Delayed Rays of a Star

by Amanda Lee Koe

  Later that morning, when the Algerian maid came in, the dank odor of urea was very strong. Marlene was sitting up straight in bed. The TV was still on. Look, Marlene said to her, eyes glassy and bloodshot. The Berlin Wall has fallen.

  The maid nodded and got to cleaning. Whatever was on TV had nothing to do with her. Seeing the broken pitcher, she asked: Madame, might you need a new bedpan?

  The words reached Marlene from far away.

  A bedpan? Marlene repeated slowly. The maid stood by. Do you know where my pitcher is from? Marlene demanded. Do you know that only porcelain of a certain quality can be stamped Limoges? Her voice was growing louder and louder. Where are my lilies? Get out. Get out of my sight!

  19

  Bèibèi bought a hard-seat express ticket from Shanghai to Beijing. There was an old man in her seat when she boarded the train. She showed him her ticket. He stared back defiantly. She stood the six hours to Beijing, listening to the Smiths till the Walkman’s batteries went flat. When the man standing beside her yawned, his mouth smelled of gasoline, and she held her breath till he was done. As the train pulled in to Beijing, everyone rushed to exit before the doors opened, jostling up against one another. She waited for the other travelers to vacate the train before stepping out.

  There was a friendly ink-brush portrait painter on the platform.

  What a beautiful coat on a beautiful girl, he exclaimed when Bèibèi was passing him by, would you be so kind as to stay still for a minute or two? In fact the coat was very dirty by now, more cygnet gray than swan white, but she supposed no one here could tell the difference. Tan-skinned cross-country laborers lugged their belongings in red-white-and-blue market bags, and a ways ahead a pair of lovers was parting. The boy was in tears. The girl wore her hair in pigtails. The painter announced he was done. He showed her the sketch. The face hardly looked like Bèibèi’s, but she had to wonder if the sadness in its eyes was true to life. For a quick sketch, it had its merits. She smiled at him, turning to go.

  Hey! he said. Eighty yuan.

  Eighty yuan? She was confused.

  A man’s got to eat, the painter said. I can’t be sitting around making portraits for free all day, can I?

  But I didn’t ask you to make a portrait of me.

  Look, miss. You stopped, you posed.

  Bèibèi began to walk away. He shouted after her as he tore up the rice paper with her likeness: What’s eighty yuan anyway to a slut like you who’ll put out for a coat like that?

  * * *

  —

  WANGFUJING WAS EASY to get to, it was in the city center. People thronged the boulevard. Kentucky Fried Chicken gleamed like a temple, fronted by a life-sized statue of a four-eyed foreigner in a cream-colored suit with a beribboned bow tie. He was all smiles. Bèibèi crossed the street toward the statue. Provincial geriatrics squinted in the sun as they headed in the opposite direction, toward Tiananmen Square and the mausoleum, to pay their respects to the Chairman. Passing an electronics shop on the thoroughfare, Bèibèi ducked into it, purchasing shiny new batteries for the Walkman. She put on the earphones and looked through the tapes for the orange one, Strangeways, Here We Come. The first track was her song. She might not have known the meaning of the words, but by now she knew exactly what sound came after which note, could have sung the whole song out loud by ear if she wanted to.

  In KFC Bèibèi joined the queue.

  The patrons in here were not like the people in the square, sunbeaten faces upturned with slack-jawed amazement at every building without discernment, thick-waisted men and women in drab olive jackets with large shiny buttons. They were trendy teenagers chatting over Cokes and fries. How they had surmised these fashions it was hard to say, when all manner of foreign influence had been banned here. Girls sported hoop earrings against soft-permed hair. One boy was in blue jeans. He’d tucked in his shirt in the back so the brand label, red stamped on a brown leather patch, might be noticed. KFC was a place to see and be seen. It was far from the homely grime of cheap eateries with huge portions, where you would be elbow to knee with a troop of drunk laborers in the corner asking for extra rice, swearing their mouths off. Nor was it like the formal restaurants with starched tablecloths and electric candelabras you could go to if you had money. Those were stifling, too quiet, and you would have to worry if you were using the cutlery the right way. At KFC you paid up front and sat yourself wherever you pleased, amid pleather booths, plastic tables, full-length windows. KFC was casual, anonymous, and you got to choose what you wanted for yourself. Bèibèi reached the front of the line.

  I would like a box of fried chicken.

  Would you like to make that a meal?

  Yes, she said to the cashier, as she looked through her money envelope. She was down to her last bills. And would you like to upsize the Coca-Cola, the cashier pressed on, and the side of mashed potatoes?

  Yes, Bèibèi said. The biggest, please.

  * * *

  —

  BÈIBÈI FOUND AN empty counter seat by the window.

  The previous customer’s tray was still on the table, and there were remnants of fried chicken. Thin, dark bones, eaten very clean. In a jiffy, a girl in a uniform came to clear the table with a spray nozzle and a dishcloth, just like in the Hou Hsiao-Hsien movie.

