On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

by Lee, Chang-rae

  What we have perhaps not considered enough is the maker and why she’s done what she’s done, whether it was some unexplainable artistic urge or else an impetus of conscience, and then, most important, what the making made her think and feel, whether back in an alleyway of B-Mor or deep inside a Charter villa. For did it allow her to feel larger, more connected? Did it settle a self-quarrel? Did it offer her liberty from some private boundary that heretofore she had not understood or even noticed?

  Because when we look at the final great work of Six, as well as the broader field-coloring efforts of the others, that ended up completely covering not just the white space of the partly finished wall but the entire blank run of the remaining others, we can conclude whatever it signifies is no more important than that they did it without pause, hardly eating or sleeping or much concurring with one another, caught up as they were in the virulent bloom of a fever. Yes, poor Five had nearly succumbed before their eyes. Yes, both she and Four would be hospitalized for more than a week. Yes, Miss Cathy had fainted from the shock, striking her head on the corner of a night table, her blood blotted all over Mala, who insisted on cradling her while Dr. Upendra stitched up the scary but luckily superficial wound. And yes, Fan had exited the house and climbed into the medical center van with Four and Five and Dr. Upendra, all in full view of Miss Cathy, who didn’t protest or say another word. These moments might have been rendered as always in the flow of connecting panels, with attendant realistic detail and texture, and maybe even in the larger scale of the underwater image of their pushing up Fan to the surface. Or they could have been depicted expressionistically, as was sometimes done before, some exuberant spray of spectral colors or surely, given the mood, a panel microscopically crosshatched in a dread hue.

  What Six conceived instead was literally the biggest thing she’d ever done. In fact, it wasn’t a panel at all, but a panorama, the work beginning where she’d left off and stretching not just to the corner but onto the next wall and the next, wrapping the whole way around to where One and Two had begun the mural many years before. In a single immense stroke the project was complete.

  And what was this last image? It was at first difficult to tell. Six started penciling the whole thing soon after the medical center van departed, working steadily and purposefully all night. The others even watched her, no one talking under the pall of what had occurred, though each wondering what it was they were seeing. Six was clearly energized by the work, rapidly mounting and dismounting her stepladder and shifting it by herself as she went along the walls; she refused any help. Her motions were unfamiliar to them, as they were accustomed to painstaking rendering, the scribing out of one tiny section at a time. Her hand now swept across the wall in wide arcs, slashes, the furious action of her arm looking like she meant to deface the surface rather than decorate it, the scrape of the pencil raspy and sharp. She labeled the colors to be done as she went, though in fact it was mostly just black, and some grays, and then a few skeins and patches of brighter colors here and there. These were filled in with the especially thick poster markers they already had on the racks but rarely used, the four others coloring while Six directed them from her perch atop the stepladder in the middle of the room. Then she’d come down and join in. By the end, they had gone through a half-dozen additional sets of the markers, their hands and fingers inked, their cheeks smeared by stray smudges and flecks, their lungs so numbed by the sweet vapors of the markers that they felt they were hollowed out, floating with the lightness.

  What they made was a portrait. Or a portrait of sorts. Seven said she wished Fan could see it, no doubt assuming it was of her. And maybe it was. It did look like her or, at least, like the curtaining sway of her hair; there was great movement in the work. For what you saw was merely a swath of a much larger image, running the height and length of two and a half walls, a banded glimpse of a girl’s head angled up in quarter profile, such that only the ends of her black hair (flashed by electric glints of violet), a line of cheek, a nub of chin, could be seen. The full portrait, were it apparent, would have been billboard-sized, as tall as the villa itself. And while it surely could have been Fan—Six just shrugged when asked—when you stepped to one corner of the room or another and took it all in, you could also think to see Five’s fullish lips, or the most solid set of Three’s cheek, or some distinctive notation of each of the Girls, and maybe Mala, too. Naturally, Miss Cathy was a presence, if only in the watery rays of sunlight that the girl was craning up to and catching, the blurred streams of them the exact color of her auburn-dyed hair, a shimmering penumbra of the gray-green of her eyes illuminating the field.

