Little Gods

by Meng Jin

  For a long time—days, I think—I didn’t leave the room. I sat there copying my father’s name on the hostel notepad until I ran out of pages. At some point a bird outside my window began to sing a pattern of three notes in an infinite loop. Short short long, short short long, short short long. I took out the envelope with my father’s photographs and arranged them on the bed. Twenty fathers looked back at me. I turned them over and wrote his name on the back of each.

  Finally I forced my body out of bed. I pulled on socks, sweater, coat. I closed my Chinese-English dictionary and threw it in my bag. I scooped up the photographs and threw them in my bag. I left before I could wonder where I would go.

  At Professor Zhang’s former dormitory, I found something-Guo, the chess player who had taken me to the professor’s class. He came to the door pinching his nose with a tissue. His roommates were out at dinner and karaoke—it was a Saturday night—but he was home sick with a cold. His head felt like a swamp. I invited myself in. I sat at the table, where the chessboard was out, the pieces everywhere, as if in the middle of a game. He sat across from me and moved them absentmindedly to their starting positions.

  So was it him? he asked. I nodded, yes.

  Really!

  He leaned back, clearly pleased with himself. He fiddled with the pieces, moving a pawn out, then back, then out again.

  Who is he to you? he asked.

  I shrugged. Someone who knew my mother.

  Are you visiting Beijing with your mother?

  I hugged my bag to my stomach. My mother was, as always now, inside it.

  I pushed a pawn out. Your move.

  He moved his knight and folded his arms.

  As we played, something-Guo warning me now and then to look again, instructing me to take back moves (I was not good at chess, I knew only the rules, nothing of strategy), I told him everything. Well, not everything—never everything—I could not explain about my mother. But I told him things I had never shared with anyone else, sentences I was afraid to say out loud. I’ve never met my father. I didn’t even know his name. I still don’t know if he’s alive or dead, if he knows I exist. My mother won’t tell me anything. In Chinese, I realized, verbs don’t change based on past or present tense. Instead you added a marker to the sentence indicating when an action occurred relative to the moment of speech, and this indication was more akin to an indication of space than of time. So instead of before and after, things happened in front of you and behind you, up the stream and down the stream. My mother won’t, I repeated, using none of these markers. I felt good, using this ambiguous present tense.

  Something-Guo won and we started again.

  And now, I said, I have his name. Professor Zhang gave me his name.

  Watch your knight, he said.

  I stared at the board and said my father’s name out loud. Was this the first time I had said it to someone who was not Professor Zhang? I said it again. It was a gush of weight from the chest. I felt satiated and hungrier at once.

  Something-Guo was silent. I continued to look for the mistake in my last move. I don’t see it, I said.

  You’re exposing your queen.

  I moved my knight back and shifted my queen to the right.

  Good move, he said, then took my knight.

  Hey!

  Okay, okay, he said, and returned it to the board. Look, you never should have moved it here in the first place. It allows me to make one move that forces you to choose between your knight and your queen. Besides, it’s not doing anything useful for you.

  How do you know what’s useful?

  That’s hard, he said. What were you thinking when you moved it?

  I don’t know, I wanted to advance.

  That makes sense. But this direction is better.

  He moved the pieces backward two steps and advanced my knight in the opposite direction.

  See, now you’re pressing me to move my bishop while also opening up your own bishop for more lines of attack.

  He sneezed and got up for another tissue.

  We played the game through, walking back steps, stopping at each one so something-Guo could explain why he chose to move as he did.

  How do you plan your attacks? I asked.

  Look at the board, see if there are any openings. Pick an area to target where it looks like my opponent is weak, adjust as the game goes on.

  Where am I weak now?

  Left corner.

  I moved my bishop into the left corner.

  Good move, he said.

  How would you go about finding a person? I said.

  He paused.

  No idea, he said. I’m sorry.

  He retreated.

  My life is pretty boring, he said.

  My life feels pretty boring to me too, I said.

  I thought of Professor Zhang’s explanation for why he and his wife didn’t talk to their son about the past. There was so much nostalgia in novels and on television about the old hard times, Professor Zhang said, but you know what I think? I think hardship is just boring. There’s nothing interesting or instructive about poverty—it’s just hard, everywhere, and that’s it.

  What would you do? I asked something-Guo. If you were me.

  Move your queen here, something-Guo said. He pointed to a square.

  Look, I honestly don’t know, he said. Maybe I’d hire a detective? Go to the police? That’s what they do in TV shows, right?

  The police? For a moment I almost protested: but I don’t want to get my mother in trouble. I moved my queen to something-Guo’s spot.

  Right, I said.

  I’d seen them, I realized as I left something-Guo’s building. Men and women (mostly men) in light green or blue uniforms and black flat hats, stationed here and there throughout the city. At the entrance of the small road leading to the building, one of them sat in a box, dozing, his hair pressed against the glass. I had no reference for police in this country, and had barely registered their presence. I didn’t know if they carried guns or batons, if they rode in cars or motorcycles, if their siren lights were red or blue or both. I didn’t know if they were scary or nice, what they’d see when they looked at me. I glanced at the man sleeping in the box. A newspaper lay open on his lap. His face, in rest, looked bored.

