Shanghai Boy

by Stevan Eldred-Grigg

  ‘Do your parents now know you’re safe? They must have been worried out of their wits.’

  He tells me he saw his mother and father yesterday when he stopped off in Nanjing. He asked their forgiveness for having been so thoughtless. A few stern words came his way, after which he was let off the hook and told to get straight back to Shanghai. On his way out the door he picked up the young cousin he talks about so often. The cousin had been fretting about Jay and said he wanted to come along for the weekend.

  ‘My cousin is studying in a best middle school in the city. He is young but he is strong and energy full.’

  ‘You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?’

  Jay nods. I feel somehow jealous.

  ‘My cousin grow up yery fast. Now he has more taller than me!’

  Needless to say I don’t give a flying fart for the bloody cousin. All that matters to me is my Jay. He turns out to know all about the police search. He’s spoken to the university authorities, who have spoken to the cops, and the search has now been called off. So it would seem that never again will my doorway be darkened, my apartment smoked out, by Inspector Mao. Oddly, the thought makes me feel slightly sad. I find that I miss Inspector Mao.

  ‘So, okay — so, Tai Shan? You — a hermit!’

  His eyes light up. He starts chattering about the Temple of the Princess of the Azure Clouds. He talks about trees. He talks about butterflies, birds. He talks about poems inscribed into the stonework on top of Tai Shan.

  ‘I spend the weeks on climbing mountains. I love the forest and mountains so much. I took lots pictures. Wanna see?’

  Grabbing his backpack, he starts poking about.

  ‘Later, Jay. I just want to — to look at you. I mean, you’re — we thought you were —’

  I can’t say dead, since in this country it’s bad luck.

  My mind jumps now to the body found in the water, the rotted carrion found where our creek feeds into the Huangpu. Who was it, if not Jay? Some unknown young man. Someone else’s son or friend or cousin or lover. I wonder whether the case will still stay open for Inspector Mao.

  ‘Okay, later,’ says Jay.

  ‘Good. Hey, are you thirsty? Are you hungry?’

  He waves my words away.

  ‘I wanna talk with you, Manfred. I think about you when I to Tai Shan. I think about you every day.’

  ‘About — me?’

  My body feels, suddenly, as though all its bones have been pulled out. I feel filleted. Quickly my mind sees that woman flopped in the heat on a deckchair, her head under a damp yellow towel, on my first night in this city.

  ‘I am crazy for you, Manfred.’

  My body bucks.

  ‘What? But — but what about — about Matt? You were pretty crazy about Matt.’

  ‘I get more from you than from Matt. He is an okay guy, but ordinary. I think about it. I think a lot, at Tai Shan. In fact, I really don’t like Matt so much. I prefer to stay with you and talk, and look at each other, and maybe love each other.’

  I stand, step across to the red sofa, and sit down. I take care not to touch. I stare into his eyes.

  ‘Jay, you lost all interest in me when you started dating Matt.’

  ‘No, I don’t lost all interest. I feel very angry to you and your doubt about my love for you. I am hurt when you tell me to look for other guys. I feel the policy is so unfair! I fear to think about if I fail to win your heart. I feel strange and impatient. It is very hard to be patient. I even want to kill you. But always I respect you. Sometimes, I consider, maybe I will take suicide if you left the world earlier than me, Manfred.’

  He stops, and knits his brows.

  I keep staring into his eyes. I can’t believe these wonderful words, of course, since they’re so exactly the words I’ve been wanting to hear. How can I believe what seems to be a licence to be happy? How can I believe that he’s here, that he’s not that cadaver found in the river, that he’s alive — more than alive, bursting with life?

  ‘So now what?’ I say gormlessly.

  ‘Wanna you fuck me,’ grins Jay.

  ‘That’s no answer, Jay. You mean you want to fuck me just as though nothing’s gone wrong?’

  He grins wider.

  ‘No, I wanna you fuck me. You are not only in my heart but I want you inside my body.’

  ‘What? Me fuck — you? Jay, we can’t fuck. Nothing’s changed. We’re not fit for each other. I’m too old. You’re too young.’

  He stops grinning. He bends towards me, and he begs.

