by Jack Livings
“It’s a shame. Your last one, and you never got to write it.”
Ning drew a deep breath. “There’s this peasant from Yunnan, probably grew up in a cave and went to school in a tree. When he gets old enough, he sets out for the golden shore. He has a trustworthy face and he gets on as a night guard at a building down near the International Finance Centre. Mostly he sits behind the lobby desk and reads comics. One night, he hears screaming. He looks up from his copy of Sui Tang Heroes and sees, just on the other side of the glass, a woman struggling with two men. One’s got the collar of her coat, and the other one has her arm. They’re dragging her away. At first he’s frozen with fear. But then honor asserts itself and he attempts to rescue her. No regard for protocol, which dictates that he phone the security team that patrols the outside perimeter. No, our hero goes it alone, and for his trouble he’s stabbed eight times and left for dead.”
“And the girl?” Li Pai said.
“No sign of her. Disappeared.”
“Probably a setup,” Li Pai said, rubbing his eyes.
“All for two kuai and a subway token.”
“People have done worse for less,” Li Pai said. “So that’s the story?”
“That’s just the first inch of it,” Ning said. “This noble boy winds up in the hospital. No money, no insurance, but his boss at the security company is a clever fellow. He walks up to the nurses’ station and signs the guard in under the name of another employee who’s covered under the company policy.”
“Clever,” Li Pai says.
“And it works like a charm. They wheel him into surgery, sew him up, prognosis excellent. All this kid has to do is lie in bed, flirt with the nurses, and answer to someone else’s name. But after a couple of weeks, he decides he’s tired of pretending to be someone else. He makes a stink about it. At first, the hospital refuses to recognize him by his given name. If he’s readmitted under his real name, they have to give back all the insurance money. But he insists. Then he calls the insurance company and fesses up. And now he’s liable for a hundred and fifty thousand in bills, and they won’t discharge him until he pays up.”
“This is the problem with heroes. Far too honest,” Li Pai said.
“The question you have to ask is, why? Why would he do such a thing? You see? That half-wit from Youth Daily didn’t even bother to ask. What does this peasant think he’s going to gain? Now he’s trapped like an animal. Why would anyone behave that way?”
“You asked him?” Li Pai said.
“Of course I did,” Ning said, smacking the table with his open palm.
“And?”
“He says, ‘I woke up, and I’d forgotten who I was.’ That was his explanation. He forgot who he was.” Ning shook his head.
“How peculiar. A real-life existential crisis.”
“Hardly. Nothing more than pride, I’d say. He’s twenty-five hundred li from home, he’s broke, he doesn’t even have a change of clothes. He’s got nothing but his name. The only problem is, now he doesn’t even have that. How can he send home an article about his heroism when his name’s nowhere in the story? What’s a hero without his own name?”
“Or perhaps he’s just too virtuous for his own good.”
“I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,” Ning said.
“They don’t make them like us anymore,” said Li Pai, raising his glass. “To age and wisdom!”
“To age and wisdom,” Ning said. “These kids. They have no curiosity. They’re just happy little story factories shitting out copy all day long.”
Li Pai nodded slowly, as if digesting a sage truth.
“Even when I was their age,” Ning said, “I pondered the larger context. Even at People’s Daily, even when I knew there was no chance the truth might make it into print, I thought of the greater good. I wrestled with my conscience. I tried to behave honorably. We both did, didn’t we?”
“We did,” Li Pai said. “We reported for the greater good, not for selfish reasons.”
Ning narrowed his eyes, but Li Pai’s face gave away no irony, no sense that he was calling out Ning’s bloated self-adulation, or something worse.
“Maybe so,” Ning said. When they’d first met at People’s Daily, he’d never before encountered anyone more deeply resistant to the lures of ambition than Li Pai. He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten his earnest face, his dedication to serving the People’s Republic. Li Pai had always been a model worker.
“We were all different then,” Li Pai said, as if reading Ning’s mind. “I remember you, brave boy. You scaled the mountain of swords, swam the sea of fire.”
“We all ate bitter,” Ning said, deflecting, but inwardly he was pleased at this recollection of his exploits.