  That Fan did not see any of this is not so ironic, for all along her journey we’ve observed more of her than she’ll ever know. She moves on, she pushes forward, this her guileless calling, and we have to remind ourselves that it’s perhaps more laudable simply to keep heading out into the world than always tilting to leave one’s mark on it.

  And surely this is how it was that she ended up leaving the villa that day with Dr. Upendra, who had noted to himself, with great surprise, that he had returned to Miss Cathy’s not strictly for her, but at least to close the loop of his piqued regard. For we know he had gone back to the medical center after that first visit to pick up his things—it was long past the end of his shift—but instead of heading home to his condo, he chose to chat and joke with some of the nurses and even began reviewing the past month’s charts, a chore that had to be done but rarely until the last possible moment, and then lingered in the staff lounge over a vending-machine coffee and pastry, something he would normally never do, given his dining standards. As he bit into the gelid, ungiving muffin, there was a certain notion about Fan that kept circling back to him; not that she was fresh or virginal—he had no such coiling for her that way—but rather the sense that he had come upon an arbitrary plant or small tree in a section of counties bush, the specimen mostly ordinary, except that it was in its own unassuming way superbly formed, despite surely not having had much room to be.

  It was not exactly that Upendra yearned for such spaciousness, as Fan would soon discover. The issue of his state of being was not stunted or malformed. If anything, he was as highly evolved as any successful young Charter could be, the elements of his existence rigorously tuned, as were those of all his peers, with “best practices” in mind, those ever-optimizing metrics that we in B-Mor know as well as anybody, though ours are, of course, designed ultimately to smooth our unitary workings. Charters, on the contrary, are always striving to be exquisite microcosms, testing and honing and curating every texture and thread of their lives, from what they eat and watch and wear to whom they befriend and make love to, being lifelong and thus expert Connoisseurs of Me.

  As the youngest chief of emergency medicine the Charter medical center had ever appointed, Vikram Upendra seemed to have already attained an enviably advanced status. He lived in a smartly outfitted two-bedroom apartment in a top condo development in the village. He spent liberally on hi-tech athletic clothes and specialized kitchenware and the globals he took for long weekend vacations with his girlfriend, Ludmilla, a crack management consultant who literally never stopped working and whom he practically only saw on late-night calls from her hotel in some far-flung locale, the padded headboard behind her ever different but enough the same, too, for him to feel comfortable if they felt like getting intimate.

  The last time they were physically together for more than a few hours was in the private sleep suite they got upgraded to on the global back from Angkor Wat, this a full two months before. And although they agreed and understood that they were committed to not being serious, quite recently she had recommended that if they were to get married it should be in the near to mid term, if only, as most other young professionals did (he was thirty-two, she twenty-seven), to pair up and pool resources early in order to borrow enough for a starter villa and begin accumulating wealth for the countless expenses a typical Charter family
must incur. Charter property and income taxes are curiously negligible but everything else, from refuse pickup to primary school tuition to the neat bundles of kale and rainbow chard, carries a dear price. He didn’t disagree with her assessment but both were too busy to pursue the issue, tabling it for their next holiday.

  It was the fact that Ludmilla was never actually around that allowed Vik to even consider Fan’s startling request, which she made after the tumult of Four’s and Five’s admission and initial treatment at the medical center. The two of them had watched the girls get rolled through the doors of the intensive care ward, and Vik, now ready to go home, casually offered to give Fan a ride back to Miss Cathy’s or wherever else she wished—he’d noticed how the woman had literally looked the other way when Fan left the villa with him and the EMTs. Once they were in his coupe, he waited for her to speak and in the awkward pause he must have been unconsciously hoping for some nearby direction because when she said, May I stay with you today? he didn’t even flinch, clicking the car into gear and pulling away.

