‘I think it will be okay,’ she said, seeing him at the back door. ‘A bit muddy, that’s all.’
‘Do you need help?’ he asked. Catastrophe had failed to arrive; he should probably contribute something.
‘No,’ Marita said, lifting a hand and turning away. ‘I mean, there’s other stuff that needs doing.’
He waited for her to give him the list of tasks, then chose to walk to the shop for plastic cups and mixers, came back with bags so full that they dug grooves in his fingers. After he had stocked the fridge he went out into the empty yard with a can of beer and stretched his hands towards the sky. The air smelled of jasmine, orange blossom and the rich damp of decaying eucalyptus. Newly emerged cicadas were drowning an old Beatles song with their high drone. He felt good in his body; his shoulders still buzzed where he had used the muscle, and the sun soaked the ache away. He should swim more often.
He opened the beer and sat down in the sun.
I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide.
Laughter from the house, and singing. He felt like a kid. He sipped secretively from the can. He would have to pace himself. There were still many hours until the guests arrived. He wished he hadn’t blundered into inviting a couple of women from uni who he didn’t particularly like, but they probably wouldn’t show up. He pressed the cold can between his knees and closed his eyes.
‘You will burn,’ a voice said.
His eyes shot open. Yun leaned over him, not close but close enough. Their hair had formed a question mark against their cheek. Their jaw from this angle – but the form shifted before it could be named. ‘Were you watching me sleep?’ Adam’s voice wavered. These cicadas were unrelenting. The music had stopped.
Yun’s hands came together, their slender fingers folded. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
Adam felt an understanding pass between them, electric in the damp air.
FURY
A woman stands at her sink. Fills her lungs with steamed air, sharp lavender. Folded elbows bear the weight of breasts. She holds her own gaze in the mirrored cabinet, dull but curious. Something in her eye shifts inward. Maybe she senses a flicker there, a presence that isn’t her own. They want her to keep looking until she sees.
She takes a plastic bottle from the sink, opens her mouth, upends it.
Her full mouth dances. It almost smiles. The edges begin to dissolve, and they taste bitterness. Pills like teeth. She swallows, and her eyes catch again on their reflection.
A moment more, and they might be visible. They feel her body responding to something in that gaze, but it is hard to read. The attention turned so poisonously in.
She opens the cabinet and breaks the connection. Puts the empty plastic bottle on the shelf, turns the prescription label around, tidies the other potions into order (alignment of nonsense, the labels fizzing incoherently), closes the mirrored door. The image restored, but she’s leaving it now, leaning over the bath, her damp hair clinging to her face and neck. Throat thick from swallowing and steam. She turns the tap off, checks the water. Careful of her skin. Heart thumping. They don’t know what she’s taken, but they can read her intention, and it frightens them.
She steps in. Heat moves along her skin, stinging the calf, the blood coming up to meet the skin. The feet go red and numb. She displaces the water and enters it. The water relieves the body of the weight of itself. She is joined to it, that intimate pressure, and it opens her pores, it gets in. She lets her ears sink under water, lets it crawl through her. All is quiet except the body. Her breath against the surface. She listens to it, and they must listen too.
Pain sings in her, nowhere specific. An unplaced shadow. It is everywhere, but it begins to dim. The energy is draining away from her, lights going out in the body’s furthest houses. There are organs and functions that slow down and release. She opens her mouth to let the water in. Her breath floats at the scented surface, a warm welcome.
They fall into her and wait. With her, they long to sink like this. To be taken down like curtains in an empty room. The desire in her body overpowers what little they remember. Best to let go now, let her light them away. Her muscles are relaxing. They are only a fragment, a remnant, they shouldn’t be here. And it’s all been very tiring.