“You even assisted with the People’s Daily Extra,” Li Pai said.
Ning stared at Li Pai. “How’s that?” he said.
“You collected the student flyers at Tiananmen for the Extra edition. Don’t be coy. You risked your life for the protests. You did your part to protect the students. You’re a hero.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ning said. He looked around to see if anyone had heard.
“Ning Wang. We’ve been friends for longer than either of us wants to admit. Surely you can grant an old man a final wish.”
“What do you mean?” Ning said.
“Tell me how you avoided the purge,” Li Pai said.
“I want to know who’s been spreading these lies about me,” Ning said. “I had nothing to do with the Extra. That was a band of revolutionaries who got what they deserved. They defied the Central Committee and were punished.” His breath was coming fast and he drained his beer in a swallow. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“No, I know you did,” Li Pai said, laughing. “Qian Liren told me so.”
“Why would you bring this up now?” Ning said. He leaned close to Li Pai. “What have I ever done to harm you?” he said. “Why would you bring this up? Someone will hear.”
Li Pai reached out and placed his hand firmly on Ning’s shoulder. From across the room it might have appeared to be a comradely embrace, but Ning understood Li Pai’s true intent. “You were a man of such bravery,” Li Pai said. “And yet when everyone else went to prison, you were spared. Such luck! So brave and so lucky.” His fingers were squeezing Ning’s shoulder.
“Yes, very lucky,” Ning said.
“Lucky boy,” Li Pai said. Suddenly he drew back and picked up his beer. “Let’s toast to luck, then,” Li Pai said. He held up his glass, unsmiling. Ning picked up his own empty glass and touched it to Li Pai’s. He made the motion of drinking from the empty stein.
“What are you toasting to luck for?” a voice said from behind Ning. It was the chief. “Toast to something appropriate, like senility or amnesia.”
“Indeed,” Li Pai cried, tossing back the last of his beer.
The chief collapsed into the chair next to Ning.
“You look terrible,” the chief said, nudging Ning’s arm. “Cheer up. Your days of taking shit from me are over.” The old man was drunk. “Everyone’s waiting on your speech,” the chief shouted.
“Yes,” Li Pai joined in. “Let’s hear it.”
Of course it hadn’t been luck. Two men who said they were from the Ministry of Water Resources had been waiting inside Ning’s apartment one sweltering night a couple of weeks after the protests. Since the crackdown he’d been living like a man in a diving bell, waiting for his air hose to be severed at the surface. Colleagues had been taken away in broad daylight. He’d known they would come for him, too, and he’d decided. Once he’d seen all the empty desks in the newsroom, he knew he’d tell his inquisitors whatever they wanted to know. It’s pragmatic, he told himself. Either way, they’ll get what they want. Just give it to them and preserve your career.
That night at his apartment, they’d asked him to take a seat, and before turning on the lights, one of the agents had pulled the cord anchored on a nail at e
ach window frame. The blinds had come whipping down, one by one.
The chief struggled back to his feet and, wobbly, turned to face the crowd. “Quiet,” he shouted. The noise died down quickly. “We’re here to see off a cherished colleague—a beloved colleague—our brother Li Pai. His contributions to the Guangzhou Post are unchartable. He has set a new standard for journalists in China. In all my years, I’ve never seen such an outpouring of sadness from the readership.” The chief looked back at Li Pai, and Ning understood that the old man had paused because he was genuinely choked up, flooded with longing to embrace Li Pai, to gather him up in his arms as one might a child. No one would have thought less of him—it was the right time for an outpouring of emotion—but he turned back to the crowd. “Li Pai has been like a son to me, but no one has known him as long as Ning Wang. He’s volunteered to say a few words about his dear friend.”
The chief sat to a round of applause that abated as soon as Ning stood up. As he maneuvered himself into position, his chair scraped loudly against the floor. Uneasy, eyes down, he felt in his pocket for the speech. There was a great silence all around him, and when he looked up at the crowd, he saw that they all hated him, and only the chief’s authority kept them from shouting him down. He unfolded the speech and held the paper out before him. He took a deep breath and began to read without understanding the words of praise, and without hearing his own voice, but hoping that he might, by some magic of language, acquit himself.
