Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

by Susan Jane Gilman

  The young woman shrugs. “Maybe one hour, maybe two. You wait in room, yes?”

  “Okay,” I say. Then, as I’m turning to leave, something important occurs to me. “Hey,” I say, trying to sound as casual as possible, “I need to change some money today. So I’m just going to hold on to my passport, all right?”

  ———

  Back in the room, I fill my money belt with all of Claire’s and my valuables and secure it tightly around my waist beneath my sweatshirt. I hurriedly repack all of Claire’s belongings, discarding anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. I have no idea what kind of state she’ll be in when the authorities return her to me—agitated, suicidal, weepy? I have to assume she’ll be in no shape to carry her own backpack. Anything of hers that I own also, such as peppermint soap, Tylenol, or a flashlight, I discard. Her paperbacks of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand I leave on the desk for the next traveler to read. Her ungainly Chinese army coat I hang in the small closet. The unused, cumbersome water purifier I tuck in a drawer. I consider discarding the broken camera as well, but I figure we already have enough problems without getting questioned by customs. I also hold on to her canteen, since it was a gift from her stepbrother Dominic. When I’m finally done culling her stuff, her pack, while not lightweight, is manageable.

  Our plane tickets to Guangzhou are for 1:30 p.m., and we’re supposed to be at the airport at least thirty minutes beforehand. I try to figure out how I’ll get Claire and her bag—plus mine—to the airport single-handedly, then navigate a sprawling city of three million. I’ve already dispensed with the idea of budget traveling. From here on in, it’s taxis and four-star hotels only. If we have to burn through all our money, so be it. I simply can’t risk the possibility of Claire flipping out at the first sight of a squat toilet or making another scene on a bus. The challenge will be finding four-star accommodations without the help of CITS. Lonely Planet lists only hostels and pensions, yet I refuse to interact with a single Chinese “tourist” official.

  Remarkably, I never attempt to contact the American embassy. It’s located over a thousand miles away in Beijing, while the one U.S. consulate in Guangzhou is just a satellite office for passports and visas only. Trying to contact the embassy—either by phone or in person—would not only delay our departure, I fear, but reignite the suspicions of the Chinese. I have an acute sense that time is of the essence. At any moment Claire could fire off like a synapse or the military police could change their minds; I worry that a telegram will arrive from somewhere informing them that in America there is no such thing as “pulling a Juliet.” All I can think is that I need to hustle my friend out of the People’s Republic as quickly and inconspicuously as possible.

  When I was little, my father taught me to ride waves in the Atlantic. Standing beside him waist deep in the ocean, I was thrilled but terrified. If I didn’t dive directly into the wall of water barreling toward me, it would pull me under. Holding my breath, I’d plunge headlong into the breaking wave, then immediately struggle to regain my footing and prepare for the next. Facing down the ocean, I was no longer aware of the blazing blue sky overhead, the glittering silt between my toes, or my mother unwrapping sandwiches on a beach towel on the sand nearby. I was aware only of the wave directly in front of me, the thunderous, impending trauma of it.

  This is how I become in Guilin now: nothing but parasympathetic nervous system, tunnel vision, and pure, animal reflex. All I’m cognizant of is the obstacles directly in front of me. Everything else has fallen away.

  I reorganize my bags, repack my toiletries, brush my teeth. Will I need money for bribes? I wonder. I take out a few small bills, tuck them in my pocket.

  Finally, when there’s nothing left to do, I drop down on the bed beside Eckehardt and sit, catatonically listening to my own labored breathing. The first shafts of sunlight glint through the curtains and creep across the baseboards. Eckehardt stirs.

  “Hello,” I say softly, stroking his hair.

  “Hello,” he murmurs, feeling for my hand.

  It feels like we are married. It’s hard to believe I’ve known this man less than forty-eight hours. Reaching down, I press the back of my palm to his cheek. His skin is moist, and he’s beginning to grow beard stubble the color of ale—a shade lighter than the hair on his head.

  “Oh, Ecke,” I say. “Thank you so much for staying with me. I can’t imagine having to go through this alone.”

