The Language of Solitude

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  “What, then?”

  “How you’re feeling.”

  “I feel empty. Powerless. A little numb. Can you understand that?”

  “I wouldn’t have understood anything else.”

  She lifted her head. She thought about Min Fang, and shuddered.

  “What’s wrong.”

  “I was thinking about my sister-in-law. Awful. It doesn’t look like anyone can help her now, can they?”

  “No. But I understand your brother. A loving heart never gives up. He’s right.”

  Christine wondered if she should say she disagreed, but she stayed silent.

  “I like him,” Paul said. “Do you?”

  Christine thought for a long moment. “I don’t know. I certainly feel sorry for him.” After a pause, she added, “There were moments when I felt that you were visiting a friend and that I was accompanying you, not the other way around.”

  “Why?” he asked, surprised.

  “Didn’t you notice how little he looked at me?”

  “Yes, I did. But it’s often like that when you’re talking to someone through an interpreter.”

  “I can’t remember him asking me a single question, can you?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t even ask about our mother once.”

  “He has other things to worry about.”

  “That’s true. But I still felt very distant from him. I can’t claim to have the feeling that I’ve found my missing brother today. Is that terrible?”

  Paul leaned over and smiled at her. “What would you like to hear from me?”

  “That it’s not terrible. That I don’t have to have a bad conscience.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “A little.”

  “I would too.”

  Christine flinched. “Why? Must I?”

  “No, of course not. But since when has the state of our conscience depended on whether there is an objective reason for it? Your mother escaped to Hong Kong with you, not with him. None of you had a choice. Life has been good to you. Less good to him. That is not your fault and also not his failure.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s fate, isn’t it? Do you think your mother really looked for him?”

  “No. At least, she never told me anything about it.”

  “Strange, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “What would have stopped her?”

  Christine did not have an answer.

  “Have you ever asked her about it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No idea. We didn’t talk about my father or my brother. Like I told you on the plane, Chinese people don’t ask too many questions. I figured she would talk to me about it if she wanted me to know.”

  Christine found the silence between her and her mother more than strange now. She felt ashamed. She felt complicit without knowing what or whom she and her mother had been united against.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, the taxi dropped them in front of the Grand Emperor, which Yin-Yin had told them was the best hotel in town. There were Mercedes and Audi limousines parked in the driveway, and an exclusive four-wheel-drive vehicle was drawn up right in front of the entrance. A bellhop took their small cases from them eagerly, and two doormen held the doors open for them. Giant chandeliers that Christine had never seen the likes of even in Hong Kong glittered in the lobby, and the white marbled floor was inlaid with eight bars of gold under a layer of thick glass. But they had barely left the lobby before they found themselves in the shabbiest luxury hotel that Christine had ever seen. It was as though they had stepped behind the stage set at a theater. The carpet in the corridor was worn and covered in stains from cigarettes and spilled drinks, and the walls had scuff marks and unsightly bulges of wallpaper.

  Their room smelled strongly of cleaning products. Christine noticed a drop of liquid on the bedspread. She pulled it back to check if at least the sheets were clean.

  “It’s just for one night,” Paul said, as though he had guessed her thoughts.

  She drew the curtains back. The large windowpanes were covered in a gray film; behind them was a view of the gray city and factory chimneys belching gray plumes into the sky. She drew the curtains again.

  They were too exhausted to go to the restaurant. Paul ordered fried noodles, rice, and eggplant with minced pork. Soon they were sitting on the edge of the bed eating while channel surfing among Qing dynasty soap operas, acrobatics shows, a singing competition featuring contestants with no talent whatsoever, and the stock exchange updates running on three of the channels simultaneously. The food was lukewarm and dripping with grease. After a few bites they put their plates down and stared at the images flickering in front of them.

  “I want to sleep with you,” Christine said suddenly, turning the television off. She hadn’t meant it to sound like an order.