THE POCKETBOOK
Claire was standing outside the cafeteria door and she could hear them laughing. Go, she told herself. Go. She pulled open the door and went directly to the service line, from which she could safely survey the seating arrangement. Her ex-roommate, Alicia, was at a table with her friends, doing her Teacher Wu impression, and it was brutal. Teacher Wu was sitting at the next table over, oblivious as ever and, Claire thought, pretty much begging for it. He was shoveling noodles into his mouth and sauce was dripping off his chin. He had that misty, philosophical look about him, the one that said, This world does not my reward hold. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him until he turned blue.
When he spoke English, his facial contortions brought to mind the painful passage of objects from the body, and Alicia’s imitation was consummate. She made her face flush. She did the stutter and the gape. A strand of saliva swayed from her lip, then snapped and dropped to the tabletop. This went over big with everyone except Claire, who, given the choice of sitting with Teacher Wu or with Alicia, wasn’t so principled as to make herself part of the joke, at least no more than she already was.
When Claire put her tray down, Alicia turned to her and said, “Oh, sorry.”
“What?” Claire said. “I don’t care.” Everyone was sure Claire and Wu were sleeping together. Alicia wiped her mouth and went back to her meal.
It was Friday night and after dinner a pack of Claire’s classmates were headed to the Kunlun. The Thai guys were rounding up people to hit the Globe Club out on the Third Ring Road. The stoners were going to the Red Dragon, and Claire heard Alicia say something about stopping by a dorm party at Beida before going to Maxim’s. No one asked Claire to go anywhere.
The students departed in flights of three or four. Anticipating the moment of complete abandonment, Claire had pulled out her paperback copy of The Fountainhead, but she couldn’t focus, and once she had the book out, she couldn’t put it back, so she wound up moving her eyes over the page in a way that simulated reading, killing time until she was left at the table all alone. Not even Alicia had bothered to say goodbye. Stay cool, Claire thought, sit in and stay cool. None of it had registered with Teacher Wu. Claire was shooting daggers at him, but he didn’t notice. He was useless. Empty, the cafeteria had all the ambience of a surgery theater, its zombie fluorescence glowing on the pots of plastic bamboo and assorted Chinese yard sale art catching dust in the corners.
Claire had had a talk with herself in which she’d acknowledged that, like a drop of detergent in a pan of greasy water, she’d succeeded in repelling every student at Capital Normal University School of Foreign Languages. She couldn’t make herself any friendlier than she was, and, as usual, when it became apparent that she had opinions of her own, whoever she was talking to went in search of more compliant company. Claire didn’t suffer fools gladly, and fools, for their part, tended to avoid her. As did the wise. And those of middling intelligence. She knew she could be brusque, but she wasn’t combative, a word Alicia had swung at her like a mallet. Alicia was the combative one. A person who couldn’t hold up her end of an argument wasn’t worth talking to. Neither were backstabbers, and Alicia was a backstabber.
Claire had spotted Alicia as soon as they’d deplaned at PEK. She’d been impossible to miss. She was Chinese American and gorgeous and Claire could hear her voice clear across the gate, as though she were addressing the entire group from onstage, which annoyed Claire, and then everyone in the group had broken into laughter and Claire had felt like she wanted to commit a homicide. At the time, she was standing by herself because on the flight from Tokyo she had gotten into an argument with a grad student from Duke about Chinese policy in Tibet, and he’d accused her of being a contrarian and she’d called him a fat prick, and that, it appeared, had pretty much put her on social death watch. On the bus from the airport, Claire had watched Alicia, who was sitting at the back, surrounded by a bevy of suitcases, smacking her gum, staring into the middle distance like the air had done her wrong. Everyone else was looking out the windows. Claire could tell Alicia was one of those people who hardly bothered to breathe unless someone else was paying attention to her. This is a girl, Claire thought, with a trust fund and a shoplifting problem.
