Song of the Silk Road

by Mingmei Yip

  “Fire away.”

  I showed him a few pictures, part of my journal, and told him almost everything, except of course Alex and my “hanging-upside-down-lotus” with the monk.

  After I finished, Chris looked surprised beyond belief. “Lily, you really should’ve let me be part of all this! And the three million dollars? Gone, really!?”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t even feel that bad. It was something too good to be true, anyway.”

  He blurted out, “Why don’t you put your experiences down in writing?”

  “But I already have my journal.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean a book.”

  “Hmm… I never thought of that. I’m still overwhelmed by the whole thing.”

  “Then all the more reason for you to write everything down so you’ll remember.”

  “But I want to finish my novel first. It’s been sitting on my desk for too long.”

  He didn’t reply, looking deep in thought before he spoke again. “Lily, I’d love to know about your experiences there. Can you lend me your journal for a few days?”

  But I couldn’t possibly let him read the part about Alex and Floating Cloud, so I said, “I want to look it over myself now, so maybe you can take a look at it later.”

  But he was insistent. “Please, there may be some writing ideas there for you and I may be able to help. I can have it copied and give it right back to you, how’s that?”

  But of course I would have to make the copies myself, not him—so they would not include Alex or Floating Cloud.

  “All right, when I have a chance I’ll make some copies. Right now I am too tired and jet-lagged to do anything. I am going to go to sleep—by myself.”

  He had no choice but to leave, skulking away like a scolded dog.

  Three days later, partially recovered from the long flight and having finished some necessary errands, I took out my novel in progress and tried to start writing again. But alas, not a single word came. After several false starts, I finally gave up. Then I thought of Chris’s suggestion of using my Silk Road experiences and began to organize my notes, the photos I had taken, Alex’s letters, and my mother’s and Lop Nor’s journals. After that, I typed away furiously on my computer. Maybe because this was firsthand experience, words poured out from my fingers like water from a tap. I was thrilled that it was so much easier than writing my coming-of-age, family saga novel.

  Oblivious of everything except my writing, it was not until two or three weeks later that I realized that Chris—after dropping by to pick up the copies of my journal and pictures—had stopped coming to my studio completely.

  Nor had he called.

  I picked up the phone and dialed his number. To my surprise, his tone seemed distant, if not cold.

  “Where have you been, Chris?”

  “It’s Jenny. She’s not been feeling well lately, so I need to be here to care for her.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that. Why didn’t you call and tell me?”

  “I… just don’t want you to worry.”

  “How’s Preston coping?”

  “He’s OK. Since his mother is sick, he needs more attention, too.”

  “What’s wrong with Jenny? I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, just a bad flu and fatigue.”

  He sounded evasive, but since his family was none of my business, I decided not to probe further.

  “Chris, don’t worry if you can’t call.”

  “Sorry, Lily, just too many things on my mind.”

  “I understand, no need to apologize. Just let me know when Jenny recovers.”

  “I will.” He paused, then asked, “Have you started writing?”

  “Yes. And Chris, I just can’t believe it. It’s so much easier than writing the novel. Not only do I not have writer’s block, I actually have writer’s shock—that suddenly I can write so fast and so smoothly.”

  Some silence passed before his voice rose again. “You mean you’re writing your Silk Road experiences?”

  “Yes, and thanks for your suggestion.”

  “Maybe you should stop for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “It won’t be very good writing if you rush too much.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not thinking of publishing or anything. Not yet.”

  “Good. I think you better concentrate on finishing your novel first.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because you’ve been working on that for more than two years now. You should really finish that first. You don’t want to lose your momentum.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll also finish that someday. Promise.”

  Five months later, I still had not heard from Chris but I had finished my Silk Road memoir. To try to find a publisher I’d need an agent first. I’d thought of asking Chris to recommend his but soon dropped the idea. True, he was quite generous with me, always paying for food and bringing small gifts, though nothing expensive, just bunches of carnations or roses from a Korean grocery or costume jewelry. The food was usually Chinese takeout—we almost never went out because he feared running into his colleagues or students.

  I was pretty sure that although Chris had been willing to help me in small ways, to get his recommendation for a wannabe and nobody like myself would be as hard as for a virgin to get pregnant. Besides, he still hadn’t called, so either Jenny was really sick or he’d completely lost interest in me. I suspected the latter, since I’d turned down his demands for sex during his last two visits.

  Anyway, my interest now was in Alex, who actually did love me, or had when I had last seen him. But he was never at home to answer my phone calls, and I wondered what happened. I took out the silver amulet he’d bought me, caressing its engraved dragon and phoenix. I prayed that we, instead of merely rubbing against each other’s shoulders in the passing crowd, would soon embrace in this Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust.

  I decided to try my luck by sending out multiple inquiries. This is what the Chinese call yuweng sawang, spreading the net to catch fish—I hoped the huge net would ensnare at least one.