  Paul slid further into the middle of the bed and pulled the blanket over their heads. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He touched her with his fingertips, gliding up and down her back, and licked her ear playfully; he was tender, as if it were the first time. What he aroused in her was much more than lust. She wanted to feel him in her, to hold him tight. Forever and ever. Melting together. He was not to move, but simply stay inside her. The pounding of their hearts. The weight of the world on her body.

  VII

  * * *

  Paul tossed and turned in bed. The air was too cold and dry, and the air conditioner hummed noisily. Next to him, the red digits of the alarm clock glowed fiercely in the darkness: 2:45.

  It was the thought of the cats that kept him awake. He stared into the darkness and tried to remember the details: Dead cats. Frenzied cats. When he had worked in Hong Kong as a journalist, he had once researched a story on cats for an American magazine. They had died in excruciating circumstances. That was at least thirty years ago. Paul no longer remembered either the name of the publication or the name of the place, and he could not recall what had been wrong with the animals that died. The only thing that remained was the image of a cat that had charged into a wall in broad daylight with its eyes open. Paul got up, felt his way to a chair, grabbed his clothes, entered the bathroom and got dressed, and went down to the lobby. It was still incredibly busy there. Three women at the reception desk were taking care of new arrivals, and a group of businesspeople were talking about which sauna they should go to. Sitting on the sofa were two women in miniskirts, who sized Paul up thoroughly.

  The concierge was sorry to report that the business center was closed and only opened at seven a.m. He could have a massage; massages were available around the clock. There were computers with Internet access in every room; he didn’t have to go to the business center for that. But Paul did not want to wake Christine up. After a brief discussion and a tip of fifty yuan, he found himself sitting in the empty office of the shift manager, putting different searches into the computer. Cat frenzy. Cat illnesses. Cats and health. Cats and rabies. He tried a Chinese search engine and found interesting stuff about the trade in cats and cat breeding, also the best cat recipes from Guangdong Province, but nothing that was useful to him. He switched to Google and got millions of hits. He found a few vague trails and a couple of pieces of the puzzle, but they still didn’t make sense together. The longer he searched, the more convinced he was that the answer to the question of how a healthy woman in her late fifties could turn into a lame, blind, and mute being in a couple of days was hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of information. Paul tapped away at the keyboard more and more furiously and waited impatiently for the sites to load before moving on quickly. If he could just remember the name of the town he had written that story on back then. He had not visited it in person; he had conducted his research only on the phone, through interviews, and by using archival material before writing his article; he had not followed up on the story, and had eventually forgotten
about it. Annoyed and frustrated, he finally gave up after two hours. Maybe he was deceiving himself after all. Maybe the doctors were right. A severe stroke. Hopeless. Even if he found something, what did the frenzy of the cats have to do with the lame, blind, and mute Min Fang?

  He went back to their room. Christine was sleeping on his side of the bed, half covered by the blanket and curled up like a child. He felt drained but not tired; on the contrary, he was filled with an inner unease that made sleep impossible. He opened the curtains a crack and stood at the window. The streets were empty, and it had started raining. The white, red, and yellow neon lights were reflected in the puddles on the street and the roofs; drops of rain splattered against the window and ran down the glass in crazy zigzag lines. The sun would rise in about an hour.

  Paul thought about Da Long. Christine’s brother had moved him, right from the moment he saw him. His clumsiness. His embarrassed smile when he saw his sister. The formal greetings. The way he stammered at the beginning of every sentence. The shyness in his manner. He was either not able to or did not want to cover up his uncertainty.

  Paul thought about the loud, rasping breath of the sick woman, her blank gaze at the ceiling, her stiff body. He thought about the colorful little rain boots in the hall of his house in Lamma. The raincoat in the closet. The marks on the door frame indicating the growth of a child, slowly fading. The strength of memory. It caused him physical pain that coursed through his body in waves. It had been weeks, months perhaps, since he had felt such pain. It came in surges, set off by a thought, a few words, the sight of a toy, a child, or a sick person. It came unannounced and with all its might, and it would never stop. That was fine the way it was. The never-ending pain of loss. The price of living.

