‘Australia,’ Adam said.
The man glanced beyond him at the traffic, changed lanes.
‘Àodàlìyà,’ Adam tried. He still pronounced it clumsily. The run of falling tones sounded too definitive, too heavy for a place that was part light and part forgetting.
The driver nodded vaguely, then pressed his cigarette butt into the ashtray in the console. He didn’t try to make further conversation. They drove for much longer than Adam thought reasonable, until he began to wonder if they were going around in circles. If they were, there was nothing he could do about it. At last, the driver slowed to a stop and jabbed a finger towards the passenger side window. His second finger was curled around another, unlit cigarette. It was grey outside, the same dull grey as the city. Adam saw a cement wall beside him; beyond that, nothing. He felt his eyesight struggle with the tonal range, the lack of detail, and understood why Natasha compared smog to blindness.
He checked that he still had his phone, then rummaged for his wallet.
‘Dàole,’ the driver said. He looked over his shoulder, eyes questioning. The hand with the cigarette was close to Adam’s knee.
Adam paid him. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
He accepted an unexpected and strangely enthusiastic handshake, the ash from the new cigarette falling on the console between them and on his clothes, then clambered out and gazed across at the indistinct grey surface.
The cab driver leaned out the window, said a long phrase or name, pointed somewhere ahead of him, then stuck the cigarette in his mouth, giving up on his passenger’s limited understanding.
Adam had crossed the street before he understood that he was looking not at the sky but at the sea. He felt deflated. China was not a country, not in the sense he knew. It had no firm edges, it did not end at its borders at all. There was no leaving it.
Now that he was here, Adam thought he knew where he had meant to go. He had wanted the Pacific Ocean, its clear warmth and openness, its familiar violence. This wet patch was nothing like it. Beyond the sand, the water simply receded into a warm white smudge. He gradually made out a small group of figures on the sand, an old woman selling kites from near the cement wall and, in the direction the driver had gestured towards, a figure standing at a snack cart.
Hunger entered uninvited. He was surprised by its authority. Arriving at the cart, he stood a moment looking at the equipment before he remembered to acknowledge the person behind the perspex screen. The woman was probably forty or so, but could have been sixty. She wore a frilled apron with a cartoon lobster on it. The lobster also wore an apron, and a little chef’s hat, both white. Its print was off-centre and the colours bled along the outline. Adam checked, but there was no lobster on the lobster’s apron as far as he could see.
‘Yào shénme?’ she asked, gesturing at her equipment with an encouraging smile. He might have been her only customer all morning, all week. She had already begun to spread the batter by the time he nodded, quickly absorbed in her work. A blue sign behind her had English writing on it. It said something about a tiger. His dizziness reared up again, threatened to overwhelm him. He would not reach out a hand to steady himself.
‘Shí kuài,’ she said slowly, grinning, and pointed at the price displayed on paper stuck inside the perspex. He had money ready, and leaned in to take the plastic bag. The jiānbǐng was thinner and wider than he had eaten in Beijing, and folded lightly over its cargo of sauces, lettuce, crunchiness and pickle. The woman watched him eat and seemed pleased with him. It was delicious, but her clear gaze made him uncomfortable. He smiled, turned and began to walk back to the beach where he had started, looking for his own footprints on the sand. The surface was blank, swept flat. When he turned around, the woman was still staring.
He tried to walk more confidently along the seashore, heading towards the family in coats. The child was shoeless and laughed as she was lifted high over the tiny lake-like waves that nearly caught her toes, shrieking each time she was spared. He paused to watch them but felt self-conscious. He looked for the woman selling kites, but she did not try to engage with him at all. He passed her, anonymous as a bird, and turned towards the water.