  At his condo he showed her the full bath and the linen closet by the front door and how the loveseat in the study/second bedroom pulled out into a bed, and even though it was still daytime, he then simply retired to his bedroom for a nap; he had been up for two days. Fan sat in the living room, taking in the rest of the place, which looked to her just like the Charter homes in the evening programs, lined by burnished wooden and metallic and stone surfaces with hardly anything else in the way of decoration or objects. She heard the shower in his en suite bathroom start and cease and then a murmur of his quick conversation with someone and finally his snoring, which was wheezy but low and chesty.

  She then washed her own face and hands and feet, pausing to examine herself in the mirror before pulling on the nightshirt one of the Girls had packed for her. Her belly looked fuller, but the rest of her had filled out ever so slightly, too, which made it seem less prominent. She certainly felt a thickening, as if she were lined inside with dense icing, and as oddly healthful and happy as this made her feel, she was also struck by how suddenly drained she could get for no reason at all. Her body now had its own aims, flipping on and off new switches. She quickly made up the loveseat bed. She wasn’t planning to sleep, but lulled by the steady saw of the young doctor’s snoring, she drifted off—she had not gotten much sleep herself—without any dreaming, at least until she was sure she was back at her row house in B-Mor with the scent of cooking from down in the kitchen funneling straight up to her room via the air shaft of the stairs.

  When she awoke, she was drooling. It was now dark outside, the only light coming from beneath the study door. When she opened it, Upendra was at the prep space of the open kitchen, where he was now preparing some food. She came out and sat on one of the stools set before the counter cooktop. She could see he was making mapo tofu, something he no doubt figured a B-Mor would like. He had also steamed some jasmine rice and had a small pot of chicken broth on simmer.

  Are you as hungry as I am?

  Fan nodded.

  He ladled broth into a coffee mug for her. It was rich and chickeny, gingery and salty, too, and although it was hot, she couldn’t help but take full sips of it, not caring that the soup was half scalding her tongue. She wasn’t scared that he might have laced it, either, for of course she was the one who had asked to be here. But it wasn’t simply that. She had seen how forceful he had been at the medical center in commanding the staff, who at first were confused and perhaps even reluctant about what to do with such keeperless patients. He had them care for the girls like they were any deserving Charters, glaring at one of the doctors who seemed to balk, ordering batteries of tests for Four, then hooking Five up to a breathing machine himself.

  He’d even assured the sour-faced medical director that he would cover the costs, which at that moment was still a possibility, for Miss Cathy had merely deferred in having them transported, never specifically agreeing to anything, and of course had not accompanied them. The medical director said she would hold him responsible, and it impressed Fan how unstinting Vik was, how duly fixed—an appreciable tilting of his head, an upcurl of his bottom lip. Aside from his studious, painstaking manner, he was otherwise, from what she had witnessed, squarely decent and kind. He did not seem devious or sneaky or lecherous, signs of which she was by now extra-vigilant for, given all she had endured.

  When the dishes were ready, he set two places side by side at the counter. She finished two full plates and half of a third, every motherly cell of her leaping, yawing wide like a starved mouth. For dessert he peeled and sliced a pear, and after they finished that, she must have looked unsatisfied, because he offered her some ice cream. He spooned her two large scoops. When she was finally done, she took a deep breath and realized he had been closely watching her the whole time, as one might do when feeding a stray cat.

  I will leave in the morning, she told him, mistaking his silent regard for disdain.

  Whatever you like, he said. Nobody is your keeper. Do you know where you’ll go?

  She wondered if her brother’s house was similar to this one. But she still didn’t know where it was. Where he was. Or Reg. She touched her hand to her middle.

  You’re pretty far from B-Mor, he said. But you don’t want to go back there, do you?

  She shook her head.

  Well, you can do what you want. There’s the extra room and I’m hardly here. But I don’t mind either way.

