The old man nodded and handed a registration pad to Sasha. Five minutes later they were granted a key. It was a small room on the second floor, with two single beds, a rusty basin stand with two basins, and a window that did not have a curtain. Roaches scurried to find a hiding place when Sasha turned on the light. They stood just inside the door, and all of a sudden she did not know what the excitement was of spending a night together in a filthy hotel. Why dont we just go home? Yang said behind her.
Wheres the place you call home? Sasha snapped. She turned off the light and lay down on a bed without undressing. Go back to the man who keeps you if this is not a place for a princess like you, she said.
Yang stood for a long moment before he got into the other bed. Sasha waited for him to speak, and when he did not, she became angry with him, and with herself.
The next morning, when the city stirred to life, they both lay awake in their own beds. The homing pigeons flew across the sky, the small brass whistles bound to their tails humming in a harmonious low tone. Not far away, Tao music played on a tape recorder, calling for the early risers to join the practice of tai chi. Old men, the fans of Peking Opera, sang their favorite parts of the opera, their voices cracking at high notes. Then the doors down the lane creaked open, releasing the shouting children headed to school, and adults to work, their bicycle bells clanking.
Later, someone turned on a record player and music blasted across the alley. Sasha sat up and looked out the window. A young man was setting up a newspaper stand at the end of the alley, making theatrical movements along with a song in which a rock singer was yelling, Oh, Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan, hes a powerful old man. Hes rich, hes strong, and I want to marry him.
Sasha listened to the song repeat and said, I dont understand why these people think they have the right to trash Genghis Khan.
Their ears are dead to real music, Yang said.
When I was little, my father taught me a song about Genghis Khan. Its the only Mongolian song I remember now, Sasha said, and opened her mouth to sing the song. The melody was in her mind, but no words came to her tongue. She had forgotten almost all of the Mongolian words she had learned, after her parents divorce; she had not seen her father for fifteen years. Well, I dont remember it anymore.
The broken pillars, the slanted roof, they once saw the banqueting days; the dying trees, the withering peonies, they once danced in the heavenly music. The young girls dreamed of their lovers who were enlisted to fight the Huns. They did not know the loved ones had become white bones glistening in the moonlight, Yang chanted in a low voice to the ceiling. Our masters say that real arts never die. Real arts are about remembrance.
Whats the point of remembering the song anyway? I dont even remember what my father looked like. Sasha thought about her father, one of the offspring of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan was turned into a clown in the pop song. Mongolia was once the biggest empire in the world, and now it was a piece of meat, sandwiched by China and Russia.
We live in a wrong time, Yang said.
Sasha turned to look at Yang. He lay on his hands and stared at the ceiling, his face taking on the resigned look of an old man. It hurt her, and scared her too, to glimpse a world beneath his empty beauty. We were born into a wrong place, is what our problem is, she said, trying to cheer him and herself up. Why dont you come to America with me, Yang?
Yang smiled. Who am I to follow you?
A husband, a lover, a brother, I dont care. Why dont you get out of Beijing and have a new life in America? The words, once said, hung in the room like heavy fog, and Sasha wondered if Yang, too, had difficulty breathing. Outside the window, a vendor was sharpening a chopper with a whetstone, the strange sound making their mouths water unpleasantly. Then the vendor started to sing in a drawn-out voice about his tasty pig heads.
Sasha, Yang said finally. Is Sasha a Mongolian name?
Not really. Its Russian, a name of my moms favorite heroine in a Soviet war novel.
Thats why it doesnt sound Chinese. I would rather it is a Mongolian name, Yang said. Sasha, the princess of Mongolia.
Sasha walked barefoot to Yangs bed and knelt beside him. He did not move, and let Sasha hold his face with both hands. Come to America with me, she said. Well be the prince and the princess of Nebraska.
I was not trained to play a prince, Yang said.
The script is changed, Sasha said. From today on.
Yang turned to look at Sasha. She tried to kiss him, but he pushed her away gently. A beautiful body is only a bag of bones, he sang in a low voice.
Sasha had never seen Yang perform, and could not imagine him onstage; he had played princesses and prostitutes, but he did not have to live with the painted mask and the silk costume. The Peking Opera is dead, she said. Why dont you give it up?
