Across a Green Ocean

by Wendy Lee

  Pock Mark, Glasses, and Mohawk don’t seem to know any English and speak to one another, leaving Michael to converse with Donny. He finds out that Donny is from Tianjin, a city a few hours east from Beijing, and that his family owns a department store chain there. He figures that Donny must be pretty well off and doesn’t feel so bad that he’s let the kid pay for everything thus far.

  “Are you in school?” Michael asks.

  “I study English at the Beijing Foreign Studies University,” Donny replies. “It is my last year.”

  “What will you do after that?”

  Michael anticipates that Donny will want to become an English teacher like Liao, or a tour guide like Liao’s son, Ben, but when Donny replies that he wants to work for an international joint venture, he realizes that he’s not in Qinghai anymore.

  “You are a college student too?” Donny inquires.

  “Yes.” Michael knows he looks young enough for it to be true. He isn’t quite sure why he’s just lied, except that he doesn’t want to appear like the older foreigner taking advantage of a local.

  “What is college life like in America?”

  Michael wasn’t aware that he’d told Donny where he was from, but he supposes that it’s unmistakable, imprinted on him from his face to his clothes. He thinks about how peculiar his own college experience would sound if he tried to explain it to Donny, the night-long cram sessions, the dining hall food fights, the experimentations with booze and drugs and sexual orientation. Donny, with his serious dreams of entrepreneurial life, would not understand.

  “It’s fun. Kind of like this.” He gestures at the noisy club around them.

  Donny nods as if the answer is to be expected. “There are many places like this in America, yes?”

  “Some.”

  “And nobody thinks it is strange?”

  “There are always people who think it’s strange.”

  Donny’s eyes grow wider. “But America is very free. You can go anywhere you want. You can go with anyone you want. I think it must be very wonderful.”

  “It’s not that easy. For example, my parents . . . wouldn’t approve of what goes on here.”

  “My parents would not either. But they do not know I come to this kind of place.”

  “Mine didn’t either,” Michael says.

  They both look at each other, and then Donny smiles, and for a moment, his face is as open and bright as that of a child. Michael finds himself smiling back.

  “Let’s dance,” Donny says, and Michael allows himself to be led onto the floor.

  Michael can’t remember the last time he was in a club. David disapproves of such places, says that he’s outgrown them, but Michael doubts that David was ever into this kind of scene, even in his avowedly wild postcollegiate days. Michael suspects that this means David once left a restaurant without paying the check, and on a dare. He has actually never seen David dance, or drunk, or dance while drunk, and wonders if that’s some kind of flaw in their relationship, not having seen somebody in a situation that contains equal opportunity for silliness and honesty.

  In front of him, Donny is acting quite silly, as his style of dancing is more of the electric-shock variety. Sparks should be shooting from his hands and feet, he’s so wired. Michael knows that he doesn’t move that smoothly himself, so he remains tightly restrained, like a checked box. But as his head begins to spin, either from the watered-down drinks finally catching up to him, or the rush of music, his limbs begin to loosen.

  The song that’s playing is some disco standard from the 1970s. Michael realizes that nobody in this room, if they were alive back then, would have heard it, since music from the West would have been unavailable at the time. To him, this song is reminiscent of late-night FM radio, awkward junior high school dances, and ironic keg parties. To everyone else here, there’s no history; it’s just a song to dance to. Michael remembers what Liao Weishu had said about the students dancing at the college, how they want to be unified. There’s something unified about everyone dancing here too—in not hiding who they are.

  Some time has passed, and both Michael and Donny are sweating as if they’re outside in a rainstorm. Then Donny reaches over and places his hand on the back of Michael’s neck. He leaves it there for an agonizingly long time, and when Michael is just about to draw away, needing to break the spell if nothing’s going to happen, Donny kisses him. His lips are impossibly soft. Michael is first stunned by that sensation, and then the thought that, for once, he is kissing someone who looks just like himself. His own kind.

  The song ends, and so does their kiss. Donny says to Michael, “Do you want to go?”

  “Where?”

  Donny shrugs. “Another club. Or your hotel.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Back out on the streets, among the swaying throngs of people, the multiple drinks suddenly hit Michael. He stumbles a little, and Donny puts a hand on his arm to steady him, and keeps it there.

  “I’m okay,” Michael says. “But maybe it should be the hotel and not another club.”

  Donny hails a cab, and Michael gets in. But he doesn’t move over so that Donny can get in next to him. Donny appears confused and then hurt. Michael closes the door between them.

  “Good luck with everything,” he says to Donny, and tells the taxi driver to go, which the driver can only do slowly because of the crowds, so it isn’t a very impressive getaway.

  When Michael looks back, he sees Donny gazing after the cab. Then the young man straightens himself and begins to walk back toward the club. He’ll find his friends and maybe pick up someone else there, a young Chinese man his age, or, more likely, a foreigner who is impressed with his knowledge of English. This is probably a regular weeknight for him.

  The taxi driver is very erratic, and by the time they pull up in front of his hotel, Michael isn’t sure he’s going to make it. He tosses some bills at the driver, runs into the hotel, and gets to his bathroom just before he throws up. Thank God for modern Western toilets.