  Da Long’s dark-brown, deep-set eyes. Their gazes had often met while Paul had translated for him; their eyes had rested on each other, sized up, and probed.

  What must he have felt when he realized that his sister was not able to help him? Did he curse the moment he sat down to write to ask for her help? It must have been a huge effort for him, after nearly forty years. What had stopped him and his mother from searching for each other for so long? His excuse was just as flimsy as his sister’s. There were no families without secrets.

  A loving heart never gives up. A loving heart does not even accept death. He knew that to Christine, her brother’s words must have seemed unbelievably corny and banal, but not to him. Anyone who had sat by the bedside of a loved one who was dying knew that some truths were so simple that people barely dared to say them, and forgot them again much too quickly.

  He was overcome by an indescribable longing for Christine. He undressed quickly, lay down next to her, curled himself around her back, and put a hand carefully under her breasts. In a matter of minutes the warmth of her body helped him drift off to sleep.

  * * *

  Yin-Yin came to meet them at the village square. She looked despondent. She greeted them briefly without looking them in the eyes, and led them through the village without saying anything.

  The atmosphere in the house was heavy. Da Long was even quieter than he had been the day before. He too seemed to have had a sleepless night. The lines in his face were deeper, and his eyes looked smaller; he seemed restless and agitated. Min Fang groaned loudly at intervals. Da Long sprang up and hurried over to her every time. But even when she was quiet he kept getting up from the table and going over to the bed to sit beside her, talk to her, wet her lips and face, and turn the music up or down.

  “Did something happen during the night? Has she grown worse?” Paul asked.

  “No, but my father is very angry,” Yin-Yin said.

  “Why?”

  “My brother rang last night. He’s spoken to a doctor, a neurologist, in Shanghai, who will be coming on Tuesday to examine my mother.”

  “But that’s good,” Christine said.

  “Papa doesn’t like it. He’s afraid that it’s just my brother’s way of putting more pressure on him. Another doctor who will say there is no hope. Another person who will say that a nursing home would be the best thing for my mother.”

  “If he’s a specialist, he might be able to help,” Paul interjected.

  “Maybe. That’s why Papa agreed. But he doesn’t trust him.”

  Da Long came back to the table and sat down with them. He drummed his fingers on the wooden surface, and his gaze wandered from Paul to Christine and back again as if he were asking himself what these two strangers were doing in his house.

  “Da Long, would it be helpful if I were here on Tuesday when the doctor came?” Paul surprised himself with his own question. The words had simply come out of him without any thought. He did not want this despairing man who was clinging onto hope to be alone with a strange doctor. He knew what it was like. He knew the helplessness, the strain. He thought about all the conversations that he had had with doctors. Is there no doubt about the diagnosis? Leukemia? What did the oncologists suggest? What side effects would the chemotherapy have? The doctors had answered all their questions patiently. Paul had concentrated on everything they said, but just a few hours later he was no longer sure if he remembered it all correctly. He began taking notes during these conversations, and he and his wife agreed never to have a discussion with a doctor on their own. Four ears hear more and four eyes see more than two, he had always said to Meredith.

  Christine saw the look of amazement on her brother’s face and immediately wanted to know what Paul had said. He gestured to her to be patient for a moment; he wanted to hear Da Long’s reply first before he translated for her.

  “What did you say?” she repeated in a whisper.

  “Just a second.”

  Before she could insist, her brother replied. “If it’s not too inconvenient for you, I would be incredibly grateful. Four ears hear more than two.”

  “Then I’d be happy to stay,” Paul said, turning to Christine. “I asked him if he would find it helpful if I was here on Tuesday.”