  ‘I love you. I wanna be yours forever. I think about it at Tai Shan. I will take lots of energy to yourself. My love will make you feel young and much resource to your living. Please, I wanna you are forever mine, Daddy.’

  I don’t want to kiss him. Not yet, anyway. I want to work out what, and why — while looking into those bright brown eyes, and seeming to hear the throbbing of a ship setting out to sea, nosing with its prow towards waves, swells, and seeming to see a red ribbon flickering, red worms thriving, white shells below damp sand sending little spouts of water up towards their own graveyard where can be seen the dead shells of their forebears scattered between wet embedded life and a cold empty dryness of sky. I climb a suspended steel walkway and see streaming traffic and a catwalk of red carpet across which white domes come wobbling, domes of gossamer. Pouting heads pop from the top of the gossamer. Overhead, held up by helium, hangs a red lycra banner advertising skin whitener.

  ‘What about your exams?’ I say, still more gormlessly. ‘You’ve got exams in a few days and you haven’t studied for them — you’ll fail all your papers.’

  Once more the grin.

  ‘The student loves when the professor worry.’

  ‘Hey, by the way, what have you done with your cousin? You haven’t left him outside in the street, have you?’

  ‘I tell the cousin to wait at the dorm. He’s waiting there, no problem, Daddy.’

  Taking the young man by the hand, I bend forward to kiss his lips.

  Knock knock.

  What the —? Who could that be now?

  YOU’RE RELIEVED I’M not a murderer, aren’t you? You know, now, that no cop carrying warrant and handcuffs will come knocking at my door. Well, you don’t know. Not really.

  Okay, let’s set a scene.

  Pines Beach. High summer. A hot sun. A hapless son. A son whose mind has become knotted with thoughts about his dying dad. A dad who wasn’t a whole man, or even a holed man — a man who was a hole in my heart. When I was a son I had to be my own father, not too handily. And when I was a man myself, myself a father, I had daughters not sons. Somehow my chest always ached for a son. I wanted to hold a boy. I’ve always wanted to hold a boy, the way I wanted to be held by Dad — though only now do I know it, and back in those days the thought of it would have made me burn red, a hot red, from shyness.

  Or a hot red of rage.

  Rage is what makes you do it, isn’t it? Murder, I mean. Almost always it’s rage that makes anyone a killer.

  Let’s go back to that day I’ve told you about, the day before his death, the day last southern summer when I visited the old man in his room at the nursing home during the afternoon of a whipping wild northerly. A humdrum day. I visited him. He was asleep. I drove home to my cottage. I felt restless. I went for a long walk. After ending the walk and getting back to the cottage, what next?

  ‘Right!’ I say to myself, jumping into my rented car.

  Rubber wheels roll.

  Hedges, highways, a hot gusty wind. Suburbs. Swinging down an avenue, and around a couple of corners, I drive past Palm Grove. I park the car a block further on. Swiftly, silently, I pad along the pavement with rubber-soled trainers and up a concrete-kerbed driveway. Sneaking into his room the way I did earlier in the day, by way of the unlocked glass door, I find him asleep.

  My nerve would very likely fail me if I were to find the coot awake.

  Quickly, my eyes flick over a red skull lying helpless on its f
at white pillow. He’s snoring, the old man. Of course I can’t bear to look at him for long, so my eyes fly across the room, checking out each corner before settling on the smooth sheen of a syringe on a shelf. How could anyone look? Really look, I mean — look at that man in the flesh.

  My own flesh creeps at the thought.

  Never can I think back to a time when the sight of my dad didn’t make me want to spew. I haven’t quite told you that, have I? Not in so few words. Well that’s because it’s not something that makes me feel too good. Never can I think of a day, from today all the way back to my earliest childhood, when I didn’t feel sick at the sight of my dad.

  I’m two years old. I’m seated in the back of our Chrysler. We’re driving through some suburb. Dad holds the steering wheel. I’m behind, bouncing in the back seat with my brother. My eyes light on the back of his neck. The back of his neck is creased, crisscrossed with a sort of spidery web of fine wrinkles. Stubble, left by his last bout with the barber, strikes up through the skin. I feel sick. The sight of the back of his neck makes me feel sick. Why? I don’t know. Why should I feel sick at the sight of the finely creased neck of the easy-going man who drives so uncomplainingly, who works so hard and for such long hours to pay the many bills of our household? Not only do I feel sick, I loathe him. Why? I don’t know!

