Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

by Susan Jane Gilman

  The Japanese couple got up and walked away. Amazingly, Claire pursued them all the way to the elevator. “C’mon. Take it. I said it was a present, okay?”

  After they left, she sank down on her bed and looked dejectedly at the broken Instamatic. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said after a moment. “But I was trying to do something important.”

  I crossed my arms. “It’s pretty uncool to try selling off a broken camera.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s uncool!” she exploded. “It’s none of your business what I do! And besides, this camera isn’t broken. I just don’t know how to use it!”

  “You sat on it!” I screamed. “And it is my business if you go around selling other people junk, because we rely on them and then they won’t trust us!”

  “Shut up!” she shrieked. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Leave my business alone!”

  “Fine! I’ll be more than happy to.” I snatched up my ugly pink sweater, then jabbed at the elevator buttons. “You want to be left alone? Fine! You’re alone!”

  When I got downstairs, panting and nearly in tears, I started hurrying through the streets of Guilin, down one lane, then another, without really looking where I was going. What just happened up there? What on earth is going on? I crossed a small bridge, then passed a post office, trying to get a handle on my emotions. I reviewed the argument like sports footage, trying to determine exactly where things started to go wrong. On Zongshan Road, I passed two tourists standing outside a restaurant pointing to a beaver in a cage. “So you cook it with ginger?” the woman said loudly to a waiter. Oh my God, I thought. This is insane. I stopped and tried to catch my breath. I was wheezing asthmatically. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of dark green. It was Claire, in her army coat, trailing me.

  ———

  That evening, we sat across from each other on our dormitory beds like adversaries. When other travelers returned from their day of sightseeing, I made a big show of chatting with them, laughing and joking around. Occasionally I shot Claire a look as if to say: See, other people aren’t acting like assholes. When a Dutch couple invited us to join them and some New Zealanders for dinner, I accepted for the both of us. Claire glared at me, but when it was time to leave, she put on some lip gloss and followed sulkily. We walked en masse to Zongshan Road, where, to my relief, the Dutch chose a restaurant that did not have live dogs, rats, turtles, snakes, beavers, or cats on display outside.

  “Hey, I’m all for sampling the cuisine of different cultures,” I announced as we sat down. “But I draw the line at puppies.” Claire, I noticed, kept glancing back at the cages outside the restaurant next door. Although we all made a point of ordering only vegetarian fried noodles, vegetarian fried rice, and deluxe fried vegetables, when our dinners arrived, she pushed her food around on her plate without touching it. The Dutch kept ordering bottles of beer and passing them sloppily around the table. By the time we returned to the guesthouse, everyone was giggling and stumbling about with our arms draped around each other. The icy room was sweet with marijuana smoke, and two Japanese girls sat on their beds singing pop songs. Claire sat down beside me and gently leaned her head on my shoulder. Slowly, softly, she began to sing along with the others, her eyes filling with tears.

  When I awoke the next morning in my clothes, it was dawn; the rest of the dormitory was still asleep. The horizon was vermilion, marigold orange, and irradiant yellow, backlighting rows upon rows of karsts shaped like enormous gumdrops, their silhouettes blueing to violet in the rising sun. The colors were so spectacular and electric, they appeared almost spray-painted.

  “Claire,” I whispered, nudging her. “Wake up. You have to see this.”

  She stirred, sat up, and blinked out at the unearthly, psychedelic dawn.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” I said.

  She nodded forlornly, looking as if she was going to weep. “Let’s go to Yangshuo,” she pleaded softly, gripping my hand. “Let’s go today, okay? Please? As soon as possible.”

  ———

  Buses left every hour, and we took the first one after breakfast. We were the only Westerners onboard. Claire slid into a seat by a window, then spent the ride with her eyes transfixed on the road and her Walkman playing at full volume. Every four minutes, she pushed the replay button, listening to the same song over and over again. Although I was prone to doing the exact same thing myself, after about half an hour, the incessant clicking and whirring got on my nerves.

