Delayed Rays of a Star

by Amanda Lee Koe

—

  BY THE TIME they got to Travemünde, the sun was coming up.

  Ibrahim was still asleep when Bébé woke. She had a crick in her neck but felt well rested. Looking around, she noticed that at this point in the train’s journey most of the other seats were empty. It had been a long time since she’d fallen asleep in a place that held fewer than ten people around her. Bébé watched Ibrahim breathe through his nose, his mouth pressed neatly together in his sleep. One of his hands was curled up into a fist that he tucked toward his chin like a baby. In the beginning the feeling inside her was neutral, then it turned soft and warm, but the longer she observed him, the more she was unable to shake off an imprecise nausea at having nothing in common with this stranger in the seat opposite hers. She could hardly stand sharing this space with him any longer. Her hands grew hot and they would not cool, even when she pressed her palms against the window, where they left an ugly, colorless smudge. When he stirred, her skin crawled. Then he opened his eyes and smiled up at her sleepily, and she was sure they knew each other again.

  Day is new, she said, pointing at the light outside.

  So are you, he said.

  Ibrahim seemed to be in high spirits as they left the train station. He picked out an elegant café for them to breakfast in. The waiter wanted to take her coat, and this time she knew to let him. He seated her, laying a napkin across her lap. Everyone else in the café, other than them, was white. When she opened the menu and saw the prices, she kicked Ibrahim’s foot lightly under the table, and said as softly as she could: Maybe somewhere else?

  Don’t worry, Ibrahim said, it’s my treat.

  No, Bébé said.

  Hey, he said, touching her hand across the table, this is my part of the world. At this she relented. She understood homestead hospitality. Where would she take him if they were in Shanghai? There must be nice places there, too, just like this. He chose eggs in green sauce, she raspberry-quark pancakes. He ordered mineral water, freshly squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Having three different drinks to accompany one meal was extravagant, but the order had been made and she resolved to enjoy it. In the beginning, she found it stressful to be served by a white waiter, but she quickly learned to ignore his presence as a person, merely making room for the function of his gestures. Without a doubt it was the nicest meal she’d ever had, but she was unsure if she would like to do it again.

  She was relieved that Ibrahim left a big tip.

  Outside, the morning air was cool and wet. Perked up by breakfast, they walked over to the cemetery. Bébé had never visited the grave of someone she was not related to.

  Are you sure your mother will be okay, she asked, with me?

  I think she might even be happy about it, Ibrahim said.

  The cemetery was quaint and quiet. Bébé’s mother was still alive, and she had never missed her in any real way. I am a colder person than anyone can know, she thought. They made two lefts, then a right, toward the end of the compound. There was no gravestone where Ibrahim stopped, only a hole in the ground. He backtracked and recircled the cemetery. The only sound in the cemetery came from a quarrel of common brown sparrows. Their chirruping call was one note, with no melody—just a cry, not a song. Ibrahim went toward the shed of an office they’d passed on their way in, and Bébé waited for him outside. His face was bloodless when he came back out. He was so pale she wanted to ask him to sit down. Let’s go, Ibrahim said. His voice was trembling. He yanked her by the forearm and they left the cemetery.

  * * *

  —

  THE SEA WAS not blue, as Bébé had always imagined it to be.

  It was gray.

  There had been a ten-year lease on Ibrahim’s mother’s grave at the cemetery, and the option for renewal, or an upgrade to any of the three other tiers—twenty-five years; fifty years; in perpetuity—alongside a discounted down payment offer, mailed to a Mr. Müller here in Travemünde, had not been exercised within the six-month grace period. When the ground thawed, they’d dug up what was left of the unrenewed graves, cremated them, and scattered all the ashes in the sea, same as they did every spring. At the end of the day, it was still a business. Burning the dead is an act of mutilation in my mother’s religion, Ibrahim said to the caretaker, it is strictly forbidden. Please accept my deepest apologies, the caretaker said. It was nothing personal.