  He lies down on the bed, fully clothed. Did he really expect to end up in his hotel room that night with Donny? That had to be his intention. You didn’t agree to go with someone to a night club and dance with them, even kiss them, in a foreign city without expecting them to go home with you afterward. But what was the point of that? To be able to say to David when he got back to New York, Oh, not only did I look up my father’s old friend, whom he helped send to prison for fifteen years, but I also hooked up with a random college kid?

  Michael already knows what David’s reply would be: that it doesn’t matter. Everything Michael has done to drive him away—refusing to take the key to his place, not calling him, leaving the country without telling him where he’s gone—hasn’t worked. David will wait for him, however long it takes for Michael to decide how he feels, because that is who he is. And Michael is beginning to think that, just maybe, he deserves to be with someone like that.

  He glances at the digital clock by the bed; it’s almost two in the morning. He needs to go to sleep if he wants to get up early enough for his last day in Beijing.

  Back in New York, it would be afternoon, and if Michael was there, David would probably have gotten off from work early to meet him. Michael would be at the bar next to David’s apartment building, nursing a pint because that’s all he can afford, watching the mirror across from him for David to enter. There’d be a businessman or two out for a late lunch, young women looking for an early drink, and then David would flash into view. The sight of him, with his tie loosened, his jacket over one arm, would make Michael catch his breath, as if he’d unexpectedly caught a glimpse of his future.

  Michael holds on to this image long enough to drag himself out of his clothes. Then he passes out on top of the coverlet.

  The next morning, Michael wakes up, thankfully, without much of a hangover. He finds a cab that will take him to Houhai, the part of Beijing where his father and Liao Weishu grew up. He has on a piece of paper the location of his
father’s house, which Liao Weishu visited a year and a half ago, which he’d asked Liao to write down before he left Xining. Rather than the highwaylike Ring Road from last night, the cab takes quiet side streets shrouded in a haze that can either come from mist or, more likely, pollution. Occasionally, they pass groups of elderly people doing their morning exercises, or old men sitting outside with their caged birds.

  Finally, they stop in front of a gaudily painted gate, and the driver indicates that he can’t go any farther. Michael points to the characters on the paper, and in turn the driver points somewhere beyond the entrance, so Michael pays him and gets out. He figures that he can stop and get directions along the way. For now, as he walks down a warren of lanes, he takes in the brick walls, the tiled roofs, the wooden doors, some of which are painted bright red and others which are peeling. These must be the siheyuans that Liao had talked about, the compounds that once held families and now are divided up among many unrelated inhabitants. One door is ajar, and he peers through the crack to see a neat courtyard brimming with potted plants. In a corner, two bicycles lean against each other like lovers. There is something timeless about this place, and Michael wonders what it would be like to live or grow up here, in a place that seems so far removed from the rest of the city, if not the entire world.

  He hears a rustle from the interior of the courtyard and jerks his head back, as if he were caught spying. What he really needs is to find someone who can tell him if he’s heading in the right direction. There are stores along this street, but most of them appear to be souvenir shops, cashing in on the picturesque qualities of the area. Michael is reminded that he needs to get something for his mother and sister. But when he looks at the wares on display—a certain time period appears to be most popular, judging from the various Mao pins and badges—he thinks of how Liao had said that Michael’s grandfather had turned to selling these things, so as to not raise the suspicions of the authorities. Suddenly, the thought of purchasing such an item seems less appealing, and Michael hurries on before the shopkeeper can misinterpret his hesitation as interest.

  Abruptly, the lane ends, and Michael finds himself standing in front of a lake that he guesses Houhai takes its name from. But it isn’t so much of a sea, as the other side is easily visible, slate roofs rising and dipping in the morning light. As Michael walks along the lake, he imagines Liao passing underneath the same willows with his missionary teacher. He can’t be far now; he can feel it. At the corner is a store that appears to be the equivalent of a New York bodega, its front bristling with ads for phone cards and soft drinks, and Michael stops to show the proprietor the piece of paper. The man says something in what Michael knows to be Mandarin, although the Beijing accent makes it sound like a rusty engine. The shopkeeper gestures around the corner and shakes his head, making it seem like he’s contradicting himself.

  “Can you show me?” Michael asks, pointing at the shopkeeper and then in the direction the man has indicated.

  The shopkeeper finally gives in and comes out from around the counter. He’s wearing blue plastic slippers from which puffs of dust rise as he leads Michael down the alleyway. Then he stops, and Michael thinks that he must have made a mistake. For in front of him, extending down what seems to be the entire block, are giant piles of rubble. Among them he can make out pieces of gray brick, concrete, and tile, all jumbled together. There are also bits and pieces of household debris: shards of dishes, broken pieces of furniture, torn pages from books—destruction caused not by Red Guards but by modernization.

  The man points to a section of wall that miraculously is still standing. “Chai!” he barks, then imitates something falling down. “Chai!”