Now that he had something in his stomach he could see that a horizon did exist out there. The sea was flat, murky, like dirty bathwater. It was nothing like the pictures. There were a few tankers lurking out by the horizon, waiting to dock somewhere. Tianjin? Qingdao? He wasn’t sure of the geography. Closer in, he saw a fishing boat that looked abandoned, perhaps just for the day, perhaps for years. It must be a prop, he thought, something left for its air of authenticity. Surely a sea like this could not hold fish in it. He took his phone out of his pocket to take a photograph of the possibly ruined boat, but it seemed much smaller on the screen and the horizon vanished again behind it; the image would be boring. He switched the camera off.
He moved back to the road and retraced his initial steps, walking towards the fenced area on the headland. He passed a faded billboard that said We salute you for your civilized behaviour! Crinkled in its frame, it seemed an artefact from another era. The buildings opposite the sea were looming, institutional. People’s Daily Beidaihe Sanatorium, one said in English, spaced neatly below the Chinese characters. It was all deserted, like a disused set or a town abandoned, lost to fever.
This was the off season, he reminded himself. He balled the paper packaging and pushed it into the plastic bag. His hunger was awakened rather than satisfied. There must be something open in the town, he thought, some hanger-on, some year-round convenience store. He longed for a big shopping-mall food court with a thousand choices, somewhere he could stay for hours, years. He picked lettuce from his teeth, turned into a side street, and walked alongside a row of shops with false fronts. The buildings seemed vaguely Russian, though he couldn’t have said why. Things were flimsy, and at the same time concrete and imposing. The place was giving him the creeps.
There was nothing open. The kite woman was still snagged in her position. A little grey dog ran past across the footpath, apparently at liberty. Adam smiled and walked on, crossed its track. His mouth was very dry.
Adam found that he was sitting at the water’s edge, wrenching off his shoes and socks. He rolled his jeans up to the calves, stood and stepped forward, holding his shoes in one hand. The sand under his toes felt soft as mud. He let the water cover his ankles, and wriggled his feet, inviting burial. He was standing on the beach with his father, letting the waves swallow him from below. His father’s hand huge around his own. He could not conjure his face, the form of him, only the sensation of the hand enfolding the knuckles, the sucking below. His feet held fast to the earth, its rhythm moving in and out. His father seemed to smile at him, but when Adam turned the face he saw was blank, unfamiliar. His grandfather, he thought. An older memory. He blinked, and was alone.
The water licked his calves. It was freezing. He fought the impulse to walk deeper. His fingers shifted, gripping the heels of his shoes. The water reached up to tug at his jeans. He felt it soak into the fabric. He did not like it. The sensation was all wrong, it was too cold, he was too heavy. He could not feel his feet or remember how to lift them.
He stumbled back, numb and clumsy, and fell to his knees on the sand. When he turned, there was only the edge of the beach laid out in low stone, a fenced-off area with an entry point. The snack cart had vanished. The air was growing lighter. He was not sure how much time had passed and he was frightened. He sat in the dirty sand, rubbing its grains from his feet. Carefully, he put his sneakers back on and slid a little further from the water’s edge. Slowly his feet warmed up and he could move them.
He had spaced out for a moment. A fugue, or something. Still not quite well.
The edge of the land seemed to bleed into the water, creating an in-between substance that was not mud but something else, something more alive than either water or soil. He had to get away from it, get back to the safe enclosure of the city. He
reached for his phone, but when he pressed home it would not answer him. The battery was flat again. Adam got to his knees then rose gingerly to his feet, his vision swimming. He waited for it to clear.
The snack cart had reappeared; it was a red smudge in the distance. The light in that direction had no specific character.
He walked back to the road, forcing his mind to focus on the sand in his socks, the tiny abrasions that might guide his steps as well as his attention.
A man stood waiting for him at the roadside, middle-aged, neat and compact, slender. His shoulders were bent forward as though he had spent many years at a desk. Adam smiled at him, then looked at his feet.
‘Hello,’ the man said. He feinted, and Adam thought he intended to hold his hand out for a handshake, but he didn’t follow through.
‘Hello,’ Adam echoed. He looked the man in the eye. Drifted to broad cheekbones, soft lips. The shoulders under a blue check shirt.
‘Where are you from?’ the man asked, his English strangely plummy.