  Ibrahim explained all of this to Bébé in an even tone, without crying or hesitating, but when he was done talking, he stood up and said he would like to go for a swim. It’s cold, she said. Yes, he agreed, you should stay right here. Okay, she said, watching him strip off his clothes. As he turned to go toward the water, she called out: Wait. He turned back.

  I come with you, she said.

  It’s too cold, he said.

  Still, she said, I come.

  The water was not as cold as Bébé expected. She held her fingers outstretched, letting the sea sluice through. Aside from the long-dissolved ashes of Ibrahim’s mother, she wondered how many other strangers’ remains she was bathing in. As they moved deeper, she put her arms around his neck, and the backs of her legs over his hips. She could feel her nipples slide up and down against Ibrahim’s skin as the waves nudged them back and forth. Looking back at the Travemünde shore Bébé could still see their clothes in a pile on the sand.

  Nearby, there was a family with a russet hound. The hound nosed behind the child, who was raising an airplane-shaped kite in the vacillating breeze—it took to the wind, and the child let out a long happy shriek. Farther off, there was a handful of middle-aged couples strolling around the beach, and on the farther end of the beach, despite the chilly weather, a naked blond man was taking a dip in the shallows. Bébé noticed that Ibrahim was still moving forward, away from shore, even though the water was over their shoulders. She tightened her arms around him.

  Ibrahim, she asked. Are your feet touching ground?

  Yes, he said.

  Bébé let a hand slip from Ibrahim’s neck, and reached between his legs. In Paris, they had never even held hands when they were out, or embraced in parting. She rested her cheek against his so they would not have to look at each other, and when he was all warmed up, she tried to bring him into her body. Instead, he pressed a finger to her clit, playing with her till she pushed her face into his neck. She had not been with anyone since Marseilles. Everything that had ever taken place with her body, in Marseilles, Shanghai, or Taishan, had nothing to do with her. It had taken a long time, but now she was very clear about this. Occasionally in the dorm in St. Denis she touched herself at night, under the covers, when the Tunisian women were singing in prayer. She’d grown more than accustomed to their strong voices. It was a sound Bébé had come to love. Under the soft cover of their song she could bring herself to climax with her eyes wide open, without her breath shorting. Now she wanted Ibrahim to know she was giving something of herself, but there was nothing she could find inside. He did not seem to mind.

  Buoyed by the undertow, they strained one against the other, the sliver of heat generated between their bodies conducted right away into the vastness of the water. When she was a girl, she thought that rivers, seas, and oceans were blue. Also, mountains at their apex must be a perfectly sharp point, and when there was an earthquake, the land was trying to walk away from itself. She felt weightless and numb when she came. Both her hands around his shoulders, she pulled him close. Bébé felt Ibrahim treading water. I’m sorry, she said. No, he said, that’s the last thing I want from you. Everyone is always sorry for me, he said, his voice catching. Why can’t you be the exception? The water was lapping close to her chin. Bébé, he whispered. What is your real name?

  If I tell you, she said, can we go back to shore?

  The current pushed them back lightly, then more aggressively forward, and lightly back again. Very softly she heard him say: Yes.

  My real name is Bèibèi, she said.

&n
bsp; He smiled at her sadly.

  You won’t ever tell me, he said, will you?

  Looking at his face, she felt certain that this was the closest she would ever get to another human being. That was so far off from where she would like to be, it made her feel like crying. There must be a way to make him understand. She opened her mouth again, but he shook his head and touched his forehead to hers.

  It’s okay, he said.