Her eyes close, and a private smile plays over her lips. There is a sweetness to this way of leaving. The death of their first body was so quick, the moment stolen. The hardness of it, the shock: breath against asphalt. Maybe they’ve just been looking for a better way. A softer landing. A moment that feels chosen. It is easier than managing to go on, striving for coherence in bodies that do not belong to them, persisting without knowing how. Maybe this, here, is the answer to impermanence, to exile. A kindness. And it feels so familiar, a proper and fitting end.
It is, after all, what was often expected of them. Some bodies are marked for death from the beginning.
They loose themselves into her softening skin, her hands tender, her muscles growing slack. They feel the water cooling. Her breath slow. Not deep, but resting at the border, ready to sink through.
So gently sinking. The water relieves her of weight. She lies still. Water at the corners. Mouth beneath. Only the breath. All that was ever expected. She’s losing power.
But they think suddenly of the touch of rain, of Adam’s eyes on them. They will not go under.
This is not what they want. They get in all her cells and push them. Electrocute her into awareness. Shove at limbs that don’t lift from their resting places. Is she shaking? Can she still wake? Something is moving. It’s not too late.
They won’t let go. They won’t go with her. They gather themselves. All the energy that they can muster. Attention to that rage turned in. Pure in it, and nearly certain. If there is a moment to move, this is it. All life wants is life. Even hers has its ember.
They want to live. They want the taste of it, of justice.
Nothing changes. They swim into one unhappy kidney, and the eyes droop. The heart rate slows. It makes no difference. There is no exit. Each body opens into death, and they belong there, not here. Not even their own death, a stranger’s.
Like the blood in this body, a slow syrup, their will is cooling. They’re not strong enough to move her. Just a remnant, a fragment, after all.
She hears steps in the hallway below. Dim, through water; getting closer. They hear this too. Through water.
Her eyelids flutter.
It doesn’t matter whose fury it is, or whether it’s only annoyed at the interruption. What matters is how it rises, sets fires under the skin, shifts a muscle in the space where the lip touches the water, starts a tickle in her ears where she feels it enter. It takes all they have. It takes both of them, the body and its guest. They turn each other out. Her hands rise up and grab the rim. The water surges. Eyes open. Ears surface. Sound floods back into the world. She seizes breath.
They hear a knocking.
She sits up, grips her knees. Her lungs are desperate for air. Her body almost without warmth, almost without heartbeat. The water coming out of her, crying. It isn’t possible that she has moved. But something in her found the strength. Some vestigial, salvaged power. A muffled voice, insistent at the door, draws her forward.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘I’m coming.’
BEIJING
The room was suffocating. Adam had not meant to fall asleep. He reached for a half-drunk glass of water on the bedside table, knocked it with one clumsy hand. It tilted, but did not fall. The surface of the water shifted, white with dust.
In his dream he had been drowning. There had been someone with him, watching him, but there was no-one else here now. He had dreamed, too, that he had thrown his shearling jacket over a fence somewhere, but here it was bunched against the wall. He sniffed the water, suspicious of the filmy layer. He drank it anyway. It had no taste.
Picked something up on the subway. Th
e phrase, repeated, was beginning to sound like a curse. He would stop thinking about it. Instead he focused on his breath, counting the inhalations, exhalations, as he had been shown. The dust in the room made his nose wrinkle up before he got to ten, and he sneezed. He shifted his attention to the blood instead, visualised it circulating in his body, steady, reliable. He could hear the high murmur of machinery. He had swallowed the dust, and breathed it in, and it floated now inside him. Junk. Foreign bodies. He should lie down again, he thought, but he did not want to. He sat up.
He was sure he had been on the couch a moment ago.
He went to the bedroom window, cranked it open. It was still daylight, and sunny out. The air was cool, and getting worse.
He reached for his phone. Natasha would know what to do. Bring fruit. Get something delivered. He picked up the machine, a bright weight restored to his hand. There was a message waiting, and for a moment he thought he had conjured her, but it was only another group text from Manu. An image, an invitation to an exhibition opening tomorrow. The message had appeared without context. It was still Wednesday, and they were all together at work, so it must have come up in conversation. He thought of Manu backing into his office, saying, ‘I’ll send you the link.’ The others raising thumbs. His the only empty chair.