  He was a good dad, wasn’t he, by his own light, the light of his day? A young fellow, his face ruddy, his hair gleaming and glossy. A young chap swinging his lower leg, weighted with one of his nippers, a little kid squealing excitedly.

  Ride a cock horse

  To Banbury Cross …

  Who was that young fellow? Who?

  Pines Beach during the summer holidays. Magpies warbling. Kids playing. Me, a skinny little boy seven years old, standing with my war comic rolled into a tight tube — not a peg tube — at the bus stop, while watching a row of weary dads home from a day’s work. Dads stepping down a little steel stair onto the dusty shingle. My own dad ducking his head at me, awkwardly. Me chirping at my dad. Me following my dad, and chirping some more, until I know my mistake.

  ‘Sorry, mister.’

  Years have gone by and how many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been wasted on keeping him just alive? Operations, the attention of surgeons, the patience of nurses, the wheeling about by orderlies, the scouring by cleaners — all of it paid for by the rest of us, not by Dad. We pay. Kids pay. Hundreds of thousands that could’ve been spent on little kids, on helping sick little kids to be healthy, or lonely little kids to be loved.

  Selfish old prick.

  My eyes light on the plastic photo album he filled with pics last year. I flick through it. I come to the snap in bright colour showing my dad dressed as Santa Claus. An old man, skin stretched thin across sunken skeletal cheeks. An old man, with jutting bony jaw. White nylon fur has been stitched, fake and itchy, around the cuffs and the brim of the elf’s hat, gnome’s hat, of gruesome Santa Claws. A red nylon jacket, open at the neck, has been spruced with a white nylon cravat. Dad would never have let himself be seen dead in a cravat before the days of the greedy cancer, the hungry black crab. Now, however, the white fabric sits folded to mask his stoma, to lend an air of faux-dashing gallantry to the croaking rake, to rasping gasping old Cancer Claws.

  I can kill Dad. I’ve worked out a way.

  His peg tube, that’s the way. I’ve watched the old fool, right? I watched him just the other day. He took pains to sterilise his hands and then to flush the peg tube with sterile water. I won’t need to worry about those little tasks! Next he took hold of some slimy slop called Jevity Plus. He filled his syringe. Anxiously, by way of the peg tube, he squeezed the slop into his belly. I felt an urge to grab hold of the gear, then and there, and with one fierce squirt let a whole damn dose shoot down the tube. Of course I kept seated sedately. Dad squeezed out the last drops. He set aside the syringe. He flushed the peg tube once more with sterile water. Next, the head of his bed had to be lifted thirty degrees and kept at that angle for at least one hour to make it less likely that something would go wrong with the dodgy plumbing inside his sunken old trunk of ribs — less likely that he’d breathe the slop into his lungs.

  I fill a syringe with nothing worse than cold water. I squirt the water into his belly. I fill the syringe once more. Working quietly, I squirt syringe after syringe of cold water till his belly bloats into a sort of melon — like the belly of that guy outside the bar my first night on the tiles last year in Shanghai. The stoma starts to bleed.

  I tidy up. I check that the room looks orderly.

  I slip away.

  Out on the street, instead of climbing back into my car, I break into a loose run, pelting, with flailing arms, across the blacktop of the suburb.

  Not that I run too far — only a few blocks. Afterwards, sopping with sweat, I shamble back to the rented car. I stick the key into the ignition. The car rolls off on its wheels of thick rubber, rolls a killer back to his hideaway.

  An email awaits, from Jay.

  ‘China is in rainy days. Chilly and damp. U know I always feel cold in the early morning, wanna hold ur body. Always I think of u, ur handsome face ur grey hair ur blue eyes. I always ask myself how do I seem in ur eyes. U know everyone has his own story, his struggle to his fate. I am just one of the human beings on this planet. I have my happiness, my dreams and sadness, everyone has his own. Is love a dream for both of us? Will we be apart finally?’

  SO THAT’S WHY I’m frightened by the latest knock on my door. Cops, once more? Inspector Mao, come on behalf of Interpol? Could the chain-smoking detective drag me off to the clink — me, the parricidal son of a cancer-ridden, cock-horse-riding, chain-smoking dad? Or could my dad himself come knocking on my door, as I feared at the start of my story? Could the old coot come in the shape of a sorrowing ghost, knocking with gnarled goatish knuckles? Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t think I could swear that I really did kill Dad.