  Thanks, Bèibèi said. The girl gave her a suspicious look and did not respond. Bèibèi set her meal tray before herself. Everyone else in KFC was eating in a pair or a group. She was the only person in the establishment who was alone. She felt very sophisticated as she slipped the swan coat off her shoulders, draped it over the back of her chair, stuck the striped straw into her paper cup of Coke, and sipped gently, careful not to make a slurping sound. She crossed her legs.

  The fried chicken was piping hot. She bit into a drumstick.

  On the outside, it was browned to perfection, and the marinade was like nothing else she had tasted. Inside, the hunks of white chicken flesh were succulent. What else did they eat in America?

  Looking out of the only KFC in China, she could picture the guards milling around the perimeter, and the Chairman’s rosy cheeks glowing down from his enormous portrait in the afternoon sun at Tiananmen Square. That prominent mole on his chin, which made him look so learned and stately, would have been unflattering on a man of less character. Thinking of the Chairman, Bèibèi sat up straighter. She wiped her lips on the napkin, squeezed all the ketchup out of its sachet, and started on the chicken wing. She had been taught in school that the Chairman could hear her thoughts, so she’d best be an upstanding little comrade at all times. Silently, for years, she’d greeted the Chairman good morning and good night whenever she could remember. This led her to believe that the Chairman knew everything, and when she started touching herself to repair what the teacher had done, she was afraid of incurring the Chairman’s displeasure. Nothing happened, and she soon understood that her secrets were her own to keep. Truth be told, life had been a little easier to bear when she’d believed her burdens were shared, but try as she might, she could never go back to that.

  She broke a chicken wing in half, the better to eat it.

  Hi, she said to the Chairman in her head, how forward her tone was, speaking to the founding father in direct address. Guess what a man once told me in Marseilles, about you. He said you were rejected in your travel application to Europe when you were my age. That must have been a real long time ago, huh? I bet not so many people know that about you. Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul. We’re good. I mean, if you had gone off and never returned, you wouldn’t have become our Great Leader, right?

  Listen, could you tell me something?

  If you went around the world and ended up back in the same spot you started from, is that the same as never having left in the first place? Chairman, I used to ask my teacher things. I thought he knew everything, because he had more words than I did. How could he be wrong? For an
entire year he took me into the shed, and I let him. He told me I was the prettiest in the village and the smartest in class. He told me that even though I was a girl, I was going to go far in life. Yes, I said, as he shook my body, yes. We were lying in the shed after he’d spent himself one day, when he asked me which boy in the village I was going to marry when I was older. Is Bèibèi going to forget her teacher when she is all grown up? Is Bèibèi going to forget who taught her how to feel like a woman?

  I told him I did not want to marry a boy in the village, I wanted to go out and see the world.

  My precious, he laughed. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!

  Know what I said to him?

  When I get to the mountain, there will be a way through.

  That was pretty quick thinking, right?

  I never went into the shed with him again, but it was too late to forgive myself.

  Chairman, did you ever make it to Paris? What if there’s a way through, but I never get to the mountain?

  * * *

  —

  THE ORANGY ROOF of the entrance to the Imperial City glinted in the sunlight. It was finished on each end with a dragon. The place was old, but Bèibèi’s eyes were new. On each side of the Chairman’s face were four red flags and four red lanterns, lucky eight of each in total.

  The Chairman’s had not been the only portrait at Tiananmen.

  There had been five other portraits erected in the square in the same style, but in 1980, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Sun Yat-sen were suddenly removed. Now the Chairman was all that remained.

  There was just one more thing Bèibèi wanted to know.

  But that, she did not dare to ask the Chairman’s portrait directly, not even in her head. She wondered what it had really been like back in June, at that protest for democracy. How had so many people believed in the same thing at the same time? Was that bravery or stupidity? Had the client been telling her the truth in Marseilles, or was it all just embellished lies, to paint an ugly picture of China for the rest of the world to point their fingers at? How could anyone shoot their own people, if they were unarmed civilians asking for a good thing? If a massacre had happened at Tiananmen in June, how could anyone be enjoying fried chicken across the street at KFC in November?

  Nothing so dreadful could have taken place at Tiananmen.

  It was the People’s Square, and everything looked so clean.

  The sky was so blue. There was hardly a cloud. The Chairman’s face was round and benevolent. When your portrait was that large, it was hard to do any wrong. The Great Leader was smiling down on her. He would not take his eyes off her. What could she do, other than smile back at him, too? There are mountains beyond mountains, and people beyond people. She was nobody. He was greatness. Bèibèi finished the last of her chicken. She licked the chicken grease off her fingers, wiping them down on a fresh napkin. All she wanted now was to keep her hands clean.

  20

  Cameramen slept under satellite dishes in two-hour shifts. Soldiers exchanged hats, as a passerby asked if there were bullets in their rifles. No, they said, grinning. A ring of waitresses working in a bar proximate to Checkpoint Charlie threw their shoes off to dance in their hosiery, moving to the rhythm of a street-side minstrel’s accordion. A corner café’s proprietor was handing out free cola. Another had filled up a squirt gun with beer, spiking everyone in sight with hops and barley. Boxy single-door Trabants crawled through jammed streets. There were foreign license plates aplenty, cars driven in from Kraków, Prague, Antwerp, all on tenterhook rumors of revolutie, revoluce, rewolucja simulcasted on European radio, power to the people! Men and women chipped away at the Wall with drills, hammers, ice picks. Those who could not get close enough were setting off firecrackers, blowing alpine horns, singing patriotic anthems. West Germans gifted East Germans bananas, flowers, sugar wrapped in newspaper cones, inviting them into their homes for coffee and brandy, crying and laughing like family.