  I got twenty-three rejections before one agent, Ellen Monroe at Monroe Agency, called me and offered representation. But she stated very emphatically in her stiff voice that there was no guarantee of acceptance by a publisher.

  Ellen kept mailing me rejection letters from various publishers big and small until one day, unexpectedly, she called.

  “Lily, congratulations! An editor from Center Books is very enthusiastic about your memoir and wants to publish it.”

  These were the sweetest words I’d heard for a long time.

  I screamed into the phone. “Oh, my God, am I dreaming?”

  “Yes, a dream coming true.” She paused for suspense before blurting out, “They’re offering you a six-figure advance—one hundred thousand.”

  This time my voice hit the jackpot. “Oh, my God, are you sure you got the figure right?!”

  “Are you saying that I can’t do my job?” she joked.

  “Of course not! Just… sounds too good to be true.”

  “Congratulations, Lily, for writing such a wonderful book!”

  Of course with the one-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, my earlier dread of having to look for menial jobs like waitressing or babysitting faded like morning fog.

  The nine months before the book was actually going to come out dragged by. I occupied myself revising and taking care of other tasks such as selecting pictures and reviewing the cover design. My editor particularly liked the love story between Alex and me, which made me agonizingly sad and nostalgic. Would I cross paths again with the love of my life? Or as with my mother, had we just rubbed past each other’s shoulders among a huge crowd in this Red Dust?

  Though at first I’d been tempted to include my affair with Chris to render my memoir more juicy and salable, I soon decided against it because it just didn’t feel right to hurt him or his family for my own gain. And what if Alex read
all about my affair with Chris?

  Anyway, at the moment both men seemed, for different reasons, to be out of my life.

  But now that my manuscript was finally accepted for publication, I decided to call Chris to share the good news. After all, he’d been my mentor for a long time.

  To my surprise, his department secretary told me he was on sabbatical to write a book and wouldn’t be back for another month. She asked me to leave a message, and I did. There must be something wrong that Chris took a sabbatical without letting me know. In the past, he’d used his time off so he could spend more time with me, or fuck me, to be exact. There was something seriously wrong. What was it?

  But Chris never called.

  Then, a month before my book was due to come out, I opened the New York Times and discovered an interview with him about his new novel—Romancing the Silk Road.

  It was clear as day that not only had he stolen my story, he’d even beat me in getting his out. So he could drink the first sip of the nutritious soup—as the popular Chinese saying goes. No wonder he’d disappeared and avoided me for so long. He was hiding somewhere to write his—actually my—story.

  I almost suffocated in my own anger as I read the Times article. Did this constitute plagiarism? I thought so. But I had to read the book to be sure.

  I dashed down to the street, hurried to the nearby Barnes & Noble, and snatched up a copy of Romancing the Silk Road. From the back cover, Chris’s intense eyes stared back at me, as if mocking my stupidity and carelessness.

  “Asshole!” I spat.

  When I was leaving the bookstore, I cast another look at his picture displayed at the front in the window and spat out, “Jerk!”

  I finished the four hundred fifty pages of Romancing the Silk Road in three days. I was even more bitter to have to admit to myself that Chris was an excellent writer. He was able to pull readers into the story, to make them vicariously experience all the adventures, dangers, discomforts, and mystery of the desert. But there was no question that he’d gotten all of it from my journal. However, since I’d left out my affair with Alex, the love story in his novel was between the English professor, based on himself, and his student—me. Very clever. The ending of the story was that “I” refused to go back to civilization, married a Uyghur, converted to Islam, and settled in the desert, while “he,” the professor, heartbroken, went back to his teaching and writing his memoir. So in the novel, he was the victim because “I” was the one who’d mercilessly left him for an exotic man to live in a strange land. The rest of the novel was lifted in toto from my adventures.

  “Shit! Shit! Chris, how could you do this to me!?” I screamed as I picked up the phone and dialed his number over and over but got only his impersonal, recorded voice. I responded by leaving a very personal, angry message. When he heard it he would at least know where I was coming from.

  In ten minutes, just when I was about to call again, the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver and screamed, “How can you do this to me?”

  “Lily?”

  It was my agent.

  “Ellen, I’m so sorry. I thought it was someone else.”

  “Did you read in the New York Times about Romancing the Silk Road?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “How could this have happened?”

  I had no choice but told Ellen everything.

  A long silence but for some deep exhalations on both ends.

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked timidly.

  “I just called your editor and discussed this with her. She said that Center Books will probably sue Chris Adams for plagiarism, or will arrange a press meeting for you to tell all. You have the credibility, since you had the firsthand experience and he didn’t. During the meeting, you can show reporters your notes taken during your trip, your mother’s and your healer friend’s journals, all the photographs and stuff like that. He’ll look very bad, so maybe we won’t even have to take legal action. You ready for this?”

  “I think so.”

  “Lily, may I ask you something personal?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you have a romantic relationship with Chris Adams?”