  On the wall is written a symbol in a circle, what could be an anarchist’s symbol, except that it’s a Chinese character that looks a little like a tool that’s wearing a hat. Michael looks at the piece of paper again, at Liao Weishu’s scrawl. He can’t believe that in the eighteen months or so since Liao visited this place, it’s been torn down. He knows that things must move fast in a modernizing country—villages that disappear overnight in favor of skyscrapers, towns submerged with water from the creation of a dam—but this is unbelievable.

  Then Michael thinks about whether his father would feel any regret over what has happened. Somehow, he suspects not. His father made a point of distancing himself from his family and his upbringing. What was the loss of a house, a building of brick and stone, compared to the loss of family members, friends, a history? Now, as his father wished, there’s finally nothing left from his past life.

  Michael takes a tiny piece of stone from the rubble, folds it in the piece of paper, and puts it in his pocket. He knows it’s silly to take such a souvenir, that it might not even be from the right house, but no one aside from himself will know its significance. Then he follows the shopkeeper, who has been watching his actions with a skeptical eye, back to his shop and purchases a soda to thank him for his help. Then he glances at his watch. He still has some time before he needs to go back to the hotel, pack his things, and get to the airport.

  He retraces his steps back to the entrance and hails a cab to take him to the Summer Palace, as if he wants to get in as much sightseeing as possible. But in reality he thinks that if he’s unable to see his father’s and Liao Weishu’s old home, he might as well go to the next place that had some meaning in their childhood. The cab heads north, back past Haidian, the university district where Michael’s hotel is located, and then west toward the mountains beyond the city.

  The haze has burned away, leaving the sky sunny if not entirely blue. Michael is beginning to understand that this is as clear as the weather will get here. With the day advancing, so do the tourists, swarming over the temple grounds, posing for pictures on the graceful arch of the Jade Belt Bridge and boating in Kunming Lake, which really is a lake, extending like a vast mirror underneath Longevity Hill. Since he’s by himself, Michael feels at distinct odds among the families, foreign tour groups, and packs of students. To escape them, he wanders off down the garden paths until he finds an empty patch of grass by the lakeside. There he sits, closing his eyes to the slender spire of a pagoda on a faraway hill across the lake.

  He tries to banish the murmuring voices of the people passing by him, concentrating instead on the sound of the lapping waves and the faint stirring of the wind. He wants to will himself back in time to when two boys were at the Summer Palace forty-five years ago. What did it look like then? Had it been renovated, or did it somehow look more authentic?

  Then words in English cut through his musing: “But why doesn’t it sink?” It’s the voice of a little girl, the words spoken with a British accent, no doubt referring to the famed Marble Boat to the west of the lake. The Empress Cixi restored it in the late nineteenth century, turning it into a symbol of that dynasty’s excess and woeful lack of preparation for foreign invaders. Michael wonders why he can’t be like the other tourists, concerned about why the Marble Boat doesn’t sink, counting the sections in the Long Corridor, bargaining for the best price for a set of ten postcards featuring the Temple of Heaven, which isn’t even on the Summer Palace grounds.

  He tries to channel a different scene, but the difficulty, he realizes, is that while he’s able to picture some random rosy-cheeked boy for Liao Weishu, he can’t do the same for his father. He doesn’t know what his father looked like as a child; as far as he knows, there are no remaining photographs. He hadn’t thought to ask Liao Weishu if he had any pictures, if indeed they had survived his imprisonment, and now that his father’s childhood home has been destroyed, there’s no hope there either.

  So instead he pictures his father the last time he saw him, on a summer day almost a year ago, two weeks before he passed away. Michael was standing in the backyard in the middle of the lawn, since it was the best place to get cell phone reception and also afforded some privacy. As far-fetched as the idea was, he couldn’t help thinking that even with his door closed, his parents might overhear him if he were
in the house.

  That particular afternoon he was talking to David, since he’d finally broken down and decided to call him. Although he’d left the city in a bit of a funk, once he was away and in the middle of the suburban town he had grown up, he’d suddenly needed to hear David’s voice. Part of it, he was sure, was that after a night and a morning with his parents, he was beginning to feel like he was a teenager again, sitting at the table while his mother tried to fill his father’s usual silence with chatter about her church friends and which of their children were in medical or law school. Uncanny how after seven years, it was as if he’d never left. Even when he talked to his parents, he could feel his speech patterns falling into the familiar cadence of empty reassurance and evasion.

  He told his parents that he liked his job and his coworkers. He said that his apartment was spacious and in a safe neighborhood, neglecting to mention he’d had to move recently because his roommate had started a fire and gotten them kicked out. At that point, Michael had decided he couldn’t stand another roommate and discovered his very own crawlspace at the top of a five-story walk-up, euphemistically described by the broker as a studio apartment with “penthouselike qualities.”

  Most of all, he did not say he had just met, and was possibly falling in love, with someone.

  That afternoon his mother had gone to the grocery store, and his father had retired upstairs to take a nap, so Michael thought it was safe to go out into the backyard and give David a call. When David answered, Michael listened carefully for any indication that he was outside, possibly in the company of someone else, but the air in the background was dense and still.