What was the harm in telling her? I thought about the way he wouldnt eat unless the food sat correctly on his plate peas here, potatoes there; no drips, no drops, no smears. How he couldnt sleep without the top sheet tucked in all around him; how he liked his women as neat as his mother. Smooth, groomed, no visible pores or swellings, no fat my God, my fat! How he dressed after the fashion of Einstein, in black socks, gray pants, shirts that varied slightly but were always subdued, jackets that were almost identical.
And how uncomfortable he was here in China, how much he disliked the steamy, crowded buses, the old clothes, the crowded sidewalks, the open-air markets with their unrefrigerated offerings, the smells, the dirt, the noise, and the absence of wildlife, which implied to him that everything had been eaten. I thought about that astigmatism of his, that twist which made him see the worst in anything, and about his ability to make others see the same way, as if hed etched their corneas with acid rain.
But I didnt say any of this. He likes a clean house, I said instead. He likes things neat.
You live in a nice house? Dr Yu asked, and I said yes but then, pressed to describe it, found myself describing another house instead. Not our spacious, clean colonial so near the university, but the cramped bungalow where Id grown up with my mother and father and brother and Mumu, who was stuck in a wheelchair and slept in the den. As I spoke I sketched the houses outline in the air, and I could see that it seemed luxurious to Dr Yu.
Six rooms, she marveled. We have three, very large apartment for just three people, now that our daughter and youngest son are away. Kitchen, sitting room, sleeping room separate. Plus a bath with running water. Plus central heat. You could come visit us, and see.
I nodded. Someday, I said. I thought this was only one of those conversations Id had at a hundred cocktail parties. Vague promises, vague suggestions, all forgotten the next day and never followed up.
Dr Yu finished her beer and looked at me. So, what do you do now? she asked. For work, I mean.
I was embarrassed to tell her about my recent idleness and so I stretched the truth instead, casting back to the houses Id bought and redone with my great-uncles money. Im a renovator, I told her. A rehabber.
What is that?
I buy old, ruined houses and fix them up again. I make them look nice, and then I sell them.
Dr Yu stared at me, apparently fascinated. This is a job? she said. People pay you for your your
Taste, I said firmly. People pay me for my taste.
Really? She seemed puzzled. They cant fix these old houses themselves?
Well, they could, I said. But they dont have the time, or they dont understand how to do it
I see, Dr Yu said. Thats very interesting. Perhaps you could explain
But suddenly the burr-voiced woman stepped to the microphone again, waved the musicians silent, clapped twice, and said, Thank you for attending this our reception-party. Good night.
Instantly the room began to empty. I looked at Dr Yu; Dr Yu smiled and said, The party is over. Time to go. She gathered her umbrella, her bag, and her books and moved into the stream of people headed for the door. Her bag had a damp stain on the bottom that was spreading up the side, and suddenly I knew where that plateful of food had ended up. Our daughter and youngest son are away, shed said, presumably meaning that her eldest son still lived at home. My father, heavier even than me, used to bring food home from the cafeteria where he worked, stuffed peppers and casseroles that he stowed in bags and then shared with me after my slim mother slept.
Wait, I said to her. I felt I owed her something, and Walter was headed our way. Would you like to meet my husband? I had forgotten that Walter and I werent speaking.
Dr Yu nodded and blushed, and then Walter stood before us looking pained. Walter, I said. Id like to introduce a colleague of yours. Dr Yu Xiaomin.
Walter nodded, his dismissing, you-barely-exist-for-me nod, as easy to read in China as at home. He was tired, I knew, and depressed by the visit hed made that afternoon to the universitys science facilities. Id overheard him talking to Paul LeClerc on the way to the banquet, and there had been no mistaking his distress. Hed described the classrooms, bare and scarred, and the absence of equipment that would have been basic at home. No autoclaves, hed said. No coldrooms. No electron microscope. The library doesnt have any good journals. Thirty students share one dissection specimen. How are we supposed to help them? They hadnt asked him for help, I knew; they had only asked to share their work with him and have him share his in return. But Walter had a missionary streak to him as wide as any river he was apt to see lives different from his as something broken he was meant to fix. We have to triage this, hed said to Paul, quite seriously. Separate the ones we cant help from the ones we can. I knew he saw Dr Yu as someone past helping.