  I’m kinda losing touch with reality, you could say.

  I’m sorta losing the plot.

  Knock knock.

  Or even if I did bloat him up that night with water by way of his peg tube, maybe that might not be why he died. Maybe he was going to die without any help from outside.

  So maybe I’m still not a murderer?

  Opening the front door slowly, still reeling with what my boy has just had to say — I love you, I wanna be yours forever — I find no cop. Nor do I find my dead dad. The knocking knuckles are smooth and youthful, the knuckles of a boy. A smiling boy. A slim, tall boy. A boy who looks like an angel — who looks like Jay. Only he’s taller than Jay. Anyway, Jay’s in the room with me already. Isn’t he? How can this boy who looks like Jay be Jay?

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ says the angel, smiling boldly.

  ‘Er, hello. Who —?’

  The angel laughs, and behind me so does Jay.

  ‘My cousin,’ says Jay, running to the doorway. ‘This boy is my cousin, Sun.’

  Yet another Sun. So many Suns in China. You need to know that this one isn’t young pudding-faced Sun the interpreter and student of Kafka. Nor is he nice Mr Sun, the friend who took me to the turtle dinner. Nor is he young Dr Sun who treated me for food poisoning. Nor of course can he be small round nodding bobbing Dr Sun the head of my department. This is a new Sun — a rising Sun — an out-of-this-world Sun. He wears a tight tanktop. I ache to roll up, peel off the thin fibre of the tanktop and kiss what must be taut smooth skin, what must be a cheekily winking navel.

  Why? Cause he’s beautiful, he’s dazzling.

  ‘Oh. Hi, Sun.’

  Jay, speaking Mandarin, teases his cousin about how he was supposed to stay on campus. Sun answers laughingly that he got sick of hanging around and wanted a walk, and that only by accident did he come upon the Foreign Experts. He knew his cousin was calling on the New Zealand professor, so he sprinted straight up the stairs.

  ‘Here, go and eat,’ says Jay, slipping him the rumpled red paper of a note for one hu
ndred yuan.

  As for me, I’m standing there stunned.

  ‘Sun, you’re tall for someone still at middle school. How old are you?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ say both boys.

  They laugh, enjoying the way they’ve spoken in unison, and as they laugh I’m reeling a bit more. Sixteen years old. Which means, by our way of reckoning, fifteen years old. A kid. I’m fucked. What can I do? Standing stranded, gawping at the laughing boys, I can see how manlike my own boy looks compared with Sun. Jay’s jaw is too heavy, too crude, the skin too coarse, too thickly peppered with fine black dots where he should shave. Jay’s not a boy — he’s old. He’s too old! My mind’s eye flips to show me myself as a boy of fifteen — a boy of fifteen, lonely and unloved. Now, looking at Sun, I want to bend tenderly to that boy, hold him warmly —

  I’ve fallen in love. A love never before felt for anybody.

  Not for my dad. Not for my daughters. Not for my ex. Not for Jay. Hot, frantic, terrifying. All alarm bells are ringing. All red lights are pulsing fiercely.

  Warning! Stop! Abort! Run!

  Run away.

  About the Author

  STEVAN ELDRED-GRIGG was born by mistake in the Grey Valley, New Zealand, in 1952. A novelist, short story writer, essayist and historian, he grew up and was educated in Canterbury, New Zealand, and Canberra, Australia. His first literary grant was awarded by the Australia Council in 1978. His first novel, Oracles and Miracles, was published in New Zealand in 1987. Chinese translations have been published recently under the title Sheng Xian Qi Ji. Other novels are The Siren Celia, The Shining City, Gardens of Fire, Mum, Blue Blood and Kaput! His histories include A Southern Gentry, A New History of Canterbury, Pleasures of the Flesh, New Zealand Working People, The Rich: A New Zealand History and Xin Xilan de Wenxue Lucheng. He has three grown sons. Han Chao, his partner, is from Mongolia.

  www.eldred-grigg.com

  ALSO BY STEVAN ELDRED-GRIGG