  I was coughing nonstop now: a deep, tubercular hacking; most of the other passengers on board the bus had it, too. We were a hallelujah chorus of contagion. Beyond the windows, the busy highway from Guilin quickly gave way to a rutted road. The landscape grew wild and dense; tendrils of fog coiled around the mountains. More and more of the karsts emerged until we were in a forest of limestone formations. They towered over us, unnerving in their enormity, in their haunting, Paleozoic beauty. Eventually the bus entered a valley. Sun broke through, glittering on the rice paddies and irrigation streams. Water buffalo lumbered about. There was one ramshackle roadside store made from bamboo, and then beyond it, nothing but billows of tropical vegetation along a river. We were deep in the countryside now, with tall grasses and fields as liquidly green as absinthe. At the foot of a solitary limestone karst peak the bus turned sharply and lurched onto a wide dirt road. About a hundred yards down was a row of single-story concrete buildings. The driver stopped abruptly in the dust. As soon as the automatic doors jerked open, all the Chinese clamored out. Swept along with them, Claire and I were forced to descend, unsure of where we were.

  “Yangshuo?” Claire shouted, pointing at the ground. Before the driver could respond, a crowd of fresh Chinese passengers pushed past us and climbed on board with their bundles and bags, everyone talking and jostling at once. It was impossible to hear or see anything over their heads. There was a jerking sound, a belch of exhaust, and the bus took off again.

  We stood on the edge of the road, blinking into the white-hot daylight.

  It was summery now. Claire took off her army coat and pulled her hair back into a ponytail; I stuffed my ugly pink sweater into my backpack. Since there seemed to be no other place to go, we hoisted our bags and trudged along the dirt road toward the little outcrop of buildings. Except for a few Chinese men squatting outside and chewing, the stretch was deserted, like a tumbleweed town in a Western.

  That is, until we turned the corner.

  We found ourselves at the beginning of a leafy cobblestone lane. In the distance, music was playing. As we followed the road and drew closer, the tune became familiar: It was Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty was belting out, “Some folks are born, made to wave the flag, Ooh, they’re red-white-and-blue.” Through a clearing in the trees, we came upon a small open-air café with a sign nailed above it: “Green Lotus Peak Inn.” Beneath it, someone had added a postscript on a smaller plank of wood: “Have a Cold Beer and Enjoy the Local Talent.” And beneath that, on still another plank: “Home Style Cooking Just Like Mother Used To.” Backpackers in tank tops and shorts sat sunning themselves around little wooden tables dotted with half-finished pink and yellow frothy drinks. Two shirtless guys were stretched out with their hands knitted behind their heads, their bare torsos tilted and gleaming in the light like sheets of newly pressed metal. The gnashing whuuzzz of a blender drowned out the music.

  “Jesus,” Claire murmured. “Look.”

  Inside the café hung a menu on a chalkboard:

  Pancake

  Banana Pancake

  Chocolate Pancake

  Waffle

  Banana Waffle

  Chocolate Waffle

  Hamburger

  Beef Stew

  Grill Cheese

  Macaroni Cheese

  Milk Shake

  Next door to the café, we saw a stall full of used and bootlegged cassette tapes. BUY, TRADE MUSIC!!! Further down was a funky jewelry stand selling beaded necklaces and brass bang
les, then a booth full of used Western paperback books labeled English. German. Spanish. At the end of the lane stood a shack of a travel office with a fluorescent yellow placard in front: Bus tickets! Train tickets! Air tickets! Bike rentals! Cormorant night fishing tour! English spoken! Fast + Easy bookings! Across from that, an open-air bar and restaurant had put up a sign announcing simply:

  PIZZA.

  At first we thought it was a mirage. We were in the middle of nowhere—ground zero of prehistory—and yet we’d stumbled into an oasis of Western hippie youth culture and English nestled among the ancient karsts. The blender stopped at the same moment the Creedence Clearwater song ended. There was nothing but the delicate clinking of glasses, a low thrum of conversation, twittering birds.

  “Is this for real?” I said.