He decided to take a shower.
The hot water felt amazing against his back. Steam loosened his blocked nose. How long was it since he had eaten? He did not feel weak. He wanted to move, use his body, go to the gym, run down four flights of stairs and out into the street.
Running might not be safe. He would go for a walk, eat something in the neighbourhood mall’s food court or in its one, always-deserted Japanese restaurant, which had an English menu. He would like not to feel illiterate for a minute.
He looked at his hands. They appeared the same as they had before, maybe a little paler. But there was this sort of buzzing feeling, in the right one in particular. Across the back of the hand, and then in the fingers. He lifted it to wipe the steam from the mirror, but stopped before he touched the glass. Something wasn’t right.
Have to be careful in these apartments. Tofu houses, Natasha called them, built in a rush and flimsy. He looked around for a loose wire, a source of electrical charge, then saw that he was standing in a small pool of water, and leapt out of it, bumping an elbow on the sink. Shaking, he walked back to the bedroom, leaving damp prints on the dusty floor. Leaving the mirror’s obscuring steam. He needed to go outside, to be among people.
He put on clean clothes, then lifted the shearling jacket to his nose. It was warm and smelled like stale earth. He remembered the shadows of fish suspended in the cold canal, shook his head and slipped his phone into a pocket.
‘Picked something up on the subway,’ he said, standing at the door. His voice sounded odd in his ears. It was too warm in here. He had to stop to check that he had dressed properly, and when he looked down he saw his feet were bare. He had almost left the house without shoes.
When he opened the door there was a delivery man in the hallway, muttering to himself over a parcel. He looked up, then through him, then shifted to let him pass. He was slight, young, slipped through the air like a dancer. Adam held the wall beside the elevator while he waited. His heart bounced in his chest. The guy with the parcel moved down the hall, reading its label and looking at doors. He peered at Adam, then at the package, and Adam smiled, but the young man shook his head and turned and walked down the fire stairs. Adam listened as his footsteps dissolved, resisted an urge to follow him.
His phone pinged, and he thought again of Natasha. The blue-grey bricks around her window, the empty hutong where he thought himself unseen. She would forgive him soon, surely, it should have been no big deal. But the message was from Manu.
Just letting everyone know the office will be closed tomorrow, it said. They are fixing the air.
Adam pushed the button at the elevator again. He could hear it moving inside the shaft, but the numbers changed so slowly on the display. His lungs were tight. The building would not let him go.
The elevator opened and he stepped in, facing his reflection. He opened his camera and held it up to the mirror. But he looked pale, his features distorted, and focus was poor; he avoided his own eyes.
Fuck it, he would just text her.
How are you? Nothing is happening here, he wrote.
He sent it quickly. It might be a sort of self-effacing joke. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He was starving. As the thought formed, the hunger took over his whole body at once, a flush of pain or pleasure. He had to stand still until it washed through him, close his eyes a moment to regain control. The sickness, if that’s what it was, had weakened him.
The elevator opened and released him to the ground level, and he stepped out into the street. A young woman walked past wearing pink fluffy headphones, humming to herself, followed by a white chihuahua dressed as a watermelon. Things were happening here, of course they were. This was Beijing.
The intersection was busy with pedestrians, mostly flooding in and out of the mall. The usual vendors had assembled at the corner: snacks, fruit, small repairs, the young woman who sold flowers. No sign of the child who was often with her. He would remember to smile when he passed on his way back. Young men in sānlúnchē loitered at the subway entrance, peering from windows to solicit customers. One cart sold lotus seedpods, another persimmons, and a third was obscured by women; whatever it was, it must have been a good deal.