Adam said, ‘Beijing,’ automatically, startling himself. ‘I mean, I live there. I came from there. I’m going home.’
The man frowned, then smiled. ‘Home,’ he said. The sound that came from his mouth was more breath than word.
‘Can you tell me how to get to the train station?’ Adam asked.
The man looked sad. ‘The train station?’ The interaction had taken a turn that disappointed him. ‘The bus leaves from there,’ he said, gesturing down the road with one hand. He concentrated, the soft lips moving, then said a number in English. Adam repeated it, slowly becoming aware that it was the number of the bus.
‘But where are you from?’ the man asked again. He had shifted, and now stood too close; Adam could smell his breath. Something sweet, medicinal, almost like milk. The question felt like an accusation. It occurred to Adam that he was from the government, that he was some kind of undercover police, that he should watch what he said. We salute you for your civilized behaviour!
‘Armenia,’ said Adam. He did not know why. He had not expected to say it and it was not really true. He hoped the man would not have heard of his ancestors’ country, that it would put an end to further questions. He was being unfair, but that didn’t matter. He had to get away now, it was not important where.
The man was staring at him.
Adam smiled weakly, lifted a hand and hurried across the road to the bus stop, his fingers numb with cold. He shoved them in his pockets. He had done nothing wrong. If he ignored him, the man would go away eventually.
Empty apartments lined the road, empty windows looking out over the inauspicious sea. He crossed to walk beside them, unsettled by the desertion. The white building behind the bus stop was boarded up. An animal – it couldn’t be the same grey dog he had seen before – was foraging in its well-tended shrubbery. These rest homes or guesthouses or whatever they were, watching over the water, they were what had suggested sickness. He felt fine. He looked up at the bus stop sign. The bus number he wanted was printed there. The billboard behind it showed a landscape covered in flowers. He barely knew what Armenia looked like, but the name now filled him with longing. He wondered if it was possible to be homesick for a place he had never been.
The bus pulled up, empty except for the driver. It was so quick that it might have been lurking just out of sight, waiting for a passenger. He boarded, paid his fare, and took a seat halfway back. The bus stayed where it was, idling. He looked out through the window and felt a sudden panic that he had left something important behind on the beach. He fought the urge to go back out there, to answer to the water. He rummaged in his bag, found his wallet, passport, phone and two bottles. He drank from the emptier one, drained it, and pushed the bottle down into the gap between the seat and the bus’s beige-carpeted wall.
The kite lady had a customer, a tall, slender person with shoulder-length hair. Something long and white billowed out behind them, more robe than dress. It was hard to read their gender. They tucked their hair behind an ear and pointed to the water. The old woman unrolled the kite for them, stood patiently. The tall figure bent over it, reached one slender hand. A chill ran through him.
Adam stood to disembark, but at the same moment, something changed in the pitch of the engine. The man from the beach was standing in the aisle of the bus. Adam sat down again. The other man approached, hesitated, then sat two rows ahead of him. He turned in his seat to look at Adam, but did not speak. Adam looked out the window. The figure with the kite had their arms raised. He could still get off the bus and go to them. But just as their kite lifted into the air, its black wings come suddenly to life, the engine rumbled underfoot and the bus began to move. They were leaving.
‘Not a good day,’ said the man.
Adam felt like weeping. ‘It’s fine,’ he said.
‘Why did you come here?’ the man asked.
Adam stared out the window. He had no answer. He couldn’t remember why he had come, not here and not to China. There was nowhere to hide.
‘You should come in the summer,’ the man went on, unhelpfully. He only meant the seaside, even if his eyes seemed to contain another invitation.
The bus driver toyed with the radio. Adam thought he caught snatches of a song he knew, but the reception was poor. He stared out the window at the town.
The bus did not return to the coast. It went up a hill, past a park with a huge wall around it. Military guards stood to attention in fancy uniforms beside elaborate gates. The bus stopped several times, but no-one got on or off.