  * * *

  —

  THE TV WAS not a hollow glass tube.

  It was a window, and it opened onto Berlin.

  With the volume turned all the way up, Marlene had been glued to the screen for more than eight hours straight, without eating or drinking. As long as she kept still and focused on the hypnotic images, she could be part of a huge party that would never come to an end. She was dizzy and her ears were buzzing, but she refused to take her eyes off the TV, following with bated breath the crawl of a small construction crane that was inching forward to clear the rubble where a whole part of the Wall had come down. Watching the debris being removed, Marlene was unable to recall why it had been erected in the first place. People were ecstatic. Their arms were raised, and their eyes were bright as they came through.

  Farther down, where the Wall was still intact, they helped each other climb over with bended knee and clasped palm. A man put his hand through a fist-sized hole to light a cigarette for a woman in a yellow coat on the other side. Other than the cigarette and her mouth, the woman’s face was not visible at this angle. She had beautiful lips, unrouged. Her cheeks hollowed attractively as she inhaled. Digging through a small drawer in one of her tables, Marlene unearthed an old cigarette butt, a vestige from before she kicked the habit a few years back after a near-fire in bed. Lighting up what was left of the stub, Marlene stared intently into the pixels. After a few false starts, she was able to time her exhale to the woman’s, and then she was breathing Berlin in, too.

  But all of a sudden it came to Marlene.

  If she could see them—they could see her. To think she had been so careful, to think she had not seen a single sunbeam in years, but all this while it had not occurred to her that the TV would be their way in. Anytime now she would hear the zip of film whirling through its canister, as they pointed and started to shoot. They were out to get her, to make a picture. The TV had to go off before they found her. Panicking, she scrabbled around her sheets, but the remote control was not to be found in bed.

  The power socket must not be as far away as it looked.

  Marlene had walked over before with the help of the Chinese maid; now she had to be able to do it again. Clambering out of bed, she tried to keep herself steady in a standing position, but after taking three steps she knew she would not be able to go on. She thrust out a hand toward the table to support herself, upsetting her postal stamps and fan mail. She looked back at the bed but was unwilling to give up quite so soon. The TV was still blaring. Looking at the anonymous crowd celebrating onscreen, Marlene felt her marrow freeze. All their faces would be forgotten—why should hers be remembered? She felt sick, guilty, fatigued. This was not a party. It was a parody of a cycle she could not explain. Whatever will be has already been. Carefully, she lowered herself down to the ground into a leopard crawl, panting hard as she stabbed one elbow, then the other, to drag her body across the room. She was almost on the other side. The plastic snake of the TV’s electrical cord dangled within reach. Her fingers clawed forward.

  Everything went dark, and Marlene could not see or hear a thing other than the strain of her own breathing. She could have been anywhere as she backed her body toward the safety of the wall, pulling her knees in and hugging them to her chest. Catching her breath, she tried for the nearest surface. Something snagged on her fingers. She pulled, and the blackout blinds came tumbling down.

  Bright light flooded the room.

  Pure starkness forced Marlene low to the ground as she shielded her face by reflex, forehead on carpet. Her eyes stung. Adjusting by degrees, she reopened them very slowly, afraid of what might happen next. Nothing moved. Everything that had been in the dark now looked incredibly precious in this light. A bright room. This was what she would like to remember. She made a fist, crushing sun rays like broken straws between her knuckles.

  Her skin was tingling.

  Marlene pressed both p
alms onto the floor as firmly as she could to push her body up. From a half-kneeling squat, she forced her weight onto her own two feet. Her shins were hurting so fiercely she thought they would snap, but before her legs could crumple, she locked her knees. Exhaling in a big, jubilant whoosh, she turned around to face the room, holding her arms out as wide as they would go to brace herself in position.

  Choupette, she called out, excited. Look!

  No one came, but she thought she heard a violin playing, many doors down. Bewildered, Marlene’s voice wavered as she tried: Papi? She craned her neck to peer past the hallway. Still there was no one. Growing angry, she screamed so hoarsely it made her knees shake: Look at me! Marlene dug her fingers into the grooved windowsill, scrambling to maintain her balance. Even if there was no one here to see it, she was not about to back down. She turned to the window. Rusty and disused, the catch gave easily in her hands.

  Marlene nudged the window open, just a crack.

  A trillion light particles strike our skin at every second outside on a sunny day. Eight and a half minutes ago they left the surface of the sun, but they had first to wander blind and torrid for ten thousand years inside that massive star before they could escape to its exterior for emission. Marlene stuck her tongue out. With her eyes closed, the light tasted white and chalky. When she opened her eyes and looked up, she saw the sun burning itself out in the sky. Now was as good a time as any to finish what she’d started.

  Taking a deep breath, Marlene began to stare the sun down.