  * * *

  —

  BACK ON THE beach they put their clothes on and lay down in the sand. The sun was out strong, and Ibrahim seemed much calmer now. He propped himself on the backs of his elbows, looking down the shore. Close to the naked blond man, who had now assumed a meditative pose by the shoreline, there were two policemen in uniform manning a small outpost. One of them was standing outside the hut with a cigarette. Behind the outpost was a line of poles linked up by a red-and-white plastic chain. Some twenty feet behind the red-and-white poles was a HALT sign, followed by a tall wire-mesh fence. Beyond the fence were watchtowers spaced out at regular intervals with uniformed guards in them, and behind that, patrol dogs moving in a businesslike fashion. These barriers had been up ever since Germany was divvied up by the Allies into the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The beach on Travemünde was where the northernmost tip of the FDR met the GDR before it opened out into the sea. Across the gulf of the Baltic Sea were Sweden and Denmark. Every now and then in the past three decades, Swedish or Danish fishermen and coastal guards would encounter a couple of bloated East German bodies, sometimes half eaten by crabs, washed up on their shores. It was a foolhardy plan, but they must have been attempting to circumnavigate the inner German border by swimming to their freedom. Were things that bad there?

  What are you looking at? Bébé asked Ibrahim.

  Ibrahim told her that behind the red-and-white poles was East Germany. He drew a vague map for her in the sand. It showed a landmass divided in two by a zigzag. As an afterthought, he added an x in the middle of the right portion of the diagram. We are in West Germany (he pointed to the left side of the zigzag). Across the water (he shadowed the sea in with a finger) is Sweden. You can’t really see from here, but Denmark’s on one side, and Poland on the other.

  And?

  And there they are not free.

  There?

  East Germany. Aside from West Berlin, of course. He pointed to the x on the map in the sand. There’s a wall.

  A wall?

  The Berlin Wall.

  Who made this wall? Bébé asked.

  Ibrahim sat up. We did, he said after a long pause, as if he had just realized that it was true. We built the wall ourselves.

  Why?

  Because—

  But he did not know what to say to her. He shrugged. She nodded. He lay down, spreading his limbs in the sand. He turned away from her, searching himself for an answer. Nothing came, so he flipped onto his back and sighed, resigned to borrowing. Because there is no story of civilization, he settled upon a half-recalled quotation in German, that is not also a story of barbarism. He tried to make a circle with his thumb and index finger to lasso the shape of the sun in the sky. They had no sunscreen, and the tops of Bébé’s shoulders were already starting to redden. Her back was so slender, it reminded Ibrahim of a kitten you could pick up in one hand by the wisp of its neck.

  She was studying his cassette tapes.

  He’d brought along his Smiths collection for the trip, all four of their studio albums and the one live recording. When she saw that he was looking at her, she said: Choose song, for me.

  He reached for the orange tape, marked Strangeways, Here We Come. It was the last studio album the Smiths made before they broke up. He slid an earphone into her ear as he played “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours.” A flock of shorebirds flew by, steady and low. He sang along intermittently in English. She ran a sandy finger along his cheek. Do you want me to tell you what the song says? he asked. No, she said confidently, leaning on his shoulder and shutting her eyes.

  * * *

  —

  THE SUN WAS noticeably lower when Bébé woke.

  Briefly she closed her eyes again, observing that the color behind her lids was a warm blood red. She opened them: blue sky. She saw Ibrahim walking along the beach, near the line of red-and-white poles. At this distance he seemed so small. She propped herself up on her elbows, watched his back recede, and thought about whether she was in love with him. A large white cloud passed overhead. Her eyes followed its shadow as it skated over the sand and disappeared into the water and she decided that she was not. Je t’aime, je t’aime, she used to practice to herself in the mirror at the Ministry, when no one was in the bathroom. The bathroom had a good echo. She practiced it not because she thought she would one day have reason to say “I love you” in Paris, but the very opposite, because she knew she would never get to use it.

  She turned back when she heard shouts.