  I turned onto the main street off something-Guo’s dormitory and found the sidewalk blocked by a huddle of bodies shouting. The shouting came from three people, two men and one woman who pointed fingers and gesticulated with their arms. The rest were spectators, talking mostly to each other and only occasionally throwing in a loud remark. In the middle of the crowd a motorcycle lay on the ground half off the sidewalk, one of its side mirrors smashed.

  The shouting was of an animal intensity—faces red, mouths puckered, veins bulging from stretched necks. Because this was Beijing, it was in Mandarin, but this was not the gentle and melodic Mandarin of TV and radio announcers. The pitch of language was violent. A trio of young women (university students, by the tone and cadence of their voices) walked past quickly, clutching each other’s elbows, saying, Ignore them ignore them ignore them. I slowed my step. A policewoman arrived on the scene (on a motorcycle, no flashing lights but announced by a modest siren). The policewoman took out a notepad and the three shouters turned to direct their arguments at her, not lowering their voices or restraining their arms, yelling over each other.

  I crossed to the other side of the road and walked back to the subway, where at the entrance two police in green uniforms stood beside various security devices, instructing passengers to submit their belongings for inspection. I realized that I had placed my bag on a conveyor belt to be scanned every time I entered the subway. Inside the bag was my mother. What did she look like to the square-faced officer sitting behind the screen?

  The police station was a one-story building with no particularly striking features except for the wreathed emblem marking the sign. The interior reminded me of an American DMV: a row of receptionists and computers sitting behind partition
ed glass. Three windows were occupied by officers wearing light blue button-down shirts with black rectangular strips on their shoulders. The room was empty. Nobody looked up when I entered.

  I went to the man closest to me. He had a triangular face and thick eyebrows and his hat was a little too large for his head.

  I coughed. Excuse me, I said. I said it again. I sat down on the chair before him. He looked up.

  I’m looking for someone, I said.

  He waited.

  Does he have a name?

  Yes.

  What’s his name?

  Li-Yong-Zong.

  I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name. His face glazed over; he turned back to his screen.

  I mean, I said, I mean I’m looking for a person. I’m—

  (how to say missing person in Chinese?)

  —I’m looking for a person I can’t find. A person who is—失踪. He is lost, and I don’t know where he is, and I’d like to find him.

  You want to file a report on a missing person? He used the words 失踪人员 (shizong renyuan), and I repeated them.

  失踪人员, yes, I said. Could you help me find him?

  You have to file the report first.

  He asked for my ID. I took my passport out of my bag and handed it to him.

  You’re a foreigner, he said, raising his eyebrows. He used the words 老外 (laowai). Why are you looking for a missing person here?

  I was born here, I said, in Beijing.

  You have a tourist visa.

  I grew up in America.

  But you’re looking for a missing person here.

  Yes. He is missing here, in Beijing. I think.

  Did he come with you? Is he a laowai too?

  No, no, I don’t think so.

  So he’s Chinese?

  Yes. He’s Chinese.

  The policeman sighed and clicked on the computer, typed in information. He turned the pages of my passport, asking now and then for confirmation that a certain line referred to my date of birth, my surname, etc. He asked for the Chinese characters of my name and I gave them to him.

  Name of the missing person?

  I gave it to him.

  Sex?

  Male.

  Age?

  I looked at him. I don’t know, I said.

  You don’t know?

  I don’t know, I repeated.

  Who is this person? Why are you looking for him?

  I explained. My words echoed loudly in the empty room so I spoke quietly. The triangle-faced policeman asked me to speak up. I repeated, He’s my father, I never knew him, I only know his name, realizing how ridiculous it all sounded, how little information I had. I said he was last seen in Beijing, to the best of my knowledge, around the time I was born. Arranged like this, as plain evidence for a police report, these facts that had caused me such agony, that made my heart drum against my chest, now appeared like the bad plot of some bad television show. I could hear my mother’s voice saying how boring suffering is, how intensely boring it is to feel sorry for yourself. I wanted to leave, to say forget it, but instead I found my voice rising, my eyes wet, my breath fast and shallow. He’s my father, I never knew him, I repeated, and repeated it again. He’s my father. I never knew him. I wiped my face. I asked for a tissue.

  The policeman flitted his eyes to his colleagues. He stood shakily. Suddenly he was no longer a can’t-be-bothered bureaucrat but a young man who did not know what to do when a woman cried. His eyes softened, his lips trembled as he spoke.

  Miss, miss, he said. Don’t cry, please, don’t cry.

  A woman police officer appeared in his window with a packet of tissues, which he passed to me under the slot in the glass.

  Miss, he said. I’m going to try to help you, okay? Stop crying, okay? Just wait here and I’ll be back, and I’ll try to help you.