The man was humming along to a tune, though Adam could hear only static. He realised that his left leg was jiggling, and made it go still.
At last the driver pulled into a slip road and shut off the engine. The man in front said ‘Here, train station,’ and waited for him to get off before he followed.
‘You’ll need to buy a ticket,’ the man said. He was only being kind, but Adam was irritated. Still, he followed him to the counter and let him negotiate a ticket. When he handed over his passport, the man pounced on it, turned it over in his hand before pushing it under the glass for him.
‘Australia,’ he said, aggrieved and triumphant.
Adam saw him lying on the concrete tiles, his skull cracked open, blood pooling. The image wounded him. It was not his fault. He could not be blamed for it, and did not deserve to be infested with thoughts that should not concern him. He had not left them behind at the water. He felt them lodged in him, hovering just under his awareness. He breathed, calmed a little, until the sensation left him.
When his ID and ticket were slipped back beneath the glass, he checked the ticket was for Beijing before reading the time and putting it in his pocket. With the warm passport in his hand, he waited for the man to leave.
‘It is that gate,’ he said, smiling. A hand, soft, against his back.
Adam turned and walked quickly away. Shaking, he made for the nearest exit. He did not look to see if the man had followed him. He did not want to go home anymore.
He hurried across a courtyard. The sky was veined, alabaster. He was tired, so tired. He needed more energy for this, he needed sugar. A small shop at the corner looked open, drinks and snacks visible through its door. He went in, bought some crackers and an iced tea with a cartoon fox on the label. Then he kept walking.
He stretched his arms as he walked, feeling the blood circulate. His shoulders crackled audibly. He was conscious of the processes inside him, the fragile order, with new wonder. He thought he understood the force that life was, how it moved in him, elusive and fragile and marvellous. He wanted the sun on his skin, the taste of salt in his mouth, a cut that bloomed blood, to immerse himself in experience. To inhale the scent of flowers. He drank the tea. Studied the packaging.
Understood that he would miss his train.
He went back into the station, keeping an eye out for the man.
There was no crush of bodies, only an orderly line. The rest of the passengers seemed reluctant to board. He pushed through them, found his seat quickly. The man would know the number, he realised, and changed carriages to avoid him, finding another empty place. After a moment a young man in a baseball cap appeared and looked at him mournfully until he produced his ticket. Adam moved again. He spotted the man who had followed him sitting in a nearby seat, but his eyes were closed. Adam hurried past, back to the seat he had been allocated, and sat as the train began moving. He could close his own eyes, pretend to sleep, pretend to have forgotten him.
From his window seat, he watched the light of day withdrawing. It was only afternoon, but the days were getting shorter, and the smog was thicker as they approached the city. The blur in the world outside pleased him now; it offered protection. They sped past unfinished towers, huge skeletal structures surrounded by fields of rubble, fields of green, the wet ground and the wasted. In one of the fields, a little glow appeared like the light on the end of a plane’s wing. Fires in the fields, he thought, as a second light materialised, and a third. They might be funerals. Maybe it was just people burning rubbish. Adam had no way of knowing.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, touched its unresponsive glass. He knew there was a message waiting. He had missed the signal, missed something important that he could not get to. He put the phone away and closed his eyes. If he did not remember them, they would leave him alone. The sky outside came closer, smothering. Not a retreat of light at all but an approach of darkness.
BORDER
A landing bounce. They want to get out. She’s stiff, and has to tilt her head to fit when she stands. No air, no space. She scowls at the collar of the man who blocks her way, his back turned like a wall. One of her feet shifts and kicks his heel; the impact pleases her. The ache in her neck begins to deepen, to enter the spine. The air is stale, warm with breath. Phones wake and beep around her. Announcements in three languages. She bends to see through the little rounded window. Out there it’s dark, but lit with signals, lines, numbers, floodlights. Land, or its concrete approximation. Where are they? A machine sweeps past below the wing and she watches it, her eyes dry and struggling with the light. Someone sneezes. She covers her mouth with her scarf.
The Airways Page 19