  Okay, she told him.

  Okay, he answered. During the meal, he had asked various questions about her life, though unlike Sewey or Mala or Miss Cathy, Vik was clearly familiar with the basics of settlements such as B-Mor; he focused mostly on the particulars of her work in the tanks, being more curious about the details of the fishery, its engineering and operational processes, than her personal experiences or feelings about the job. It was the same with his probing of her household, his queries having to do with the number of floors and rooms in the house, and how its members were situated, depending on age and family relation. Unlike everyone else she’d met the last few weeks, he seemed to know how old she really was. He did not ask why she had left, or where else she had been before finding herself imprisoned on the other side of the village at Miss Cathy’s.

  He rose from his stool to clear the plates, and suddenly it was obvious to Fan that despite the nap he was still very tired, his eyes sagged and bloodshot. She offered to clean up and he let her. While she washed the dishes and wok, and wiped down the counters, he sat in the living area, taking out a small metal box from the undershelf of the coffee table. The box had a lid with a mini-window and clear tubing attached, and he plugged it into an outlet. From a special tin he plucked a tiny, sticky brown cube from rows of cubes and placed it inside the box, turning a dial. When a ping sounded, he took the tube in his mouth and inhaled. He did this a few more times and Fan could smell it, a syrupy botanical funk, the scent very similar to what one of her oldest aunties would smoke nightly out behind their row house. She was always the happiest auntie, never irritable or gossipy and forever fixed with a wan smile.

  When Fan was done, Vik asked her if she wanted to watch a vid with him. Apparently, he’d just found and ordered an original file of one of his favorite movies, an old-time full-length anime about a girl counter-cyberterrorism agent. Fan had never heard of it but was immediately engrossed in the story and the way it was animated in an antique handmade style, much like, she thought, the Girls’ wall was (at least until the final gargantuan image), though this heroine was endowed with the body of an impossibly slender if still voluptuous woman and looked nothing like anyone Six would have ever conceived. It was a lengthy movie and in the middle Vik paused it and zapped a bag of popcorn, which they steadily drew down as it was lodged between them, he nodding and snorting and sighing in boyish delight at the familiar action and images, Fan following along as well as she could, perhaps intrigued most by the idea of the cyborg h
eroine, whose powers were superior and who showed great resilience of spirit but was also made vulnerable by her consciousness of the hybrid nature of her being. Fan wasn’t sure if she had been affected by the residual vapors from Vik’s contraption, but the muted colors of the anime seemed somehow especially rich and haunting, and the sequences of violence and protogenesis so strangely beautiful, that by the end, after the heroine is physically destroyed but rises again, whole in form but entirely changed, Fan felt a sudden hollowing in her chest, a flash cavern of longing that she had not yet known.

  And what was that longing? It was certainly not for Vik, although she must have already been comfortable with him, sitting as closely as they were in the murky light of the vid. It wasn’t, surprisingly, about the tiny thing growing within her, which by now was perhaps just endowed with a real human shape, if not so in her consciousness. And it wasn’t even about Reg, as her feeling for him was all too constant, self-generating like some massive falls, which would not diminish even over the millennia.

  Vik’s hand grazed hers and she pulled away. But in fact, he just had fallen asleep, his mouth barely ajar, a dusting of popcorn salt clinging to the corner of his lips. She powered off the screen and in the pitch black she made her way to her pullout bed in the study, turning on a light to find a blanket. When she came back out to cover him, Vik had slid down on his side, his bony knees already raised up toward his chest; this was probably what always happened on the first night off call. In the study Fan lay unsleeping, though with the door to the living room kept open. She listened to his breathing, light and fine at first and then deepening to snoring, which did not bother her at all, in the way it did not bother her in the thinly partitioned row house back in B-Mor, her uncles and aunties and cousins pitching their nightly calls in an unmelodious orchestration that heralded her blood.