When they arrived at the dormitory and she checked the roommate postings, she nearly threw up. Of course the administration had stuck her with Alicia. Why wouldn’t they? Claire thought. Just perfect. But she talked herself down and decided on the spot to make the best of it. That first night, they had stayed up late smoking cigarettes, Claire nodding along to Alicia’s crystalline recollections of club shenanigans in the Meatpacking District, a crashed BMW on the Vineyard.
Wow, Claire said, wow, expelling jets of smoke through her nose. She hoped she didn’t sound as bored as she was.
It’s not like we’re rich, Alicia said. You don’t know rich if you think I’m rich. But Daddy does fine, she said, laughing so loud that Claire winced. Alicia declared her enemies to be numerous, which was why she’d come to live in exile in China. Even her best friends were assholes of the lowest order. Cretins, she’d said. I know that makes me an asshole, she said. But it’s true. They’re all assholes. Isn’t everybody an asshole? she said, flopping back on her bed.
No way was Claire going to utter the polite answer, which was, No, you’re not an asshole, I hardly know you but I can tell you’re a good person, primarily because Claire thought Alicia was a spoiled bitch, an asshole if ever there was one. Instead, she decided to retaliate with some biographical information of her own, and Alicia propped her head up on her hand and looked irritatingly engaged, her eyes a little too fixed, her interest too measured, like the practiced sympathy of a grief counselor. She’d listened and nodded so intently that it had thrown Claire off a little. Claire wasn’t sure why, but she’d even made up a story about having an affair with a professor back home. And that’s why I’m in exile, she said.
Two weeks later, Alicia moved to a single room. It came out that she’d petitioned for a single the day after they’d arrived.
“It’ll be good for both of us,” Alicia said to Claire. “Haven’t you had enough of me? I know you can’t stand it that I come in so late and bang around. And now you won’t have to deal with my stupid-ass whining anymore. Win-win—you’ll have a single!” She smiled like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, and Claire had stood there thinking she’d believe in god if only he’d drop a Volkswagen on this horrible person.
“How? They won’t let anyone switch. You have to cough up
a kidney just to get a spare door key,” Claire said.
“I don’t know. I asked. I thought it would be better for both of us.”
“No, you didn’t,” Claire said. “What did you tell them about me?”
“Paranoid much?” Alicia said. “Christ. Don’t get all weepy,” she said. “I’m just moving upstairs.”
“Why? What did I do?” Claire said.
Alicia gave her the grief counselor look. “It’s not personal,” she said.
Bitch. That had been a month ago.
And now, here was Claire, finishing her meal alone, telling herself she was fine. Single. When she walked out the cafeteria doors, the pack of students milling around by the bike racks went silent.
“Oh, come on, people,” she said. She unlocked her bike, mounted up, and pumped across campus, cutting through courtyards and taking blind corners at suicidal speed, spouting a slew of bad Chinese at terrorized pedestrians.
Outside the front gates she swung into an alleyway bordered on one side by the college wall, a ten-foot concrete slab topped with broken bottles, on the other by a public bathroom, a long row of pit toilets attended by an ancient man on a folding stool. The alleyway jogged left at the corner of the wall and passageways branched off into the hutongs behind the college. The students had been warned not to use the alleyway as a shortcut to the market. Claire used the alley every chance she got.
Near the mouth of the alley she rattled past a cluster of brick hovels attached like barnacles to the college wall. Families squatted outside tending cooking fires and talking over chessboards. Children yelled at her. It occurred to Claire that Alicia would never take the alleyway. She would never experience this side of China.
It was here, Claire told herself, with the college behind her and the market ahead, that she felt most at home. She told herself she savored the taste of the unsettled air between the two arenas of existence.
At the edge of the market she dismounted. There was an hour of light left, and she could go east into the Chinese market or west into Uyghurville. Occasionally, as a test of her mettle, she ate in one of the restaurants there, and in her bag she was carrying a souvenir of her last visit, a kernel of hard brown hashish. She’d been saving it, hoping she wouldn’t have to smoke it alone, entertaining the vague notion of casually mentioning to Alicia that she had it and just seeing what happened.