The Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia was also the one who clarified the provenance of that curious line, We’ll always have Paris. Both his subordinates and superiors were irritated that it was he who had the answer to this riddle. I have to admit, he said, looking quite pleased, I’m surprised! Surely I can’t be the only one who happens to know this? It’s a famous line from a Hollywood classic.
What movie?
Casablanca.
When was it made?
In the early forties.
The context of the line?
Humphrey Bogart says it to Ingrid Bergman as she leaves. He’s passed her his precious exit visas so as to facilitate her safe departure from the city henceforth, away from Nazi collaborators.
A political film?
American propaganda in its time, but an epic romance now.
* * *
—
THERE WOULD BE no formal charges pressed against Bébé with regard to the incident, though her case was officially stamped with “public nuisance.” No one wanted to mention Ibrahim, or the fact that the real criminal charge here might have been manslaughter committed by East German police against a West German citizen. Both states hardly wanted relations to sour further. At an early meeting, the Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia had raised the possibility of using the tragic aspect of the incident as a creative catalyst to call for reunification. The ambiguity herein can be played to our advantage, he proposed. We have only to frame the incident correctly for the media, hence influencing the groundswell of public opinion.
Have you gone out of your mind? his boss said quite abruptly.
Sir, he said, looking hurt. I’m sorry?
Did it escape you, his boss said, that the deceased minor is a Turk?
Ah, the Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia rose to the occasion, in fact you are mistaken. He is German, I made sure to check. His mother was Turkish, but his father is German, and we emphasize of course the father and his youthful age—
Both sides will be at our throats, his boss said. Racists, one side yelps. Mongrels, the other hits back. I certainly will not be caught dead in the crossfire. Pun unintended, he added quickly. You see how dangerous words can be? These days a man can hardly speak two sentences before he is attacked for being this, or that. No one knows what they’re talking about, but everyone wants to be heard. We should hold our breaths and pray for this incident to sink with no trace. We engage only in undertakings whose outcomes we can be certain of, his boss remarked in closing. The moral pose of leadership is maintained via foregone conclusions.
The Chinese girl was an incongruous part of the state narrative; what was left were the logistics. It would have been most economical for them to send her on to France, and have their neighbors do as they saw fit, since she had cited Paris as her last port of call, regardless of whether her attempts at personal biography were true (“prone to fancy,” the Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia noted circumspectly under character assessment), but they had so recently tussled over a whole boatful of Lebanese refugees, and France had ended up bearing the cost of that. There was no point in pinching pennies over one Chinese girl, and in any case, it would require even more paperwork to have her sent to France.
It was cleaner for everyone to repatriate her directly to China.
His boss signed off on the deportation recommendation, and the Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia made a photocopy of the approved memo. Filing it away neatly, he leaned back in his swivel chair and took a quick moment to admire his empty in-box, which would soon be full again. C’est la vie.
17
The shackles were not removed from Bébé’s wrists except during mealtime, and those around her feet were not removed at all. Her shoelaces were confiscated, though they’d returned the swan coat, the Smiths tapes, and the Walkman. She did not understand why they removed her laces, her shoes looked so strange without them. The last to board the plane from the back door, she was escorted to an empty row at the very end of the cabin.
The flight attendants were tall and attractive, in navy-blue uniforms. Bébé had never imagined she would one day be a passenger on an airplane. She had only seen them in the sky, and marveled that they did not fall down when they must be so heavy. She tried to count the hours but fell asleep midway. Wrists clamped together, she shimmied the window shade up with her fingers. They were up in the sky, and the clouds were so fluffy. The land below was incredibly far away. They must already have passed Paris. Hot meals were served on tiny trays. Each time they unlocked her handcuffs for the meal, a stewardess sat beside her to keep watch, and she ate as slowly as she could. As the plane commenced its descent and the air pressure in her ears began to pop, Bébé gazed out at the huge landmass growing closer. That could only be China, she thought, with an unmistakable tug of pride.
She wanted to see the Great Wall from above—in school they had been told that it was the only man-made object in the whole world that was visible from the moon. Sadly, she couldn’t seem to find it, but tried her best to feel glad to be home. It must not have worked, for when the runway jumped into view she hoped the plane would crash, so there would be no need to begin again. Then she took it back because that would not be fair to everyone else on board. The wheels greased the ground lightly in a smooth landing, as a pleasant voice over the PA system welcomed them to Shanghai and announced the local time.
Ground staff from the airline, a graying brunette with a stern brow, came up to collect Bébé from the cabin crew. Finally both cuffs were unlocked, and she stretched her ankles. Her shoe fell off.
May I, she said in French as she pointed to her laceless shoes, something to keep it together?
Right, the ground staff said in Mandarin. Let me look around.
