know whether I would even be permitted to contact Katherine. I couldn’t warn her about it. I could not shut down her hope. Little Rabbit was her baby. I had to keep her hope alive.

Katherine was no longer an American guest. She had lived a Chinese life, not a long one but an intense one. She had learned everything she was supposed to learn about China but one thing: she still did not understand that my spiritual life ended here, right at this moment. I could feel Satan knocking on my heart’s door, hurrying me to hell.

*   *   *

“D
ance with me,” Katherine said as she took a tiny cassette player from her bag. “We’ll keep the volume low.”

Without waiting for my response, she took me by the hand. She held me tight.

The music was so soft we could hear the floor squeak under our feet. Our shadows moved on the wall. I leaned my head on her shoulder. She pulled me in, slowly. Her breath hit my cheek. I wanted to tell her that I had been in love with her since the first day I met her. I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t imagine life without her.

As if she knew what I was going to say, she wouldn’t give me the chance to talk. She held me, her eyes closed. Her hair smelled like fresh flowers. Her fingers came to soothe my face. I closed my eyes and felt the rhythm of her body.

“I am taking you with me,” she murmured. “I am taking you.”

I opened my eyes.

I saw tears running down her face.

I held her, trying to feel her, her love, her shape, her voice. My America, farewell.

A
s a borrowed worker, I was “honorably returned” to Elephant Fields. Mr. Han did not speak with me, not even a word, after graduation. The notice of my departure was posted on the door of my parents’ home. It was marked with a deadline date and had an official red Party stamp. I was a skeleton nailed in a coffin. Mr. Han blew me away like dust. My family could do nothing but weep for me.

Mother spent all her savings buying fresh meat and vegetables to feed me as if every meal was my last on earth. She cooked spicy meat and bean paste and put it in jars for me to take along. My father stir-fried bags of flour I could eat with hot water as a kind of porridge. My parents did everything silently, preparing me and themselves for my departure.

My schoolmates and neighbors had nothing to say about my
assignment. Indifference was the Chinese way. “Clean up the snow in your own yard, pay no attention to the frost on other people’s roofs.”

As a last-ditch effort, I wrote Mr. Han and the district Party committee letters demanding to be treated fairly. The letters were like stones thrown in water—I received no response. I felt like a mantis trying to stop a carriage with its legs. I was vanishing, vanishing into the ocean of a billion people. I became faceless and voiceless.

*   *   *

B
us, train, train, and bus, days and nights, passing mountains and rivers through central China—my journey was a ride to hell. When a tractor finally dropped me off at Elephant Fields, I lost my strength completely. For a while I was not able to get on my feet and walk. My whole being was paralyzed, a chill froze my blood. My pupils enlarged, my vision blurred, my limbs were numb. I lay on my stomach, my breath thinner than thread.

Elephant Fields looked the same, the “ear” standing out like a giant chip against the sky. The vast gray land made me feel small as an ant. I had no tears. Having escaped hell only to be returned made me learn the depth of pain. Slowly I forced myself to stand up and walk.