The shiny new fruit shop was absurdly popular. Lines at both checkouts. A couple walked out, a bunch of leeks sticking from the bag over her shoulder, a cabbage under his arm, a child between them swinging from their hands. The child’s face was solemn. He watched until they had passed him. Something about that concentrated joy made him feel miserable.
He stepped into the shop, lit so brightly that his eyes hurt. The apples were piled at the front by the door, each one almost the size of that child’s head, nestled into a web of polystyrene, or whatever it was, white coral wrapped around a vulnerable skull. He reached for one, slipped it from its soft nest, lifted it to his face. The cool skin was pleasant against his own, but he could feel a flaw. When he examined it, he saw a mark along one side, an unhealed scar where the fruit had been damaged. He tucked it back into its casing. A woman beside him held a cut rockmelon, close enough that he could smell its syrupy flesh through the plastic binding. He thought of pushing his hand into it, taking the texture between his fingers. She made a noise with her mouth that was not quite speaking, and he stepped back, nearly colliding with an old man behind him.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, forgetting his language. The melon had shocked him. His legs were weak and his fingers numb. He needed to eat. He reached for another, unharmed apple. He peered through the net rather than removing it. Sniffing, he could detect a faint odour. An old woman reached past him to take a plastic bag from the dispenser and he shifted out of her way, dropped the apple, heard it roll under the display.
He pretended he hadn’t seen it fall. The woman paused, shook out her bag for a long moment, sucked air through her teeth, and began picking out apples to examine beside him. He took another and went quickly to the weighing station without a bag. The young woman there weighed the solitary apple with a sigh, put it into a plastic bag, placed the sticker on the plastic bag, and handed it back to him. She had the manner of someone much older than she looked, someone who’d had time to grow exhausted. He went to the counter and paid, breaking a hundred-kuài note. The checkout person tried to put the plastic bag inside another but he stopped her just in time by waving his hand, embarrassed, only remembering to say ‘bù yào’ when his intention was already clear.
In the street Adam looked for somewhere to sit and eat, but there were no benches and the only low wall along this strip was dirty with cement dust from the demolition. He removed the apple from its bag and then from its net. He should wash
it, but he didn’t want to go back into the apartment. He put the net in the bag and, not seeing a bin, scrunched it up and pushed it into his jacket pocket. He shone the apple against his jeans before he took a bite. It was crisp, but almost flavourless. Maybe he had lost his sense of taste. His mouth enjoyed the texture of it anyway, the juice against his skin. He decided to walk.
If they were waiting in the apartment he would need time to prepare. He meant to feel the strength return to his body first, to nourish it and push it gently towards fitness, feel its life force flow back in. Oxygen would help. A worried feeling crept into him, beginning at the wrists and travelling up the arms towards his chest. A sense that he had forgotten something, neglected some obligation or committed some undiscovered error.
He took his phone out, knowing it would not help. The message he had composed to Natasha was still there, with a red exclamation mark beside it. It had not sent. There was no reception in the elevator. He deleted it.
It was better to go down into the subway. Disappear for a while, be among people, mix himself in the city’s bloodstream. The prospect filled him with pleasure. A fresh excitement tingled in his fingertips and toes. He had his wallet, his Yīkǎtōng, his phone. The city laid out for him, like cities should be. And all those bodies below, that circulating energy.
He took another bite and tasted something rotten. When he held the apple up to the light, a brown stain was forming from the core, spreading towards the surface. He spat the bite out, but the taste was still in his mouth. He carried the half-eaten fruit to the bin by the road, deposited it, and crossed towards the subway.
The ginkgo trees were drooping now, their leaves a sickly yellow. The pavers underfoot were sprinkled with green and brown and golden fans that lay where they had fallen, but those still hanging on the trees were dull. He passed a girl who was taking selfies below them; she would fix the colours with her phone later, increase the saturation. It was still warm. The ginkgos were out of order, or the season was. Someone was already sweeping up ahead, removing the evidence. Their orange jumpsuit brighter than any filtered autumn.
The Airways Page 11