Bébé noted the white woman’s strong Beijing accent—nothing could really surprise her anymore. The ground staff came back with a handful of cable ties. They’ll have to do for now, she said to Bébé, better this than nothing. Better this, Bébé echoed, than nothing. Mandarin on her tongue was easy, intimate as breathing. When she finished lacing her shoes up, she was ready to step off the plane. Before she was brought to immigration, she asked to use the bathroom. When Bébé saw the squat toilets, she almost laughed out loud: she’d forgotten they existed. Sidestepping the pail with the scoop of water meant to act as a manual flush, and the besmirching stool that had fallen out of bounds of the latrine’s canal, she held up the end of her coat daintily, careful not to soil it. Back in the hall, she was dumbfounded by the sight of Chinese people in large numbers again. The ground staff cut through to the front of the line and had a few words in private with the frizzy-haired Chinese officer sitting behind a counter, who did not bat an eyelid as the situation was explained. Bébé was handed a provisional document. Even if you were using a fake name in Europe, the ground staff said, please put down your real name here. She filled it out. The immigration officer stamped it with a firm hand, already looking past her disinterestedly to call out: Next!
I did not even get to tell my story in my own words, Bébé thought as she walked away. PROGRESS AND LEAP FORWARD TOGETHER read the slogan hung at the far end of the arrival hall, white characters on a red banner. Under the banner was a money changer. She approached him with whatever was in her purse. She guessed that he quoted her a poor rate, but having no point of comparison, she did not feel like she could ask him for a more equitable exchange, and so accepted whatever amount of yuan he handed over to her, without bargaining or counting the notes.
* * *
—
AFTER CHANGING BUSES three times, once at the main station and then at increasingly smaller transit stops, Bébé reached the lane house on the western tip of Wujiaochang two and a half hours later. The sun was setting as she climbed the old steps to the third level, where she’d rented a room with a few other col
leagues from the factory. Running her hand along the staircase railing, she sensed that she’d returned out of curiosity rather than familiarity. The unit was vacant, and she could not say that she was sad to find the place empty. In fact, if she’d found the other girls here, she would not have known what to say to them.
One floor down, she could smell fragrant garlic being sautéed in the kitchen on the stairwell. It was dinnertime. Looking for someone? an old woman asked as she flicked salted fish this way and that. Bébé shook her head. She doesn’t live here anymore, she said as she passed the old woman and went on her way.
There had been a red-braised beef noodle shop with a faded awning Bébé frequented near the sports stadium, where she sometimes went with her colleagues to watch free baseball games on weekends. The other girls would cheer their favorite players on, calling out their jersey numbers. Once, the visiting team scored a home run, and the ball hit Bébé’s shoulder. She admired the bruise on her flesh for a week. Every day it presented a slightly different shade. Near the stadium was a single-screen cinema where they treated themselves to a movie on occasion, and a short bicycle ride from the cinema was a university.
Not much had changed on that alley.
A billiard hall had sprung up, and some boys were showing off their tricks. The noodle shop was still there, clear plastic flaps demarcating its entrance. When she stepped in, there was still no menu. Taking a seat, she called out her order without having to ask what they served. When the noodles arrived, they tasted the same as they ever had. A hint of cumin and cinnamon in the tomato-and-beef broth, the noodle dough pulled by hand. Ravenous, she ordered a second bowl, just broth and noodles this time. It was cheaper without the meat. Drinking the soup down to the last drop, she then paid and left. There was nowhere to go. Passing the cinema on the street, she went in. The garrulous ticket boy, who looked about her age, informed her that the last screening of the evening had just begun, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Daughter of the Nile. It was a Taiwanese film, he added clandestinely, for which reason it was not widely screened in Shanghai, but they worked with someone who circumvented the system.
Are you from Fudan, too? We get a student discount.
I’m majoring in life, she said, in a deliberately rustic accent.
The boy blinked. She handed him the full price for the ticket, even though she did not know what she would do once her money ran out.
* * *
—
IN DAUGHTER OF THE NILE, a listless Taiwanese girl sporting a fashionable perm goes to night school and waitresses at Kentucky Fried Chicken in the heart of Taipei, even as she tries to keep her family together. Hsiao-yang rides a scooter in shades, listens to American pop on the jukebox in a nightclub her brother owns, and even gets a whole cream cake for her birthday, but her friends are leaving Taipei soon, and the older boy she likes is involved with the wrong people. She finds solace in a pet puppy, and the cutesy Japanese shōjo manga she is reading in Chinese, Crest of the Royal Family, whose lead character is Carol, a rich American teenager studying Egyptology in Cairo, where she falls in love with Memphis, a teen pharaoh she awakens from the dead.
Bébé sank low into her seat after the movie to see if she could sleep the night in the cinema, but a hunchbacked woman with a broom came in and swept her out. The boy who had been manning the ticket stand was smoking on the steps.
Some coat, he said, nodding over at her. Imported?
She ignored that and asked: Got a cigarette?
He offered her his pack and asked how she found the film.
I’d really like some of that fried chicken, she said.
He seemed surprised by her answer, but it made him smile. Yeah, he said. Too bad there’s no Kentucky Fried Chicken here, huh?
Well, she said, there’s no Kentucky Fried Chicken in Paris either.