  A young waitress stepped out of the café with an empty tray tucked under her arm. Blinking, she shielded her eyes from the sun. She was Chinese, though there was something strangely Western looking about her. She was tall and slim, dressed in a pink, puffed-sleeve blouse and a beige dirndl. Her shoulder-length hair was cut across her forehead in thick bangs, but the front locks were pulled back with a pink polka-dot ribbon. When she smiled, her full-moon face looked satiny and untarnished.

  “Hello. Welcome to the Green Lotus Peak Inn.” She stepped lightly among the tables to greet us. “I am Lisa.” When she reached us, she did something truly astonishing. She put down her tray and hugged me.

  The strangest feeling overtook me: I’d met this woman before. I knew her already. She couldn’t be any older than Claire and me. Buoyant, aspiring, she was a Chinese version of us: a kindred spirit, a sister from a different life, perhaps. And yet while her face was girlish and bright, her eyes were soulful, almost melancholy. There was something maternal about her. Claire sensed this too. For the first time in a while, her posture relaxed and her face lost its pinched, furrowed quality.

  “Wow. Hi,” Lisa exclaimed, opening her long, slender arms. Claire, the notorious non-hugger, hugged Lisa too.

  Lisa held Claire in her embrace for a moment, then stepped back and tenderly brushed a lock of Claire’s hair out of her face.

  “Oh, your gold hair,” she said. “You are both very pretty girls. Where are you from?”

  When we told her America, she said, “Oh, you have come very long way. You very far from home. Must be very hard. You miss home, yes? But here in Yangshuo, no worries. I speak English, and we have food you like. You need place to stay, yes?”

  Claire and I nodded dumbly. In China, the simplest tasks—peeing, eating, buying a ticket—had become so difficult and degrading, they’d worn us down, made us buckle and contort. Only now that we were suddenly relieved of the effort of having to fend for ourselves did we fully appreciate what a strain it had been. We found ourselves tearing up.

  “Ooh,” said Lisa sympathetically, touching her hand to Claire’s cheek. “Don’t cry. You in good hands now. Go down road, make left, then right. You see sign. Garden Guesthouse. You get nice room there. Then, you come back here and I cook for you. Good food. Just like Mom make.”

  With his broken English, the proprietor of the Garden Guesthouse communicated that he had accommodations for us provided we didn’t mind sharing our room with another traveler. He led us into a thatched hut with three beds situated on crude platforms high above the dirt floor; they weren’t so much beds as tables shrouded in mosquito netting. Shared showers and squat toilets were located in a small concrete barracks across the courtyard.

  Back in Shanghai or Beijing, accommodations like this set us on edge. But here in the countryside of Yangshuo, they seemed charmingly rustic.

  “Very Gilligan’s Island,” Claire remarked, setting down her backpack and surveying the room. “Almost like camping. All we need now are kerosene lamps and pith helmets and maybe some sort of pet monkey?”

  Her good spirits were a relief. At Lisa’s, we dug blissfully into enormous stacks of banana pancakes, moaning with pleasure each time we swallowed. Van Morrison sang “Brown Eyed Girl” from the tape deck behind the counter. And the guys! There seemed to be more varieties of beautiful young men than pancakes at that café; virile chess players simmering with concentration; bed-headed Apollos in sandals and hemp tunics; tanned backpackers gripping pineapple milk shakes in muscular hands and threading fresh rolls of film into their cameras as if preparing for battle. The air seemed to shimmer with pheromones. Behind the café, the Green Lotus Peak rose up like a patron saint. The breeze was scented with frangipani. The Swedes had been right: This was paradise.

  Claire beckoned to me across the table. “See? I told you we should come here.” She flung her hair back.

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious,” she whispered, leaning in close. “We were meant to meet Lisa. Don’t you see? She’s our protector. She’s the connection.”

  “Excuse me, ladies.” One of the chess players stood over us. He had dark, leonine hair and a gaze alone that could pin me to the wall like a butterfly. I instantly felt myself on high alert.

  “I’m Than. My friends and I”—he pointed back at his table—“we’d like to buy you two a beer, if that’s all right.”

  I ran my hand through my hair so that it fell over one eye in what I hoped was a seductive manner. “As long as you come over and drink it with us.”