  He blinks up at me blearily. “Yah.” He rubs his forehead. “I was worried. Those policemen, they might have taken you away with them, yah?”

  At first I assume he’s joking. But it makes perfect sense. Military police arriving on a doorstep in the middle of the night? Of course.

  “Jesus,” I say. “What if you hadn’t been here?”

  Bitterly I flash upon Gunter with his rucksack full of tea twigs, departing for the train station in the middle of Claire’s health crisis in Dinghai. Then, shamefully, I recall how Claire and I ourselves dashed selfishly down the platform at the Shanghai Terminus, pretending not to notice that we were abandoning Jonnie—humiliating him after all of his generosity. Ecke-hardt Grimm, with his fairy-tale name: This German stranger has gone to extraordinary lengths for us. He is a far better person than I am, than I possibly ever will be. He has forfeited his vacation to help two insolent American girls, one of whom, no less, is… Does he know? Suddenly it seems imperative I tell him.

  “Hey, Ecke,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. “There’s something I think you should know.”

  “Mm?” His eyes are halfway closed again.

  “Eckehardt,” I say haltingly, “I’m Jewish.”

  My confession, I believe, is monumental. We’re the next generation, after all: Here in China, in our own small, poignant way, we are writing a new, inspiring chapter, redeeming the hideous history of our peoples. Then I panic. What if hearing this makes him hate me?

  Eckehardt stretches sleepily. “Yah?” He yawns into the crook of his elbow. “I was raised Catholic myself. Though obviously”—he laughs, motioning to the disheveled bed we’ve just shared—“not a very good one.”

  Sitting up groggily, he rakes his fingers through his hair. “Oh. I need some coffee. Do you think the restaurant is open for breakfast yet?”

  I stare at him. Whatever I expected his reaction would be, nonchalance was not it. But this, I realize, is the best possible response. It’s the best possible response in the entire world.

  “I’ve got a collect phone call to wait for,” I say. “Please, go on ahead. Order anything you want and sign it to the room.”

  I suddenly recall that the night before, I’d promised the two Canadians, Sandy and Kyle, that I’d have breakfast with them to discuss traveling together. Now the idea seems so absurd, it’s practically science fiction.

  “If you see that Canadian couple in the restaurant, would you please send them my apologies?”

  “Yah. Okay.” As Eckehardt tucks in his shirt and threads his belt through the loops in his jeans, I wonder how on earth I’m going to make it through the rest of my ordeal without him.

  Then something occurs to me. The night before, on the couch in the lobby, Sandy had said: Kyle here’s worked in a hospital, and I’m a sort of nurse.

  I freeze. “Wait a second, Ecke. Can you make sure to find them? And tell Sandy exactly what’s happened? And then can you please ask if her if she’d come up here immediately?”

  After he’s gone, I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed and stare at our backpacks lined up neatly by the doorway, each one zipped and labeled, ready for the long trip back home. I smooth my hands aimlessly over the bedspread. The hotel walls are thin, and through them, I can hear faucets squeaking and water glugging through pipes overhead. A closet door rattles open and shut. Footsteps approach, then fade down the hallway. Outside, a woman shouts something in Chinese; then a ventilator kicks on, throbbing and humming. A bicycle bell cha-chings. A dog barks. Around me, Guilin is waking up.

  In just a few days�
� time, I will be halfway around the world again. I try to fast-forward ahead past the treacherousness that await to the time when I am finally home in our New York apartment on the twelfth floor, and my family and I are all sitting down to dinner around a table set specially with linen napkins and wineglasses, and my mother is passing around a platter of crisp roast chicken and bowls full of glazed carrots and egg noodles shiny with butter. I try to imagine hurrying down the steps into the subway on 96th Street, into the roar and the velocity of the IRT, then emerging at Sheridan Square to stride triumphantly through the streets of Greenwich Village in my gold ankle boots. I try to picture being reunited with my friends, and giggling over giant frozen margaritas at Caramba! and dancing ecstatically beneath the roving magenta spotlights at the Palladium—all of this drama and scariness over and done with and relegated to the past as a bad hiccup in time.