Sure, he said, not taking her seriously. A whole bunch of my classmates took the train from Shanghai to Beijing just to visit KFC, he scoffed. “Unity-building class trip,” they called it. Don’t people have anything better to do with their time?
Wait, she said. There’s one in Beijing?
First one in all of China, he said, everyone knows that, no?
For some reason, she said, taking a long drag on her cigarette, I’m the sort of girl who’s always the last to know. Her gaze was far off as she blew smoke into the night breeze. So, she asked lightly, how was the chicken?
They couldn’t stop talking about it, he said. They said fast food is a kind of freedom.
She burst out laughing.
What? he said.
I don’t know, she said with a shrug.
He studied her for a moment before asking: What is your name?
My name is Bèibèi, she said, and then she started to laugh again.
What’s so funny, he wanted to know.
Nothing, she said. Can I have another cigarette?
18
Marlene’s new maid was Algerian, from a maid agency. The refugee pilot program had been put on hold as the pro bono lawyer reconsidered her life goals, decompressing over Swedish deep-tissue massages at the behest and expense of Papan.
The Algerian kept a clean house and made no complaints clearing Marlene’s waste, but she cleaned as many as ten houses on a daily basis, and was not one to dawdle and sit by the TV with Marlene, or run out and buy pastries for her.
Madame, the maid said pridefully. Some of us are on a schedule.
Marlene never had a nice word for the maid after that, picking on everything from the way she folded the blanket to the sound of the vacuum. In turn the maid was ungentle and curt. Every time Marlene reached for her piss pitcher she almost knocked it over, because the Algerian maid never thought to place it with the handle turned out, the way the Chinese maid used to. Marlene’s skin itched terribly now that she’d grown used to having moisturizer rubbed into her back, her armpits stank of rotting flowers more than ever, her nails were so long she broke them off with her letter opener. No more their weekly clipping, and she’d forgotten how she used to get by, biting magnifying glass between teeth as she tried to trim her nails without lopping off the tips of her fingers.
* * *
—
IT HAD BEEN weeks, too, since Bogie last called.
The first week Marlene kept up with putting her face on. The second week, she took the phone off the hook. You won’t be calling? More like I won’t let you. The third week she put the telephone back on the hook again, sprayed perfume under her arms. The fourth week she told herself not to be stupid, she’d known this from the start, how else would it have ended, when he was eighteen, and there was so much life out there, waiting to be lived? When you were eighty-eight and you lived alone, you had to cut your losses as swiftly as you could. Why should she miss a Chinese maid who had hardly a hundred words of French on her, or a German schoolboy harassing her on the phone with poetry?
Marlene was furious now, but there was no one to take it out on besides the TV.
She counted to a hundred as she flipped channels, and when she lost count, she picked up her mother-of-pearl binoculars, focusing them on the framed portraits hanging on the wall across the room.
Most of the people photographed were dead, but from her bed now, she could see them smiling, posing, drinking, dancing. Let there be no doubt: she was beautiful. Marlene’s favorite pictures were the candid shots where life had been interrupted in motion. Dolores del Río turning to whisper in her ear as they stood before a Frida Kahlo self-portrait in a gallery. Sharing fruitcake on paper plates with John Wayne, he in an undershirt and white suspenders, looking away from the camera, she in a crisp white men’s shirt and black pants with brows raised, mouth caught chewing. Jo and her smoking in a fancy restaurant.
Marlene had looked over this picture of herself with Jo any number of times, but only now did she notice that the cigarette in his mouth was, in fact, unlit.
She zoomed out, and in again. Jo had a matchstick at the ready in his right hand, and an open matchbook in his left. He was about to strike a flame just as the picture was made. Although she understood, Marlene found it difficult to accept that Jo must have put a match to the cigarette and gone on to finish it right in front of her at the restaurant years ago, but in this photograph, its unlit counterpart would remain forever pristine.
* * *
—
DINNER WAS A can of split-pea soup on her stove. Too thick, and terribly salty. There was no water within reach to dilute it, so she ate it like a spread over crackers. Some skinny misfit with messy hair was skulking about on TV. Marlene did not quite understand Winona Ryder and Chloë Sevigny, this whole new breed of actresses who prided themselves on looking malnourished and disheveled. The century was regressing as it reached the millennium. Growing drowsy by nine, she left the TV running at a low purr, dialed down her bedside lamp, and reread Hemingway till she dozed off. She’d called him Papa; he’d called her Kraut. Over the years, before he killed himself, Papa and Kraut agreed that they would have married each other if they weren’t already married to other people, but both knew that neither would have said such a thing if either had been single. Close to midnight, French news stations interrupted a late-night comedy to broadcast live footage of hordes of East Berliners passing through the Wall into West Berlin. When Marlene woke at six, reaching for the half-full Limoges pitcher bleary-eyed, she saw young punks holding hands and dancing on the Berlin Wall. She had slept through something momentous. Her hand shook as she replaced the pitcher under her bed. Striking the side of the frame, the pitcher broke.
Delayed Rays of a Star Page 38