  She gave him a troubled look. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “What made you think of that? I have to go back to Hong Kong today.”

  “I know. I’ll take you to the airport and stay with you till you go through immigration. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s not that,” she said indignantly.

  “What then?”

  “That you’ve made a decision like that without talking to me about it first.”

  “Christine. The idea came to me on the spur of the moment. I’m not staying here for fun. I’m trying to help your brother!”

  “I don’t care about that. We could at least have walked out into the courtyard to talk it over for a few minutes. How on earth will you help him anyway? Since when do you know about anything medical?”

  He had never seen her so worked up. He wanted to tell her about his discussions with doctors, about the loneliness of those moments, but there was so much anger and rage in her eyes that he stayed silent instead. She seemed to be trying to tell him this: This is not my brother who you are helping. This is a stranger whom I just happen to share my parents with.

  The next couple of hours were difficult. Da Long sat on his wife’s bed or clattered about in the kitchen. Yin-Yin tried valiantly to keep up a conversation with them. She told them a bit about her mother and her wonderful voice, about the little recitals they used to give together, about her studies, and about Shanghai. She did not ask any questions.

  Christine found it difficult to suppress her fury. It was clear that she would prefer to be on her way to Hong Kong sooner rather than later, and when Yin-Yin offered to take her to the airport, as she had to be back in Shanghai that day anyway, Christine didn’t hesitate.

  * * *

  Paul took a bottle of beer out of the minibar and emptied it in three gulps. He switched off the light on the nightstand, lay on the bed, and put his arms behind his head. The flicker of neon lights lit up the room at regular intervals.

  The telepho
ne rang. It was Christine calling from Hong Kong. She had landed and was at home. She had called to wish him good-night. She had thought over his decision and she respected it now, even though she did not know what Paul could do without a medical background. But she apologized for being angry anyway. It was an overreaction, no question about that. The last two days had stretched her beyond her limits. She had not liked the thought of having to travel back to Hong Kong without him at all. She was sorry.

  The memories came back slowly. Paul went over to the computer and sat down without switching on the light. The faint light-blue glow from the screen was enough to illuminate the keyboard. He entered a key phrase that he remembered from that time, and the very first click took him to a useful website; the next got him even further. And further. Every link got him closer to what he suspected. Suddenly he could go no further. The website of the New York Times, whose archive he wanted to access, was blocked. So was the BBC website. He tried the Washington Times, the Post, but no luck. Paul thought about how he could get around the Chinese censorship of the Internet. He tried other ways around it, but the media websites were still blocked; the connection failed every couple of minutes and then Internet access failed altogether. His attempts to restore it were unsuccessful.

  He rang the concierge. He could not explain why Paul’s Internet connection was down. No other guests had complained. The shift manager’s computer was available for use. Paul felt a sense of unease; he hesitated and turned down the offer.

  * * *

  Breakfast was pathetic. The fish was swimming in a greasy sauce, and the rice congee tasted of nothing. The wontons were lukewarm and hard and dry at the edges. Even the tea was bitter. Paul left the food, fetched a yogurt, a couple of slices of watermelon, and a banana from the buffet table, and ordered a fresh pot of jasmine tea. He walked back to the farthest corner of the icy-cold, windowless room and thought about what he should do. He had actually planned to look around this strange city, one that had expanded so quickly that people returning after some time away could no longer find their own homes, but his head was still full of the whirl of contradictory stories that he had found in just one hour on the Internet the previous night. Could there really be a connection between the agonizing death of the cat and Min Fang’s suffering? If so, what was it that connected the two? If it were some mysterious virus, how had they been infected, and how great was the chance of infection for the other people in the village? Could he, who was neither a doctor nor a chemist or a toxicologist, find answers to these questions? He had learned how to research things as a journalist; he could try to gather evidence and information. If his initial suspicion was confirmed, surely the Chinese authorities would take an interest. It wouldn’t just be about the lives of cats then.