  But it’s impossible. All I can do is sit here in the People’s Republic of China and hope that the police will make good on their word. All I can do is listen anxiously to my own labored breathing. All I can do is wait.

  Chapter 11

  Guangzhou

  THERE IS A half hour of silence. Dread accumulates like clouds in a turbulent sky. The bedside clock ticks ominously. Then everything seems to detonate at once.

  Eckehardt hurries back with two slices of bread wrapped in a napkin. “Sandy, she is coming,” he says breathlessly. A moment later, Sandy strides into our room in her fuzzy white sweatshirt and Bermuda shorts.

  “Lordy, I’ve seen people get into a pickle before, but yours takes the cake. Your friend’s lucky, you know. The Chinese aren’t big on letting crazy foreigners run loose in their country.”

  Summoned to the rescue, she is efficiency personified. She plants herself in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips as if she plans to either clean or invade it. “Mind if I take a look through her stuff, see if she’s on anything?”

  I dig out Claire’s quilted toiletry bag, and Sandy rifles through it. “Malaria pills. Laxatives. Midol. Nope. Nothing unusual.”

  “Hello,” a police officer announces, poking his head through our door. Three officers march in and silently take up position by the window. It seems we are now hosting an open house. Military police officers appear in the hallway outside, along with George, the hotel manager, who stands on the threshold with an imperious-looking Chinese woman in a frilly white blouse buttoned to the neck. All of them are talking at once in the language I can’t understand and pacing around.

  “Your friend,” George announces. “Yes. They are bringing her.”

  At the end of the corridor, there is a sudden commotion. More police pile out of the elevator; Jonnie, my so-called student interpreter, is among them, still dressed in his V-neck sweater vest and blue polka-dot tie. Amid the cluster of olive-green army hats moving toward me, I catch a glimmer of blond hair. The men grow nearer and nearer until they are directly in front of me, and then they step aside to reveal Claire standing slumped and dazed between two military escorts.

  Her face is pale and swollen. Hanging lankly like seaweed, her hair is sprinkled with tiny bits of twigs, her bangs matted against her forehead. Her left cheek has been raked with scratches like bloody perforations.

  “Hey,” she says, almost inaudibly. She rubs her left elbow as if she is polishing it and stares at the carpet.

  Absurdly, the peasants who found her have dressed her in a bright orange souvenir T-shirt reading “I Climbed the Great Wall of China” and navy blue pants from a Mao uniform that are so small, they fall only to her calves. Her red, puffy feet are swimming in an enormous pair of the cheap plastic sandals that guesthouses provide for use in public showers: thick soles with molded rubber crosses over the toes. She has to shuffle in order to walk in them.

  This hodgepodge of clothing is a testament to the peasants’ poverty and generosity, yet it only makes her look more deranged.

  Her gold bracelets, I notice, are gone. So is her gold horseshoe on its slender gold chain. There is something of a broken puppet about her, a marionette with its strings snipped; her movements are twitchy, then listless. A vital nerve has been extracted from her, an electrical wire yanked out. Behind her eyes is deadness. Her mouth is dumbly agape.

  “Wow. Talk about making an entrance,” I say, attempting a joke.

  With great difficulty, Claire smiles. “Yeah, I really showed them, huh?”

  “Are you all right?”

  Jerking her head to one side, she stares at the wall and starts humming.

  “Okay. We’re going to get you home.” I motion to Sandy. “Claire, this is a friend and a professional nurse.”

  “Well, look at you, so tall and gorgeous,” Sandy says, stepping forward. Her voice is the aural equivalent of a plush toy: velvety, comforting, preposterously cheerful. “I’ve been here in China a long time. Believe you me, I know how rough it can be. But don’t you worry. You’re in good hands now. I’ll bet more than anything you’d like a nice hot bath, wouldn’t you?”

  For a moment, Claire appraises her. Then she swallows and nods. She looks as if she’s about to cry.

  “Well, guess what? We have plenty of hot water here. What do you say I take you inside, and we get you all cleaned up? Won’t that feel better?”