  The policemen appeared to be yelling at Ibrahim. She saw him skip over the red-and-white chain, breaking into a jog past the HALT sign, triggering a trip wire with a yellow flare. More shouting now, through a loudspeaker, from the watchtower on the other side. The policemen on this side ran all the way up to the red-and-white line, calling out to Ibrahim, but they followed no farther. Ibrahim stopped short at the fence and began to scale it. Everything was happening so quickly. Bébé stood up and called out his name once, then a second time, as loudly as she could, with the force of her whole body. Turning in her direction he shouted something. She could not hear him, but she saw his mouth moving. The dogs were barking behind the second fence. Ibrahim did not look back again. At the top of the fence he jumped over. Bebe watched him land in the sand on the other side, pick himself up, and go on running.

  He was reaching the watchtowers.

  The voice over the loudspeaker was very powerful now.

  Drei, she heard. Zwei!

  Eins, she heard, and then gunshots.

  15

  What did the deceased shout to you before he crossed the line? the German police asked Bébé over and over, in their German-accented high school French. I don’t know, she said over and over in her Chinese-accented basic-intermediate French. I don’t know.

  What Ibrahim shouted across the beach to Bébé was brought to light by the nude swimmer who witnessed the episode. He testified in his report: The boy shouted to the girl in English: We’ll always have Paris. What is the meaning of We’ll always have Paris? the police asked Bébé. The words they were asking her about were not even in a language she knew. They told her it was English. She said she knew no English. When one of the police officers translated We’ll always have Paris into French for her, she started to cry.

  Why are you crying?

  I would probably have cried no matter what the meaning was, she thought soberly. She did not have the French for that. She had not eaten or slept in more than twenty-four hours.

  What was the Turk doing?

  He not doing anything.

  What did he have to do with the GDR?

  What is GDR?

  Don’t bullshit me, girl.

  (Silence.)

  East Germany (makes a strip with his hands). West Germany (makes an adjacent strip with his hands).

  I don’t know, I am in Paris.

  What are you doing in Paris?

  I am cleaner, I am maid.

  What were you doing in Travemünde?

  We go to dead people place and the beach.

  Are you a Communist?

  No.

  Haven’t all Chinese pledged allegiance to the Communist Party of China?

  Only one Party, no to choose.

  So you are a Communist?

  (Silence.)

  Were you trying to organize with Communist factions in the GDR?
<
br />   I not knowing what you are talking.

  Did you plan this together?

  No planning.

  Were you planning a violent act?

  You checking already the bag. Nothing inside.

  Was this politically motivated?

  What?

  Why did you and he go for a swim?

  His mother in the sea.

  His mother? The sea?

  His mother. The sea.

  Were you and the deceased lovers?

  How is this love that you mean?

  16

  The Lübeck municipal police had Bébé in their custody for twenty-four hours. She was passed on to the Hamburg police, who held her for a few days before the federal department decided it was more prudent for Hamburg to escort her down to Bonn instead of having to send a functionary from the Ministry of Home Affairs up to Hamburg.

  The foreign liaison officer assigned to deal with Bébé in Bonn had once been voted the Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia at a municipal social, where he was made to wear a colorful paper sash crafted by the secretaries. He was blessed, indeed, with a well-shaped nose, hazel blond hair with a neat side part, and a congenital fondness for conjunctive adverbs, with an especial weakness for “hence” and “nevertheless.” Unlike the policemen, he was not in a uniform, but in a well-pressed suit, and his French was smooth. Thank you for complying with this interview, he said when they met, and assisting in our investigation. This all lent Bébé the impression that he would be inclined to help her. When she told him she was the maid of an actress in Paris, he even smiled at her and appeared to write it down. I appreciate your kind feedback, he said at the close of the session. Consequently, we will be looking into your matter, and sharing our findings as soon as we can.

  He held the door open for her.

  She hesitated.

  Ladies first, he said.

  Bébé would not have known the extent of the bureaucrat’s efficiency. Even before meeting with her, he’d taken the initiative to fill out the outcome box in his neat handwriting: Best suited for immediate deportation. The meeting was mere protocol, an administrative formality before the paperwork could be processed. It was not a matter of his believing or disbelieving her. That was beside the point. His job was merely to establish the most administratively expedient and diplomatically strategic means of handling each situation that came his way.