  好吗? 好吗? he said. Okay? Okay?

  He disappeared into a room behind the room. I waited. I was still crying. I could not stop. On my lap the tissues shredded and turned to grains of filth. The room was quiet and cold.

  From somewhere behind the glass I heard faint speaking. Some minutes later, the young policeman appeared with an older one, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a square, stone-looking face. The older policeman came around the partition and introduced himself as Officer Shu, the head officer in this district. He invited me inside, and I followed him back through the door where the first policeman disappeared. We went down a hall into a small office.

  Tell me what you told him, Officer Shu said when we sat down. His voice was cold and his face betrayed no expression. He sat with his palms flat on the desk and looked at me without blinking.

  I told him.

  While I spoke he thumbed through my passport, looking at my photo and back at me, tilting it up against the light, peering at the words.

  Tell me again, he said, everything you know about him.

  I’ve never met him, I said.

  And your mother, she never spoke of him?

  No, I said, she wanted me to believe he was dead.

  I had never uttered this thought, to myself or anyone else, but as I spoke it now I knew it to be true. I continued, following the feeling of that truth:

  —that he had died around when I was born. She never said it, not directly, but I had a strange feeling, it was dark and heavy and it was wrapped around anything to do with my father, and the same feeling also surrounded my early years in China, my birth.

  And you were born, he said, looking at my passport, in June of 1988, in Shanghai?

  No, I was born here, in Beijing, in 1989.

  He looked up, suddenly alarmed.

  It’s a mistake, I said. I dug in my bag for my birth certificate and handed it over. As I closed the zipper, I saw the envelope of photographs.

  Wait—I said—I have photographs. I have photographs of him too.

  I handed over the photographs and he thumbed through them quickly, flipping them over, glancing at the name written on their backs. He stacked them like a deck of cards and pushed them back to me. He opened my documents again, looking long at my birth certificate, holding up the certificate and the passport and comparing them side by side.

  It’s been so long, I said. It’s embarrassing, it’s so embarrassing. But the truth is I never really thought about him until now.

  Why are you thinking about him now?

  I clutched my bag against my stomach.

  My mother—

  My mother left.

  I used the words 过世 (guo shi). They meant left earth or left this world or, more literally, passed through worlds or, literally specifically, passed from this world into the other world.

  Officer Shu nodded. He rubbed his temples and slumped back into his chair. His hard face slumped too, revealing itself not as soft or kind but simply exhausted. He put down my passport and birth certificate and clasped his hands, then leaned forward, exhaling, and looked squarely into my face. His expression was not mean. He looked like he would’ve liked to go to sleep.

  I’m going to ask you a question, he said, and I want you to think about your answer carefully.

  I nodded.

  Are you a journalist?

  What?

  In the pale light of the office, confessing to this older male authority, I would have said anything. I was prepared to say: my mother lied to me my entire life, about the most confusing things. I was prepared to say: I still don’t know how she died. I was prepared to say 死, the direct word for death. The edges of the wooden box dug into my thighs. I was prepared to take my mother out for proof.

  He repeated his question. Perhaps he said journalist in English.

  No, I said.

  Good, said Officer Shu. You don’t have a journalist visa.

  Let me give you some advice, he said.

  He told me, his voice growing slower and more tired as he spoke, to stop looking for my father. Don’t go to another police station. Don’t ask anyone else. You’re not go
ing to find him, he said. It’s been too long. Let it go.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. He stacked my documents and pushed them across the desk. He tried to arrange his face kindly, tried, perhaps, to arrange it into the face of a father.

  Look, he said, you’re still very young. There are many roads to a good life. I’m telling you this for your own good. I’m sorry about your parents. Truly, I am. But forget them and look to the people who are still here—grandparents, aunts, uncles—whoever you have.

  I thought about Zhang Bo, something-Guo, the old lady in Shanghai. Only a few times had my mother mentioned anything about her own mother; I knew even less about this grandmother than my father. I opened my mouth to say this but the interview was over, Officer Shu was already leading me out.

  You’ll stop looking? he said as he opened the door.

  I looked back at the waiting room, where my young officer sat staring at an empty computer screen, decidedly avoiding my eyes. My head nodded.

  Good.

  It was very strange, I told something-Guo.

  He shrugged as if to say, I’m sorry?

  He said, I’ve never asked the police for anything.

  Me neither, I said.

  I wasn’t suggesting it really, just couldn’t think of anything else.

  We walked through the cold streets of old Beijing. My head hurt. I had been told to stop, my natural obedience kicked in. But I felt lost; I didn’t know what to do instead of what I had been doing.

  Hey, something-Guo said, I think it was a courageous thing to do.

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. He pulled me to him. I was surprised to find my body warmed by the sudden proximity to another. It was a nice feeling. It was the first thing I’d felt in weeks that did not feel like suffering. I leaned into this boy, swelling with gratitude for his presence, his touch. For the first time I considered his face. He was good-looking. He had small and dark and kind eyes.