  Sandy guides Claire carefully by the elbow over the threshold. “Okay, everybody out,” she barks at the officers milling around the beds. “Gai wah qwen. Vamoose.”

  The officers, I see, have been busy rummaging through our drawers and closets. “What is this?” one of them demands, pointing to Claire’s Chinese army coat. “Who does this belong to?”

  “What do you care?” Sandy snaps. “They sell those all over. You know that. Now, go wait outside.”

  “And this?” The man holds up the blue plastic water purifier I discarded in the desk. With its white plastic tubing, it looks incendiary.

  “It’s a water purifier,” I say.

  “Why you put it in desk?” the officer asks.

  “Look. Save your questions for later, okay?” Sandy points to the doorway. Her audacity impresses me. “This girl needs a bath and a rest. You’re not going to accomplish anything by badgering her.”

  One of the officers begins arguing with Sandy in English; another chimes in in Chinese. Claire stands beside Sandy with her eyes closed, humming faintly to herself, her head lolling against her clavicle.

  “If you want someone in here, then send a woman.” Sandy plants her hands on her hips. “I’m not having a bunch of men hovering over her while she’s taking a bath.”

  As another officer begins shouting at Sandy in Chinese, the telephone rings. My collect call has finally gone through to America. It is, of course, the worst possible timing. Lunging across the bed, I grab the receiver. “Hello?” I cry. There is a crackling sound like fat roasting. “Mom?”

  “Susie, where are you? Your grandmother called with the news. Are you with Claire? Are you two all right?”

  Pushing past me, one of the officers pulls the drawers out of the nightstand and overturns them. I crouch between the two beds with my hand cupped around the receiver. There’s absolutely no way to speak without either the Chinese or Claire hearing every word.

  “Mom, what a pleasant surprise. We are absolutely, super-duper fine,” I say saccharinely. “Everything here is just peachy swell.”

  I pray that she will detect the falsity in my voice and realize that I am talking to her under duress.

  For a moment, there is a hissing silence.

  “Mom, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” she says finally. “I think I do. You can’t talk freely. People are listening?”

  “Exactly.” Glancing over at the military police, I present them with a pacifying smile, then reach for Eckehardt’s hand and squeeze it so hard I practically crush it.

  “Okay.” My mother exhales into the receiver. “Just answer yes or no. Is Claire okay?”

  “Um. Not sure.”

  “
Is she there with you?”

  “Yeah. Along with a lot of other folks here at the hotel, who are all being super-duper friendly, Mom. Especially the Chinese police.”

  “Okay. Got it,” she says worriedly. “Are you in danger?”

  “Again, not sure.”

  “Okay. Should I just keep asking you questions, then?”

  “Why don’t you do that? That’s a very good idea.”

  Never before in our lives have my mother and I been in such perfect sync. We are almost telepathically fused, the phone line between us a shared central nervous system.

  “How serious is it? Your grandmother said you have to come home immediately. Can you give me any idea why?”

  “Well,” I say cryptically, “Claire’s out of money.”

  “Out of money? What happened to her money?”

  “Oh. It’s in the river,” I say lightly, aware of the irony and absurdity of my response as I say it.

  “In the river?”

  “You know,” I say casually. “The river Claire decided to go into.”

  The military officers begin to clamber out. Sandy steers Claire into the bathroom, locking the door behind them with a click. Two Chinese women have been left to guard us instead—the one in the white frilly blouse, parked in the chair beneath the floor lamp, another in full uniform standing rigidly by the window. I have no idea how much English they understand.

  “Uh-oh, I think I’m getting the picture,” my mother says anxiously. “Suze, did Claire jump in the river?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Exactly.”

  “Susie, can she swim?”

  At this moment, I love my mother more than anything; she knows the Van Houtens are avid sailors with a bright turquoise pool in their backyard. But she has figured out a way to get me to confirm Claire’s mind-set and intentions, the full-blown awfulness of exactly what has happened.

  “No.”

  My mother can no longer help herself. “Suze, has Claire completely flipped?”

  “Majorly, Mom.”

  ———