Who are you to say that about the Peking Opera? Yang said, his face turning suddenly stern.
Sasha saw the iciness in Yangs eyes and let the topic drop. Afterward, neither mentioned anything about the stay in the hotel. A week later, when Boshen was escorted away from Beijing, Sasha was relieved and scared. There was, all of a sudden, time for them to fill. To her relief and disappointment, Yang seemed to have forgotten the moment when they were close, so close that they were almost in love.
THE PARADE STARTED with music and laughter, colorful floats moving past, on which happy people waved to the happy audience. Boshen looked at Sashas face, lit up by curiosity, and sighed. Despite her willfulness and unfriendliness, the thought of the baby Yangs baby made him eager to forgive her. Do you still not want to tell Yang about the baby? he said.
Youve asked this the hundredth time, Sasha said. Why should I?
He might want to come to the U.S. if he learned about the baby, Boshen said.
Therell be no baby after tomorrow, Sasha said. She had tried Yangs phone number when she had learned of the pregnancy; she had tried his pager, too. At first it was measured by hours and days, and then it became weeks since she had left the message on his pager. He might be living in another apartment with a new telephone number. The pager might no longer belong to him. She knew he had every reason for not getting her message, but she could not forgive his silence. In the meantime, her body changed. She felt the growth inside her and she was disgusted by it. Sometimes she hated it from morning till night, hoping that it would finally go away, somehow, surrendering to the strength of her resentment. Other times she kept her mind away for as long as she could, thinking that it would disappear as if it had never existed. Still, in the end, it required her action. In the end, she thought, it was just a chunk of flesh and blood.
But why was there a baby in the first place? Boshen said. Why and how it happened were the questions that had been haunting him since he had heard from Sasha. He wanted to ask her if she, too, had been dazzled by the boys body, smooth, lithe, perfectly shaped. He wanted to know if she had loved him as he had, but in that case, how could she have the heart to discard what had been left with her?
Sasha turned to Boshen. For the first time, she studied the man with curiosity. Not handsome or ugly, he had a candid face that Sasha thought she could not fall in love with but nonetheless could trust. A man like Boshen should have an ordinary life, boring and comfortable, yet his craze for Yang made him a more interesting man than he deserved to be. But that must be what was Yangs value he made people fall in love with him, and the love led them astray, willingly, from their otherwise tedious paths. Yang had been the one to bring up the idea of spending a night together again, and Sasha the one to ask a friend for the use of her rented room, a few days before Sashas flight. It was one of the soggiest summer evenings. After their lovemaking, sweet and short and uneventful, they stayed on the floor, on top of the blanket Sasha had brought for the purpose, an arms length between them, each too warm to touch the other. Outside, the landladys family and two other neighbor families were sitting in the courtyard and watching a TV program, their voices mixed with the claps of their hands killing the mosquitoes. Sasha turned to look at Yang, who was lying with his back to her. The little pack of condoms she had bought was tucked underneath the blanket, unopened. She had suggested it and he had refused. A rubber was for people who touched without loving each other, Yang had said; his words had made her hopeful again. Do you want to come to America with me now? she asked, tracing his back with one finger.
What am I going to do in America? Be kept as a canary by you? Yang said and moved farther away from her finger.
You can spend some time learning English, and get a useful degree in America.
Useful? Dont you already know that I am useless? Besides, nothing humiliates a man more than living as a parasite on his woman, Yang said, and reached for a silk robe he had packed with him. Before Sasha had the time to stop him, he walked out the door. Sasha jumped to her feet and watched from behind the curtain; Yang walked with a calculated laziness, not looking at the people who turned their eyes away from the television to stare at him. When he reached the brick sink in the middle of the courtyard, he sat on the edge and raised his bare legs to the tap. The water had run for a long moment before the landlady recovered from her shock and said, Hey, the water costs me money.
Yang smiled. Its so hot, he said in a pleasant voice.
Indeed, the landlady agreed.
Yang turned off the tap and walked back to the room, with the same grace and idleness, knowing that the people in the courtyard were all watching him, his willowy body wrapped in the moon white robe. Sasha stood by the window, cold with disappointment. She became his audience, one of the most difficult to capture, perhaps, but he succeeded after all.