  “Yes.” Ashamed, my voice came out weak and vulnerable.

  Her response surprised me. “Good, that’s a great story for the media. A famous novelist and university professor took advantage of his student’s dire situation to seduce her, then plagiarized from her work based on her courageous solo journey. Lily, you’re going to be a star in all the major media. The publisher’s publicity and I are working on it right now. Just be sure you’re available for all the interviews.”

  Before I could respond, she had already hung up.

  Musing on the whole thing, I suddenly remembered Master Soaring Crane’s pouches. I took the piece of paper out of the second one and saw:

  See all, but stay hidden.

  Damn! I should have looked at it sooner because that was the very mistake I made—not keeping my journal hidden from Chris.

  Three weeks later when my memoir, The Mountains of Heaven, came out, I was thrown into a series of frantic activities. In the end my publisher didn’t need to sue Chris for plagiarism. I just told my story and it worked. My memoir shot up to number ten on the New York Times best-seller list, the highest commercial success any new author could dream of. I wondered if Chris now remembered what he had once told me: “Any writer would run over his or her mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, and any remaining family members to be on the New York Times best-seller list, even if only once.”

  Ha! I didn’t even have to do that, for both of my parents, in fact, both pairs of my parents, were no longer on this Red Dust for me to “run over.”

  Chris’s Romancing the Silk Road did not fare well because of the bad publicity. I even heard a rumor that he was blacklisted and wouldn’t get any more contracts.

  “Congratulations, Lily.” One day Ellen called me, two months after my memoir had been sitting on the best-seller list. “You’ll soon receive a check, a very fat one.”

  “May I ask what kind? I hope not saturated or trans fat.”

  She laughed heartily. “Ha, very funny. You’ll laugh out loud when I tell you.”

  “Fifty thousand?”

  “Oh, think big, please.”

  “A hundred?” My heart was beating like a battle drum.

  “Lily! You heard what I said, think big!”

  “Two hundred?”

  Her high-pitched laughter pealed like the most sonorous church bell. “Five hundred.”

  “What? Are you kidding?!”

  “Nope. Besides, I just sold your novel for movie rights.”

  The rest of the conversation was a complete blur.

  36

  The Book Tour

  I was flown first class to the West Coast for a multistore book tour, put up in a five-hundred-dollar-a-night suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and driven to the different bookstores in a limo with TV and a minibar. Was this a mirage, like the one Alex and I’d seen in the desert an incarnation ago?

  I was to do reading/signings at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Book Passage, Book Inc., Kepler’s, among others.

  Arriving at my first West Coast event, the San Francisco Borders, I was surprised to find the space already packed, with the crowd spilling into the hallway. The manager, a lively, thirtyish man, led me to the podium as the audience enthusiastically clapped.

  After forty minutes of talking and reading about my desert adventures, passions, and survival, it was time for questions.

  “Did you write this book for money?” asked a young man with a smug expression.

  “Of course!”

  Laughter spilled like water from a sprinkler.

  I went on. “We write—or sing, or paint, or act, or play music—for all kinds of reasons. Not only money, but curiosity, challenge, to prove something… But who minds being paid for all of our painful ef
forts? And what about our bills?”

  “Yay!” a group of young men yelled.

  When the commotion died down, a very old, heavily made up lady in the front row demanded, “Where’s Alex? Do you miss him? Are you going to try to find him?”

  The unexpected question brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them back. I nodded. “Yes. And if anyone here happens to know his whereabouts, please tell me.”

  More laughter as a few girls clapped and giggled.

  A fortyish, professional-looking woman in a black suit raised her hand. “How do you feel about losing your mother, finding another one, then losing her again?”

  “How would you feel?”

  Another round of loud laughter rang out.

  The audience was so enthusiastic that finally the manager had to stop the Q&A session to announce that it was time for the signing. In less than a minute, the queue already snaked all the way past the in-store café. A staff member gave out slips of paper for buyers to write down names to save time and avoid misspellings.

  As I began to tire of repeatedly signing my name, a woman’s soft-spoken, accented English snaked into my ears. “Miss Lin, I’m Lingzi Lee. Very pleased to meet you in person.”

  I looked up and saw the face of a fortyish Asian woman, somehow familiar. “Have we met?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “But I’m almost certain I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  She pointed to a young man behind her, now moving up to us. “Maybe my son is the one you met?”

  I almost fainted the moment my eyes landed on his face.

  “Lily.”

  “Alex!”

  This time I could not hold back my tears. But then my joy at seeing Alex immediately changed to anxiety—he looked so gaunt and weak. What had happened?

  I asked softly, “Alex, you lost a lot of weight. Are you OK?”

  He nodded. “I’ll explain later. But don’t worry, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  A chubby teenager behind Alex was the first to figure out what was going on. She screamed excitedly to her girlfriend, then everyone in the bookstore, “That’s Alex Luce, Lily Lin’s lover in the desert!”