  Claire gave me a swift kick underneath the table. But Than was already signaling to his friends and, in seconds, we were thoroughly invaded. An Englishman named Simon and a German named Gustav drew up chairs beside us, set their empty glasses down, and opened up their portable chessboard. Gustav offered around a package of Marlboros, then tucked it into his breast pocket and called out to Lisa to bring over five more Tsingtaos. Simon and Than hoisted their glasses. “To peace, love, and understanding in Yangshuo!” Snaking their arms over the back of our chairs, they reclined with satisfaction.

  “Ah. Sunshine, cold beer, two beautiful girls, and a chess set,” Than said. “What more can you ask for?”

  “A third girl?” suggested Simon. “So tell me.” He scooted his chair closer to Claire. “Where you’re from, where you’ve been, where you’re going. What you think of the geopolitical situation in Micronesia—”

  “What you prefer,” Than interrupted. “Totalitarian dictatorships or free-market cannibalism?”

  “Women with facial hair or men with breasts,” said Gustav.

  I scowled with mock annoyance. “I have to choose?”

  They laughed, and in the concentrated beam of their attention, I felt myself bloom. It was an enormous relief to flirt, to banter and joke and be frivolous; the frisson of laughter and hormones made me feel alive again, more like my old self. Had we been back at college, surrounded by attentive men, engaged in some playfully preposterous philosophical debate, I know that Claire would’ve happily dug in, issuing witty comments with a sly look on her face. This intellectual ping-ponging was exactly her thing. Whose life would make a better musical: Socrates’ or Dolly Parton’s? But she just sat there stiffly. Whenever the men tried to engage her, she pulled her collar tightly around her throat and answered curtly: No. Whatever. I really couldn’t tell you.

  Their beers finished, the men folded up their chessboard; they’d rented bikes to take into the mountains for the day. “Do you want to join us?” Than asked. “I’m sure we can find two more bicycles.”

  “No, thank you,” Claire responded frostily. “We don’t go off into the wilderness with strange men we’ve just met.”

  I shot her a furious look. The three men exchanged glances, shrugged, and left with their backpacks.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But what exactly is your problem? Those guys were totally into us.”

  Claire narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s my problem? Susie, you have absolutely no idea who those men are.”

  “So what? You think they’re a bunch of chess-playing, bike-riding ax murderers? Can’t we just take a chance and have some fun together with some cute guys for once? Ca
n’t we just be spontaneous?”

  Claire sucked in her cheeks and crossed her arms. “You don’t know what they want from us. My father is very important, you know.”

  “Christ.” I leaned across the table. “Who cares about your father, Claire? Those guys have been backpacking around Asia for the past eighteen months. They’re Europeans. You think they give a shit?”

  “They have ulterior motives.”

  “Yeah? Well, so do I. They’re hot, they’re straight, they’re single—”

  She didn’t smile. “Susie,” she said in a low, vicious tone, “do you understand that people here in China are watching us?”

  I looked at her with exasperation. “No shit. We’re in a Communist country.”

  “No. I’m not talking about that. Other people, Suze. You’re not even aware of it. But I am. I see them. Eyeing us. Sizing us up. You really do have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”

  Then she shook her head and waved her hands as if to erase what she’d just said. “Forget it,” she sighed, her tone suddenly turning conciliatory. “Look, I’m still not a hundred percent. I’m still a little off kilter from the fever. I’m feeling claustrophobic. Let’s just walk, okay? Get some fresh air.”

  Lisa recommended a path following the Li River out of the village, making a long, lazy loop through the countryside. We walked single file in silence, listening to the rustle of the water. Along the riverbank, the earth was loamy. The air had a sweet, mineral scent. A formation of geese flapped overhead. The sun was hot on our backs, but the steady breeze was like a balm. Slowly the path deviated away from the river and descended inland into a glittering expanse of rice paddies. They glowed green, like phosphorus.

  “Lisa,” Claire mused. “Lisa is so nice. Lisa is a truly wise and caring person. She reminds me of my mother.” She stopped. “Do you ever miss someone so much you physically ache?”

  “Yeah,” I said vaguely. “Mostly guys, I guess.”