Dr Yus blush deepened as Walter tugged me aside and said, Lets go, I need to get out of here. The others are all on the hotel bus already. And I promised Id talk to Fred Dobzhinski, and Ive got things to do
I could have wrapped my hand around his heathery tie and pulled until his head parted from his neck. I turned and saw Dr Yu, already separated from me by a stream of people, fussing with the buttons of her blouse. She looked at me for a second and then looked away, and I looked at Walter again and saw a six-foot-tall carp standing on his tail. I pulled away from him, made my way to Dr Yu, and said, Im sorry, hes such a prick sometimes
Prick? asked Dr Yu.
Schmuck, I said helplessly, knowing my meaning was still lost. Asshole! I said much too loudly, sure Dr Yu would get this phrase despite my confusion of body parts and metaphors. Not ass-face, asshole.
Dr Yu smiled. Ah, she said. Yes. She scribbled another character on her palm and flashed it at me. Hard to miss, she said.
Hard to miss, I agreed.
You will come to have dinner at my home tomorrow night? she asked. We would be most happy you can meet my husband and my son. My husband is a doctor and maybe he can fix your cough.
I hesitated; the idea was impossible. We had some presentation scheduled for the next night, some show or dinner or entertainment, as we did every night. All we were ever going to see of China was the thin, thin skin, creamed and powdered and rouged and depilated.
Please, she said, watching me think. It would be a great honor for us.
I looked back for Walter but he was gone, vanished the way all of this, the singing and dancing and drinking and talking, the eating and proud hospitality, would vanish if he had his way. Already a dark yellow, sulfurous cloud hung over the city and made my lungs sting, as if I were manufacturing acid rain inside my chest. I coughed, then coughed again. I looked out the window and saw Walter near the bus, clicking his index finger against his teeth and sheltering his head with a newspaper. He stood all alone.
Id be delighted to come, I told Dr Yu, making my mind up that instant. I liked her face, and her curiosity. And even if shed approached me only because of my connection to Walter, it was me shed asked to visit. Can I come alone?
Of course, she said. Thats what I meant. Quickly, while the waiters turned the lights off and the other guests left, she gave me directions. Come to the Temple of Heaven, she said. At five. Take a cab. I will meet you there at the Triple Sounds Stone and take you home otherwise you will never find it. Is that all right?
Thats wonderful, I said. She ducked into the courtyard and vanished, and I crept through the warm rain to our packed, polyglot bus. The lights inside the bus were on and the tired white faces of my companions shone starkly through the windows, mouths open in gaping yawns and eyes closed in irritation at the thought of the half-hour journey to the isolated splendor of our hotel in the Fragrant Hills.
THE FORBIDDEN CITY
Having made mistakes you may feel that, come what may, you are saddled with them and so become dispirited; if you have not made mistakes, you may feel that you are free from error and so become conceited . All such things may become encumbrances or baggage if there is no critical awareness.
Mao
THE NEXT DAY, I retraced some of my great-uncle Owens footsteps. He had visited China several times in the 1930s, traveling all around the country before the Japanese occupation; hed returned twice in the late 1940s, after the end of the war. The place hed visited most often was Beijing, where hed stayed for months at a time in a house he rented from a friend of his, a British journalist who periodically toured the southern cities, gathering information on the student movements and the rumblings of rebellion. In her absence, Uncle Owen had cared for her house and had tried to recreate a way of life that was already obsolete.
Uncle Owen had entertained me with his China tales since Id been old enough to listen, and after he died his companion had sent me his Beijing diaries when Id learned that I was to make this trip. From these, Id formed a hazy picture of this city Uncle Owen had loved. The house hed rented had belonged to a palace eunuch before it passed to the Englishwoman, and was very old-fashioned: no plumbing, no electricity, no central heat. He read by kerosene lamps, and at night he slept on a kang a raised brick platform heated from within by a small stove. His rooms were heated by pot-bellied stoves in which he burned balls of coal dust mixed with clay. From the peddlers who came to his door, hed bought iced bitter prune soup and steamed stuffed dumplings, and hed struggled, as I had, with the melodic tones of spoken Mandarin.
In winter winds so cold that hed worn two padded jackets beneath his robe, hed strolled through the gardens of Beihai and sipped tea by the shores of the lake. Hed befriended the servants who cared for the house, and hed thrown parties in the courtyard, under a mat roof raised on bamboo poles. Beijing was crumbling then, its palaces and fine homes being broken up, and hed haunted the local curio shops, training his eye and buying fabrics and brass, copper and pewter, ivory and rugs and scrolls and lacquer and small exotic carvings. When he left Beijing for the last time, just after hed seen the new government parade past the Gate of Heavenly Peace in 1949, he said the destruction and chaos had broken his heart.